How to avoid crushing team morale with emails

Burnout is becoming a dangerous norm. How are you helping your people? Do you know the history of burnout? Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined the term "Burnout" in the 1970s after watching some of the most passionate frontline healthcare workers lose their usual spark in the workplace. The most dedicated doctors, nurses, and medical staff? They were the ones burning out the fastest. That is the all too common pattern today. The frontline workers who care most? They tend to feel burnout first. So. How do you fight back vs burnout? Its important to show your frontline employees that you are on their team. Too often burnout is addressed with a quick reply of "just take some vacation" but there are usually much deeper issues at play. Here's where I always start: 1) Acknowledge it Stop pretending everything is fine. Before pushing more updates or change initiatives, openly recognize the burnout and disruption. This builds credibility and signals you're not operating in a vacuum. Don't say: "We're excited to announce another enhancement to improve your experience!" Say this: "We know this is a lot - new systems, changing roles, and long shifts. You've been carrying a lot, and we want to make communication easier, not heavier." 2) Do A LOT less but better Frontline workers need to know the top 3 things that affect their shift, not everything happening across the enterprise. Send fewer, clearer, more relevant messages. Prioritize your "need to know now" over "nice to know" comms. You should create a comms hierarchy too. Here's a simple example: 🔴 RED: Immediate safety or operational changes 🟡 YELLOW: Important updates for this week   🟢 GREEN: General company news (send sparingly) It helps to create a recurring theme for your comms too. Think: "top 3 things you need to know this week" Then you have a pre built cap for your framework. 3) Your messages need to feel HUMAN There's nothing worse then getting a long email filled with corporate jargon that after I spend three minutes to read it hasn't told me anything. My simple rule: If you wouldn't say it? Don't send it. Bad example: "Management is implementing enhanced safety protocols to optimize operational efficiency." Good example: "Hey team, Mike here. Starting Monday, we're adding one extra safety check before shift handoff. Takes 2 minutes, keeps everyone safe. Questions? Hit me up." 4) Create space for their voice to be heard People tune in when they know their voice counts. You can launch a simple, anonymous weekly pulse with 1 to 2 questions and act on what you hear. Then close the loop by saying "You said, we did" Ex: this week's pulse: 1) "What's your biggest frustration right now?"  2) "What would make your job easier this week?" But here's the key: respond publicly to themes you're hearing. "Last week, 60% of you said scheduling is unpredictable. We're piloting 2 week advance schedules starting next month" P.S. What else would you add?

It's Sunday night. Are you about to send a work email? Don't. (At least if your company's normal workweek is Monday-Friday! If you work for a company with a work from anywhere anytime policy, that's amazing! This may not apply to you. But in a traditional business with set hours like I've worked in most of my career? Read on.) Before leaving the corporate world earlier this year to launch my own business, I worked in the world of HR for nearly 30 years, leading HR for 25. So I get it. If you are a leader, you can't always shut your laptop at the end of the day Friday and forget about work. But you can try. And if it's not possible, you can help make sure your team has a much needed weekend or evening break. How? If your work hours are all over the place, schedule that email to be sent during normal business hours. It's easy to do in most platforms. (NOTE: This is easiest if your team is in one time zone on roughly the same schedule - it's trickier, but not impossible, to work with each team member's time zone.) You may tell your team it's ok not to respond to emails, or even have a bounceback email that says something like that. But what matters more than intent is impact. The impact of a team leader sending copious amounts of emails during non-work hours can have the unintended consequence of making your team feel like they have to work 24/7. That they have to check their email constantly even when off for a day or a week. And while that may be in some cases, and certainly urgent issues come up from time to time, most of the time it's habit. That feeling of always having to be on is not sustainable to most people - and can and will lead to burnout. We talked about this a lot with the executive team at my last company because my team members felt this deeply from all across the company. As executives we couldn't necessarily always shut off at the end of a day or week. But we could make sure our people did. If we had to be plugged in or wanted to be catching up on email on the weekends, we scheduled our emails to be sent during the workweek. If something came up that was urgent and we needed a team member? We called. It wasn't perfect. But it was something. And it gave my team - who felt comfortable bringing up these concerns - a break. Which gave everyone else who might not have been comfortable saying something a break as well. Most of the time that email can wait. And that gives you a break too.

“Let’s talk.” That is all my (then) manager said in response to my big proposal. I felt my chest tighten with anxiety. -He hates it. -I screwed up. -He is going to give it to someone else to recreate. I met with him later that day and found out that all he wanted was a small tweak before I submitted it to our CEO. I exclaimed, “NEVER do that to me again!” He was baffled, “Do what?” I explained that I ruminated all day because of his ambiguous email. He thought I overreacted. I learned a BIG lesson that day that I often pass on to the leaders with whom I work. *When you have power, your words (or lack thereof) have far greater consequences than you think - especially on those who have less power than you.* Your power amplifies your impact. There are 3 forms of communication that become amplified when you have power. 1.) Brevity 2.) Ambiguity 3.) Direct communication -“OK.” -“Do you have a few minutes to speak?” -“This isn’t what I wanted.” Your brief, unclear, direct emails could be costing morale and productivity. What do you do? 1.) Add one more sentence. “OK. I like that approach.” 2.) Add a tiny clarification, “Do you have a few minutes to speak? Don’t worry, all good.” 3.) Add a softener. “Thanks for your hard work on this. I have a few changes.” Still think your emails land in the way that you intend? I invite you to think again. Ask your team :) #coaching #leadership #communication #mentalwellbeing #digitalbodylanguage

Be damn careful what time you send your team an email or slack. Your actions speak volumes. I have been guilty of this in the past and I thought it is worth sharing again. No matter what you tell your team about disconnecting after work, during the weekends or PTO, if you as a leader message (e.g. Slack, Text, etc.), then you are violating what you said. It doesn't matter if you say that they do not have to respond or if they will see it when they get up. The message has been sent that work is more important. As a leader, you have to follow exactly what you state or your words on this are hollow. The above applies when you as a leader are on PTO as well. If you are checking emails, sending texts and slacks, you tell your team two things - you don't trust them while you are gone and during PTO they should do the same. We are all connected, which is good and bad, but we can remove the bad by simply respecting the boundaries that we talk about as leaders. P.S. Use the schedule function on email and Slack if you are up early to have the messages go out at the start of the day. If you are Teams person, we cannot be friends.