Are you, like so many others, moving back into the office for at least a couple days a week? This can provoke a great deal of anxiety, and there’s so much to feel anxious about because there’s so much you can’t control. Where will you sit? What will you have access to? (a monitor? coffee? anybody else?) Will you even be able to get anything done?
I have many clients who are in the process of moving or getting ready to move back into the office. Some are excited to be in closer proximity to others, but some are overwhelmed by all of the unknowns. I’m seeing all kinds of ways of reacting to the uncertainty, ranging from denial to catastrophizing to radical acceptance.
What I love about what I’m hearing is that they’re in tune with their feelings, and they’re able to be open about the anxiety they are feeling in response to all the uncertainty.
However, many reactions to anxiety are not leadership behaviors, and the folks on our teams need us to lead, not just let it all hang out. Does this mean we should suck it up, “act as if,” and feel the fear and do it anyway?
Well….
Whatever you are feeling, if you are in a leadership position your feelings are having an impact on others. And some of the ways we express our anxiety actually makes it spread. For instance:
- Catastrophizing (think “the sky is falling!”)
- Magical thinking (this mostly comes across as denial)
- Avoidant coping (think Netflix + sofa + ice cream + bourbon, or simply “I’m going to think about that tomorrow.”)
And if that’s how a leader experiences and expresses their anxieties, it’s going to spread through their team and, at the very least, productivity will tank.
(And I SO understand these ways of experiencing and expressing anxiety. We are wired for negativity and have a rainbow of coping mechanisms, some of which are more effective than others. I like to do my catastrophizing at 2am. And if you haven’t yet been ready to learn how to live without a particular coping mechanism, it means you weren’t ready yet.)
In the midst of all this anxiety, the concept of Radical Acceptance can be helpful.
Radical acceptance is based on the notion that suffering comes not directly from pain, but from one’s attachment to the pain. It has its roots in Buddhism and the psychological paradigm put forth by Carl Rogers that acceptance is the first step towards change.
What Is Radical Acceptance?
Radical acceptance can be defined as the ability to accept situations that are outside of your control without judging them, which in turn reduces the suffering that is caused by them.1
-VeryWell Mind
One of my clients is moving her team back into the office this week, and I think her approach is a great example of radical acceptance at work.
She told me she wanted to be the first one to go in, so she could find out what it would be like and describe it to her team, to manage their expectations. She planned her trip into the office on a day when she could make the entire day just about that experience, because she figured a lot could go wrong, and she wanted to be as prepared as possible. (Radical acceptance!)
She experienced delays on the way in. She felt how weird it was to be back in the office. She discovered what she would (and wouldn’t) have access to. She found out what was the same (very little) and what was different (a lot) and how she felt about all of it.
And then she wrote a long email to her team letting them know what she experienced — with all of her uncertainties and anxieties, with the disappointments and the pleasant surprises. Unvarnished, but also without pessimism. She knew it would be awkward for all of them, and she wanted them to know it was awkward for her, too, and they would be okay because she would be there for them.
I believe this is what Radical Acceptance looks like in action. She accepted her own anxiety and the fact that others on her team would feel it, too. She also accepted her role as a leader, despite that anxiety. By accepting the fact that she was uncomfortable and by accepting the fact that it was going to be imperfect, she was able to see things as they were.
Could radical acceptance be useful for you in your current circumstance? What could you do to accept what is real and see things as they are?
You can start a no-risk conversation with me if you’re interested in exploring how coaching might support you in achieving your goals. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
