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There Won’t Be a Clear End to the Pandemic
The pandemic has rendered many activities unsafe, but thankfully it can’t stop us from fantasizing about them. A common balm that people reach for is the sentence construction “When this is over, I’m going to ____.” It seems to help, if only in a fleeting way, for them to imagine all of the vacations they’ll go on, all of the concerts they’ll attend, and all of the hugs they’ll give, as soon as they’re able to. Unfortunately, the sublime post-pandemic period that so many are longing for will likely not arrive all at once, like a clock striking midnight on New Year’s Eve.
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Don’t Just Lead Your People Through Trauma. Help Them Grow.
The last several months have stacked painful experiences on top of each other: a global pandemic, economic collapse, and new reminders of perennial racial injustice and police violence. This July, rates of depression and anxiety in the U.S. were more than triple those of early 2019. The simple question, “How are you?” has turned into an emotional minefield. Workplaces are saturated with trauma, too, and leaders are agonizing over how to keep their teams healthy as everyone works remotely and juggles any number of stressors.
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The Surprising Benefits of Talking to Strangers
Imagine you die. You wake up in a world only made up of people you remember. “All your old lovers. Your boss, your grandmothers, and the waitress who served your food each day at lunch… It is a blissful opportunity to spend quality time with your 1,000 connections, to renew fading ties, to catch up with those you let slip away. It is only after several weeks of this that you begin to feel forlorn. You wonder what’s different as you saunter through the vast quiet parks with a friend or two. No strangers grace the empty park benches.
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Meet The Rebel Psychologist Turning Managers Into Leaders In Two Minutes A Day
In today’s workplace, 35% of the population are Millennials. A third of them are managing teams and yet a majority – 58% – have not received management training, according to a CareerBuilder study. That’s not to say that millennial managers don’t want to grow. Most of the time, they simply lack the resources to develop their skill set in a way that’s reflective of their demands. Now, in 2020, flip-charts, workshop rooms and week-long seminars are long gone, but management training has yet to experience the digital disruption that we’ve seen in other areas of our lives. The wisdom on leadership and building great teams is out there.
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Burning Out
As a frequent commentator on all things higher ed, Kevin McClure likes his predictions to be right. But in the case of a recent article he wrote about the growing threat of faculty burnout, he wanted to be wrong. “Basically what I heard over and over again was people saying, ‘That’s me. This is how I feel. This gives words to the way that I’m feeling walking into fall semester,’” McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said about feedback he received. “So it’s a situation where many people confirmed my argument that there will be a wave of burnout -- but it does increase my level of concern.” ...
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Is It OK to Reveal Your Anxiety or Depression to Your Boss?
Workers everywhere are having a tough time. Should they ask for help on the job? The share of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression ballooned during the pandemic, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, rising to 40.9% by mid-July. A similar national survey from the first half of 2019 put that number at 11%. For many, 2020 has ushered in fears of falling sick and losing a job, tension over the coming election and racial inequality, and a feeling of being overwhelmed by an untenable work-life juggle.
