Maria Bruederlin, Author at Impactcoachingsolutions

Quiet Quitters

Posted on October 16, 2022November 11, 2022 by Maria Bruederlin

The term “quiet quitters” seems to be floating around; it’s in the news, articles, survey results and conversations at the office. It’s a clever term that brings attention to serious matter impacting organizations. Some say the words describe a common problem felt by organizations for quite some time. But it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a just new term, quiet quitting is real and affecting your organization, your teams, the well-being of many employees. The description of a “Quiet quitter” is an employee that just does the bare minimum, they are detached, definitely demotivated, and probably feeling undervalued. Our surroundings globally and domestically are not helping either, but rather making the problem much more obvious and maybe even contagious.

I don’t want to make it seem simple and unimportant, but I feel that many organizations overlook the obvious, the solution is not really that complex. Changing a culture in your organization might take time, but not addressing it could lead to burnout, loss of productivity, inability to hold on to your employees. The difficult part is taking the first step, and sometimes that means admitting it’s happening in your organization. The execution, the consistency, and the patience to see it through won’t be easy, but definitely doable.

Did you know that a recent Gallup survey found that 50% of our workforce is quiet quitting. That means 50% of our workforce is doing just what is needed to get by and they are detached from their jobs. The survey also found that an additional 18% are actively disengaged, and those tend to be the most vocal in their dissatisfaction and unmet needs. The numbers are impactful, it’s understandable that your teams and organizations are feeling the pain in demotivation, underproduction and challenged retention; and yet even worse the employees that are sticking with you are picking up the extra work and responsibilities, they are really feeling the overwhelm and burn out.

The first thing that needs to happen to start moving the needle in the other direction is to start bringing our “human skills” back into our organizations. Our managers need to be engaged with their teams. There are three critical things they need to add to their toolbox: mindset, relationships and communication. Things have changed; the way we used to incorporate these into our leadership is not the same, our working environments, employee expectations and life values have shifted, our leaders need to shift too.

The mindset of our leaders needs to be focused on the well-being of their teams and themselves; really understanding their needs, ideas, goals and values. When our leaders demonstrate that care and empathy, they are modeling a behavior that shows that they are invested in making sure our employees are happy and satisfied. A happy and satisfied employee is creative, productive and seeking new challenges.

The communication we have needs to shift in a direction of being less directive to being more open to ideas, more often to allow for feedback and feed forward. When we begin to engage in more productive conversations, asking more questions, seeking to learn more about the way others think, the things that they are passionate about and the things that keep them up at night we are entering a new dimension of trust and understanding. We are learning and helping them learn. We need to communicate more often and more effectively.

And finally, our relationships need to grow and be maintained. Our conversations don’t only happen in formal meetings, we need to intentionally seek out informal opportunities to build new and more relationships. By building relationships, we create an environment of trust and support, our feedback is welcomed and sought out. Our teams know we have their back and are genuinely interested in their success and wellbeing.

It’s like a formula: leadership = mindset + communication + relationships. These skills are human skills, a.k.a. emotional intelligence skills. These skills are not easy but they are in our human tool box, re-skilling our managers with emotional intelligence will start moving the needle to a culture of change, empowerment, innovation and growth.

Board Room to Dining Room

Posted on July 13, 2021November 11, 2022 by Maria Bruederlin

From the board room table to the dining room table, it’s what I tell most of my clients, the behaviors they are working hard to demonstrate as leaders carry over to their team at home. The team’s faces, activities and expectations are different, but we need to show up in even more important ways, we need to prioritize how we spend our time with the team at home the way we do with the team at work. How are you prioritizing your time? Are you making sure you are being mindful with how you are spending your time?

My cousin told me, treasure every moment, don’t pass up any time for things that can wait; the laundry, the groceries, the errands, all of those things can wait; but life will not wait for you, and if you aren’t careful, you’ll miss it. She wasn’t wrong and her words have been present in my mind since.

At work we are focused, making sure we are meeting expectations, developing relationships with our teams, making ourselves available, asking to be put on projects; we are deliberate and intentional in how we spend our time, because the consequences of not achieving and delivering results can cost our jobs, our income. What would happen if we were intentional and deliberate in how we spent our time with our team at home? Really prioritizing and focusing on the most important things. We get so caught up with completing our to-do list, being productive, that we often leave the other moments for later, when we have more time, when it’s more convenient, when I get everything else done. Life doesn’t wait, our time is the most precious thing we have. We cannot deposit our time in an account for later use, we cannot borrow someone else’s time when we are short, we only have our present time. It is my cousin’s words that allowed me to enjoy the last few months with my father; intentionally spending moments with him, listening to his stories, playing cards, visits to the doctor, short walks around the block, sitting outdoors watching the cardinals. I will never get those moments back, and thankfully I have the memories of having spent them with him. The laundry waited, the dishes were left for later, the most important tasks were completed, spending time with my dad while he was with us. Be intentional with your time and the moments you spend with your team at home. Go to the game, take a walk, listen to the stories and their favorite song, ask questions. Ask yourself, how can you be your “leader best self” with this team?

Being productive with the moments that matter, being intentional with the time you spend, meeting the expectations of your team, it matters at the boardroom table, but is even more critical at the dining room table.

Designing your Emotions

Posted on April 13, 2021November 11, 2022 by Maria Bruederlin

Did you know that your brain uses 20% of the energy in your body? It’s processing, interpreting, organizing and messaging other systems all of the time. 20% may not seem like much, but it’s actually the body part that uses the highest amount of energy. In order to maintain and perform at its peak, it needs to ensure all systems are running perfectly. If one thing is off, too much or too little, then it needs to compensate and adjust to cover for the overage or underage. When your brain is processing, interpreting and organizing your thoughts and emotions, it does so in seconds. According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, Neuroscientist and Psychologist, your brain is “busily making predictions.” It uses “all its available information (your memory, your situation, the state of your body) to take guesses about what will happen in the next moment.” It’s processing and interpreting the experience and searching for similar experiences for its next best response. What happens if the response from the previous experience is one you rather avoid? Or what if it’s time to step out of the box and try a new response? Our brain is always learning and creating new pathways to respond to our environment in the most efficient way. Your mission is to learn and create more awareness around why you act or react the way you do? why some situations lead to emotions you wish you could control?

Starting your mission to increase your awareness and emotional intelligence growth doesn’t have to be complex or difficult. With intention and determination, you can start as soon as today.

Create space in your day for a few mindfulness moments, it could be between meetings, at lunch or on a coffee break. Take a short walk, find a quiet corner, or even sit in your car. Create a quiet space to think and breath, with no interruptions. Start with 3 deep breaths to settle down your mind. Then begin to breath normally focusing on the breath. As other thoughts, ideas or distractions appear let them go and return to observing your breath. You have to be intentional about this, your brain will want to sneak in thoughts and distractions. After a few minutes, ask yourself about your day so far, what you’ve noticed? What emotions have surfaced? What was happening around you? There are no right or wrong answers here, it’s just to begin creating awareness.

The reflective moments will help you begin to notice your emotions. You may want to change some of them, replace them with others, maybe avoid them altogether. Which brings you to a second step. Setting up intentional actions to create a new response, behavior or action for yourself. With your mindfulness practices you’ve identified specific situations that cause the emotions? Is it a particular experience? a place? a sound? a person? