How do I spend my time? Am I getting the best rate of return on my time investment? Am I making the best use of my time? These are questions I ask myself as I sort through various professional projects and the activities of life. 

In a 2011 article, “What is an Effective Manager,” in the Canadian Manager, Mitch McCrimmon argued that we should review ourselves, our own resources, just as we might our financial resources. One of the questions he posed was:  “What is the best use of my time today?” Time is a resource of which we rarely have enough. Odd as it may seem, during my senior year in high school decades ago, our English teacher required that we write a letter to Santa. I asked Santa for only one gift: a 28-hour day. 

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey devoted a chapter to putting first things first and later developed into his book, Putting First Things First. He suggested our activities can be categorized on two dimensions: “urgent—not urgent” and “important—not important,” thus creating a matrix. Using these dimensions, we can classify our activities into one of four areas. So how do we spend our time? How much time do we spend on “not urgent, not important” activities? More importantly, how much do we spend on “important, not urgent."   The importance of investing time in the “important but not urgent” is repeated in Clay Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life. This is the quadrant where our relationships often fall and can be too easily neglected.

My favorite, and I think the best, self-study questions for managers come from Henry Mintzberg, his 1975 Harvard Business Review (July-August) article, “The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact.”  His questions should be in the desk drawer or computer of every manager. Here is an example from Mintzberg’s self-study questions:

12. Do I spend too much time on current, tangible activities? Am I a slave to the action and excitement of my work, so that I am no longer able to concentrate on issues? Do key problems receive the attention they deserve? Should I spend more time reading and probing deeply into certain issues? Could I be more reflective? Should I be?

For me taking the time to reflect on my use of time is difficult. This is probably true for many of us. We are always busy. But reviewing how we use time is probably one of the best uses of our time.

McCrimmon, M. (2011). What is an effective manager. Canadian Manager, Fall. https://www.lead2xl.com/what-is-an-effective-manager​

Modified from my blog, 12/13/2012. 

Image by AbsolutVision. Obtained from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/deadline-stopwatch-clock-time-2636259/​
​
© John Ballard, PhD,  2022. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

Meetings are costly. We don’t usually think about the cost to bring people together to share information or try to work an issue but the cost is there. Keep track of how much time you spend in meetings in a week and convert to a percentage, then a percentage of your pay. Meeting costs add up quickly.
 
Unfortunately wasting time in meetings is a major complaint among managers and employees. Surveys of managers have suggested (1) 30% or more of meeting time is unproductive and (2) the majority of meetings fail to accomplish their objectives. There are great leaders and managers who do not have “how to conduct effective meetings” in their toolkit.
 
Well-run meetings make things happen. If you are leading a meeting, here are questions you need to answer.
 
1.  Is this meeting really necessary?  You are spending the company’s money to bring people together. Is it worth it? If you are mainly sharing information, there may be more efficient ways, such as intranets, email, video conferencing.
 
2.  What do I want to get accomplished at this meeting? If you’ve decided a meeting is necessary, then you should have a good handle on the purpose. You need to think through what items you need on the agenda and in what order. Then share the agenda with people coming to the meeting and give them time to prepare.
 
3.  Will the right people be at the meeting? It is hard to make decisions if the decision-makers, or the people with the information needed, are not in the room. Be sure the key players will attend.
 
4. Should smartphones, computers and other digital devices be allowed?  This can be a tough decision. Some leaders and organizations ban digital devices from important meetings. In a well-run meeting participants are engaged with each other. The fewer the distractions, the easier to focus, and perhaps the shorter the meeting.
 
5. Can I expect the group dynamics to lead to a successful meeting? Some people talk too much. Some people don’t talk enough. Few of us are good active listeners. Here are two techniques to consider when needed:
 
(1) Use the “talking stick”, only the person with the stick (pen, or pencil) can speak. Others must listen. The stick can be passed around or exchanged among participants.
 
(2) Use the Crawford Slip Method, a method to get anonymous feedback, with depth and no group dynamics. Show participants a target question, such as “How can we improve customer service?,” and have them write a one sentence answer on a post-it, turn it over, then write another, then another. No talking allowed. Continue for 7-10 minutes or until about half of the attendees are not writing. Collect the slips and after the meeting sort them into categories. These slips are data that can be fedback and used to develop action plans.
 
6. How will I get feedback about how the meeting went? Apply continuous improvement to your meetings just like any other process. It can be as simple as asking participants to give feedback about the meeting, a few anonymous sentences written at the end of the meeting on what went well, ideas to improve.

Modified from my original article published online 2014 in the American Management Association's Playbook. 

Image by Gerd Altmann. Obtained from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/meeting-meet-business-people-people-1219530/
​
© John Ballard, PhD,  2022. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

Have you known people who exude confidence, who seemed to be natural leaders? Sometimes there is just something about a person’s look or behaviors that say this person is a leader.  Perhaps it is the erect posture, or the confident tone of voice, or the way the person looks at you and others directly. Some people look and act confidently. Such people more often move into positions of leadership.

Connson Locke (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Cameron Anderson (University of California, Berkley) wondered how people who appear to be highly confident affect the behavior of others, specifically in decision-making. Does a person who appears to be highly confident “cause others to participate less, or to suppress their own ideas and opinions’ (p. 42). Studies have suggested that people who appear to be highly confident are more likely to be seen as competent -- people who know their stuff --regardless of whether this is true.

In a series of three different experimental studies Locke and Anderson examined this subject.  What did they find?

• On decision-making tasks, participants viewed the highly confident person as more competent and they participated less.
• Even when the highly confident person had incorrect opinions, participants deferred.
• When highly confident people sought others’ ideas, the participants were more likely to participate, off-setting the effect of perceived competence.

My take-aways:

1.  We often do see people as leaders, or potential leaders, who carry themselves well, speak with confidence, and look at us while talking. We also tend to select and promote these people into positions of power and leadership. Not all perhaps, but many. If we think honestly about it, we may find we have a stereotype of the leader, and it is a stereotype that many others also may have. What are the implications for those of us who do not fit the stereotype?

2.  For the leaders amongst us who appear confident to others, there is an important point here. Recognize you may be perceived as more competent or smarter than you are. You may intimidate others simply by being yourself and suppress participative decision-making. The solution: Genuinely seek others’ opinions and ideas, admitting you do not have all the answers. That is being a leader.

Locke, C. C., & Anderson, C. (2015). The downside of looking like a leader: Power, nonverbal confidence, and participative decision-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58, 42-47.

Image by mohamed-hassan. Obtained from https://pixabay.com/vectors/businessman-superman-shadow-hero-6262463/​

Modified from my blog, 2/14/2015. © John Ballard, PhD,  2022. All rights reserved.
_________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

Funny how some things stick in your mind. Functional fixedness, Duncker (1945), a concept I learned decades ago in a cognitive psychology class. 

The Pearl Jam concert was over. I found my way to my car, started the engine, and headed toward the exit. One car was in front of me. But the car in front of me could not get into the exiting line. Cars from elsewhere in the parking lot continued to fill the exit line. The car in front of me was stuck.

I noticed the entrance to the parking lot was not being used. Who is going to come into an emptying parking lot after a rock concert? Besides, at some venues patrons are encouraged to exit using both the exit and entrance. So I moved around the car to exit the parking lot using the entrance lane. A policeman stood there. He halted me and the exit lane for a moment and then signaled both of us to move out into the street, directing my car to the outer lane of the street, the exit lane to the inner. I was out of the parking lot and out of the congested area within minutes.

So why did others not seen the parking lot entrance as an exit to the street? Functional fixedness. An entrance is an entrance. An exit is an exit. We see something as being used for one thing and that precludes us from seeing how it could be used in other ways.

In his classic experiments Duncker had people try to mount a candle or candles on a door. Some people had a box of candles, matches, and a box of tacks. Others were given a box of candles, matches, tacks on a table, and an empty box – and they solved the problem more often and more quickly. Why the difference? The first group perceived a box as a box, something that holds items. The second group saw the empty box as something that could be tacked to the wall to hold a candle. Because the empty box was not being used as a box, it was more easily reframed and repurposed.

Anyone who has seen the movie Apollo 13 (based on actual events) has seen the concept of functional fixedness turned on its head. Problems had to be solved. The landing module became the main cabin. Round holes had to take square pegs so carbon dioxide could be removed from the air. Things had to be used for purposes other than those intended.

My take-away:

How often do we frame something, someone, some situation in only one way? There are times when if we “let go” of seeing that one way, we might see more effective, more efficient ways. Some people have skills and abilities that do not get used because that is not how we see those people. We do not provide them opportunities to show their skills. Sometimes we need to think about the meanings we are giving, the perceptions we have formed – and perhaps see things anew.  

Duncker, K. (1945). On problem-solving (L. S. Lees, Trans.). Psychological Monographs, 58 (5, Whole No. 270). 

King, M. J. (1997). Apollo 13 creativity: In-the-box innovation. Journal of Creative Behavior, 31(4), 299-308.

Image by T. Takemoto from http://www.flickr.com/photos/nihonbunka/5817226337/
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en

Modified from my blog, 10/21/2013. © John Ballard, PhD,  2022. All rights reserved.
_________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

Admiral William H. McRaven gave the commencement address at the University of Texas in Austin in May 2014. A YouTube video of the Admiral’s speech has over 16 million hits. It was a powerful speech well delivered. The Admiral talked about lessons he learned in Navy SEAL training (SEa, Air, Land), an elite Navy unit.  The Wall Street Journal published part of his commencement address. 

The Admiral explained ten lessons for life using vivid examples from his experiences in SEAL training. Here is a brief summary using his words (in quotation marks) and my interpretation of what he said.

1. “If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.”
2. “You can't change the world alone—you will need some help.”
3. Nothing matters “but your will to succeed.”
4. “Sometimes, no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform”, you are not going to succeed. 
5. “You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.” But it will make you stronger.
6. Sometimes you must take risks.
7. Deal with obstacles as they arise.
8. Be at your best in the darkest moments.
9. Have hope and share hope
10. Persevere, don’t give up. 

In 2017 Admiral McRaven expounded on these ten lessons in his best-selling book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life . . . And Maybe the World.

My take-away:

Good advice. I can sum up most of these points with one word: grit. Duckworth and associates researched grit and reported their work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2007. They defined grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals”, “working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress” (pp.1087-1088). In six studies they found grit explained a larger chunk of success than IQ. Grittier individuals achieved higher levels of education sooner, and changed jobs less often. Who gets ahead? People with grit, stick-to-it-ness, perseverance. In 2016 Duckworth published her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

I love what the Admiral said and how he said it. What I hear him saying is, “Have grit.” 
 _____________
Modified from my blog of 5/28/2014. © John Ballard, PhD,  2022. All rights reserved.

Image of bed by Clkr-Free-Vector-Images. Obtained from https://pixabay.com/vectors/bed-hospital-medical-health-311372/​

A special thanks to Admiral McRaven for endorsing Fred Stuvek, Jr.'s book, The Experience of Leadership, for which I provided a chapter.

Great leadership can be the catalyst to great success. In the National Basketball Association, the Golden State Warriors have earned their fourth NBA Championship in the past eight years. Steve Kerr, head coach of the Warriors, exemplifies the characteristics of leadership that could elevate  performance in many organizations.
 
In May 2017 Chris Ballard (no relation) wrote an article in Sports Illustrated, “No Coach, No Problem.” Ballard’s article provided insight into Kerr’s leadership style, illuminating ten characteristics of outstanding leaders. 

1. Respect. Great leaders earn respect and respect others. Players and other coaches respect Coach Kerr highly.
2. It’s not about you. When you make a moment about you and not the team or the organization, you start to lose them. It is always about them, about those you lead. Kerr allowed Sports Illustrated only one photo of himself.
3. Humility and compassion. Kerr: “The people to me who are the most powerful leaders are the ones who have great talent in whatever their field is, great conviction in their ability to teach it and act it, but an awareness and a humility and compassion for others” (p. 30)
4. Nurture freedom, build trust. Coach Kerr has built a culture where players are participants willing to share ideas. It’s not “my way or the highway” but the opposite. The players trust each other and the coaches and vice versa.
5. Empower. Kerr’s leadership is highly participative, not hierarchical. Regardless of minutes played, every player is part of the process, the flow, and ready to step up when called.
6. Grit. Out of high school Kerr only had one scholarship to a major college basketball program. Ballard noted that as an NBA player for 15 seasons, Kerr only started 30 games. Success goes to those who persevere.
7. Communicate. Kerr has conversations with players where as he puts it, he may “overcommunicate” and sometimes he writes notes to players. Players know where they stand; what they need to do to improve.
8. Know your people. Warrior player Draymond Green: “He knows me . . . That’s his thing. He has this feel for exactly what each player needs” (p.32).
9. Perspective: Kerr: “Take things seriously, but not yourself.”
10. Live your core values: Kerr: “What I learned from all the coaches I talked to was that your entire process has to reflect your core values” (p. 34). Kerr’s core values: joy, competition, compassion, mindfulness.

Chris Ballard summed up Kerr’s leadership as follows: "You want to lead like Kerr? Just be humble and grateful, curious and self-aware. Communicate, value family and empower others. When bad things happen, keep a broader perspective. Most of all, create something bigger than yourself . . ." (p. 35).

Ballard, C. (2017, May 29). "No coach, no problem." Sports Illustrated, 126 (15), 28-35. 
 
Image, “Steve Kerr,” by Keith Allison.
Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Kerr_(16453076458)_cropped.jpg
Used with  permission:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en 

Modified from my blog of 6/15/2017.© John Ballard, PhD,  2022. All rights reserved.
 ​__________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

What do you bring to your job? Make a list of what you think you bring to your company. Your list might include  experience, education, attitudes, knowledge, skills, abilities. These are your inputs to the job as you perceive them. 

​What do you expect from the job? These might include company’s benefit, pay, opportunities for growth, fair treatment, good working conditions, a satisfying job. These are your valued outcomes.  While these inputs and outcomes listed may be easy to identify, others are not. For example, what did you list about your level of effort?
 
Everyone in the office marveled at Karen. If there were a superwoman, she was it. She got the toughest assignments and made them look easy. Admired by all, praised by her bosses, Karen was a wonder. Her co-workers were amazed how anyone could work so hard all the time. Karen knew how others viewed her – and she thought, “If they only knew.” Karen was a hard worker, a smart worker, with outstanding organizing skills – and while occasionally an assignment would cause her to turn up her effort, most of the time she was on cruise control with plenty of energy to spare. “If I worked as hard as I could, they would be amazed”, she thought.
 
Do you give 100% on the job? My guess is that if you do, you’re on your way to burnout. People work at different levels of effort. Some people give so much at the office there is nothing left when they get home. Others moderate their efforts so the job gets done but there is energy for other activities after work. Many of us find a happy medium that satisfies our employer and ourselves. Few people give it all each and every day.
             
So am I advocated coasting in our jobs? Of course not. Over time an employee will settle into a level of effort consistent with what’s needed to get the job done and individual factors, such as one’s need to achieve. This level will vary with each person, the job, and the situational factors of the job. But if you give your very best each and every moment of every day, there will be nothing in reserve when it is needed. There are times when we turn it on and other times when we work less hard. Employers and managers who push employees relentlessly will likely pay the price in stress-related medical costs, absenteeism, and turnover.

Revised from Decoding the Workplace, Chapter Seven, Organizational Socialization.

Image, "Superwoman", by Saydung89. Obtained from https://pixabay.com/vectors/superwoman-heroine-mother-woman-5709443/

© John Ballard, PhD, 2022. All rights reserved.
__________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.
 
