How to Be Helpful: Cancel the Meeting

"I just had no idea what I was doing" my friend confessed to me over a plate of breakfast potatoes + an omelette.

He quit a few days prior from his dream job.  About a year earlier, after years of working on the front line, he'd been promoted to manager.

But the excitement quickly wore off as he found himself underwater with so many people issues:  flooded in drama while managing people who had a fraction of his skill.

He coped by micro-managing or just doing their job for them (after all, that was what he knew best).  

He was stressed to the breaking point and, on an unsuspecting Thursday, he walked out.

Middle managers are a vital part of translating organizational values, those slogans that we paste on the way or splash across our websites, into meaningful actions.

But, all too often, we promote people and hope for the best without giving them any type of training in the human-centric skills that are necessary to thrive.  

Recent research from CEB Global showed that 60% of managers fail in their first two years.  

Over the course of our next few newsletters, I'm going to be sharing tips for leaders/managers to help support your people when they need it most.

These tips are gathered from years of research, the school of hard knocks, and pearls of wisdom from some of the best people leaders I know.


The gift of time
Megan is one of my favorite HR pros.  She was part of an early Empathy@Work cohort and I share this insight of hers in just about every session that I do with leaders and managers.

"When someone is going through something hard, the first thing that I do is go through their calendar and look at any meeting that could be an email or just is not that necessary and I cancel or postpone it.  I give people the gift of their time."

The gift of time.  There are all kinds of ways that we complicate care or second-guess ourselves in showing support.

We feel the need to fix things.

Or come up with the magic words to make something better.

One of the best things you can do, if you are a leader or a manager, is give people back the gift of their time when they are going through something hard.  

Cancel that meeting, redistribute the complex deliverable, and give people the space to focus on what matters most.

Podcast Recommendation

From the Handle with Care podcast vault, this podcast is especially timely during Mental Health Awareness Month.

Suicide is complicated and tragic. It is intensely personal, specific to an individual.

Furthermore, how suicide is experienced and interpreted also differs between communities and cultures.

In this episode, I talk with Karen. Karen is Chinese American. Since the death of her sister, Karine, by suicide, Karen has been on her own journey with grief and loss…and she feels a particular passion to speak to the stigma around mental health among Chinese Americans.

I learned so much in this episode and I am confident you will too.

Gift Recommendation

I absolutely love the cards from Em & Friends (linked above).  They range from insightful and heartfelt to a little bit snarky.  But the common thread is that these cards give you words when you feel like you can't find their own.

For example, I gave them to a client who told me, a week later, "These were just perfect for my work friend whose husband cheated on her for the forth time.  I didn't even imagine that there could be a card for that occasion, but I'm so glad I have one."

So many greeting cards fall into the saccharine or default to meaningless cliches; I recommend keeping a box of these pitch-perfect cards in your desk at home or at work.