 

“Soft skills.” Do you, your colleagues, your organization use that term? Through study and practice we learn “hard skills”, often technical, sometimes quantitative, skills essential to accomplish job-related tasks. On the other hand, we have come to understand that success on the job, good performance, even promotions often come down to “soft” skills, those related to interacting and working with people. I agree with Jennifer Parlamis and Matthew Monnot (2019):
 
“We need to retire the term ‘soft skills.’”
 
What words come to mind when you associate to the word “soft.” Parlamis and Monnot stated that “the word ‘soft’ is often used as a pejorative term”, e.g., soft on crime, soft sciences. They noted that synonyms for soft tend to be derogatory, such as “weak”, “dull”, “wimpy.” They argue that the set of skills we refer to as “soft” be reframed with another term and suggested “CORE skills” for Competence in Organizational and Relational Effectiveness.
 
There is another reason for eliminating “soft skills” from our vocabulary. Given a list of words and asked whether a word is associated more with men or women, the word “soft” will be associated more with women. I have tried this in the classroom and both sexes, nearly 100%, associated “soft” with women. Soft is a sex-role stereotype. It can affect hiring, performance appraisals, promotions. It is time to stop using the term “soft skills.” Furthermore, there is nothing soft about them.
 
I propose we use the term “relational skills” in place of “soft skills.”
 
I have used “relational skills” for decades across all aspects of my professional life. While people will not instinctively know what CORE skills are (or are already using CORE in a different context), they will intuitively understand the meaning of “relational skills”. [For an in-depth discussion of relational practice and implications for women, I recommend Joyce Fletcher (1999). ]
 
Concluding:
 
1. Using the term “soft skills” has negative implications. “Relational skills” is more descriptive and free of those implications.
 
2. For more on unintentional sex-role stereotyping in the workplace, see this blog.
 
3. The choice of our words and phrases in our conduct can be important. As a young child our daughter asked, “Dad, why don’t you ever call me and my brother kids?” To which I replied smiling, “When you act like baby goats, I will.”
 
Fletcher, J. (1999). Disappearing acts: Gender, power, and relational practice at work. The MIT Press.
 
Parlamis, J., & Monnot, M. J. (2019). Getting to the CORE: Putting an end to the term “soft skills”. Journal of Management Inquiry, 28(2), 225-227.
 
Image, "Team", by geralt, Obtained from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/team-people-silhouettes-drawing-123085/

© John Ballard, PhD, 2022. All rights reserved.
__________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a massive, uncontrolled, unplanned experiment. Millions of people left their offices to work remotely, mostly from home. In a March 13 New York Times report, Emma Goldberg shared research findings. Here are some facts and statistics gleaned from her article.

• Because of the pandemic, 50 million workers in the United States “left their offices.”
• For white-collar workers: Pre-pandemic 6% worked from home; during pandemic, 65%. (Gallup)
• Nearly 70% “reluctant to return” to office jobs (FlexJobs).
• Reasons working remotely preferred: safety, quality time with children and pets, flexibility for other activities, casual dress, no unnecessary office interaction (results of NYT survey/interviews) 
• Knowledge workers: % agreeing remote work beneficial (Future Forum):

            86% Hispanic
            81% Black
            75% White 

• Desire to work remotely “most or all of the time”, global survey (Future Forum):

            50% Mothers
            43% Fathers

• Increase in “sense of belonging at work” for knowledge workers working remotely (Future Forum)

            24% Black
              5% White
 
Youngjoo Cha, Indiana University sociologist: “We had a nationwide experiment in telecommuting. These conditions challenged the notion of ideal workers.”
 
The New York Times surveyed over 700 people and interviewed over 25. Here are some comments from interviewees:

• “I won’t be going back to the office. Ever.”
• (After receiving promotion and pay raise): “If I had continued going into the office, there might have been some excuse around likability".
• “There are still a lot of spaces in a lot industries where just being a woman of color is an outlier. The side conversations, the pre-meeting conversations, the post-meeting conversations, the inside jokes – they all subtly add up to tell you that you don’t quite fit.”
• “What a relief not to have to go in day after day, week after week, and fail at making friends and having fun.”
• “I feel  a little bit depressed when I wake up at 8 a.m., go to my coffee table, sit there at my computer on Zoom from 9 to 5, and then just close my computer and haven’t left my tiny studio all day.”
• “Not one single person who re-enters the office in the next three months is the same as the one who left.”

 
Full-time U.S. remote workers (Gallup):

• 2019 4%
• 2020 May 43%
• 2021 December 26%

 
My take-aways:
 
1. Employees want flexibility in times and places to work.  For many jobs working remotely is possible. Management attitudes though could be a limiting factor. In a March 2021 blog I discussed published remarks in The Wall Street Journal from 19 CEOs. The majority felt remote work was problematic – less quality, less productivity, less innovation. Organizations will make different decisions; some based on data, some on managerial preferences.
 
2.  One result, as discussed in another blog, may be a two-tier workplace. Peter Cappelli of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School addressed this in an August 2021 Wall Street Journal article. He argued,  “face time still matters” and “on-site employees will get the bulk of the attention – and the promotions.”
 
3. A contribution of this March New York Times article is to bring individual differences into the remote, hybrid, office discussion. Those of us who are more introverted may be more comfortable with less in-person interaction, less chitchat. In other workplaces racial, ethic or gender differences may make remote work more desirable. For example, as the article mentioned, women tend to be more comfortable than men in offices that are warmer. As Parkinson et al. stated, “the associated impacts of this pervasive overcooling on well-being and performance are borne predominantly by women.”
 
4. This time of remote work has highlighted issues that have been understated or ignored. If leaders attend to the lessons of the pandemic years, organizational decisions can be made that should benefit both the organization and its employees.
 
Goldberg, E. (2022, March 13). "Who is the office for?" New York Times. Online March      10: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/business/remote-work-office-life.

Parkinson, T., Schiavon, S., de Dear, R., & Brager, G. (2021). Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in    thermal comfort.Scientific Reports, 11. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03121-1

Image, "Remote Working", by kreatikar, Obtained from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/remote-working-freelancer-network-4561363/​

© John Ballard, PhD, 2022. All rights reserved.
__________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

​​World events can affect people in the workplace. We are still experiencing the effects of COVID-19 and its variants.  Remote and hybrid work are more common now. Organizations can develop policies to deal with health issues such as those associated with the pandemic. More difficult are recognizing and addressing stress and mental health issues, especially those stemming from seemingly remote world events.
 
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian military forces to invade Ukraine. The individual impact of this and subsequent actions by the EU, NATO, and others varies widely. Imagine a continuum. On one end are those affected directly for whom this may even be a life or death situation. On that end of the continuum may be U.S. companies, such as in the tech sector, with Ukrainian operations that have a large number of employees there. For them it has been decision time. Do we stay or do we go?
 
Then there may be colleagues of Ukrainian descent, which you may or may not know, who struggle with the realities of what is happening in their ancestral homeland, and possibly to relatives and friends in harm’s way. Intrusive thoughts, perhaps grief, and concerns may affect the ability to focus, to work normally. Over a million U.S. citizens are of Ukrainian descent.
 
Images and media coverage of war affect many. From seeing the bodies of soldiers, and civilians, to the destruction in once peaceful neighborhoods. Troubling events may trouble the mind. Some will simply ignore the media coverage because it is too upsetting.
 
On the other end of the continuum, there will be people who do not care about Ukraine, out of sight, out of mind.
 
The war in Ukraine can impact the mental health of employees. Recognize this possibility. Acknowledge what is happening as you see appropriate. If possible, make sure employees are aware of the availability of mental health resources.
 
It has not been business as usual during the pandemic. It is not business as usual with a war in Europe.  

Image by Danielhadmanphotography. Obtained from https://pixabay.com/photos/veterans-day-anzac-day-anzac-4653833/
 
 © John Ballard, PhD, 2022. All rights reserved.
 _________________________
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Now also available as an audiobook, paperback, and audio CD. ​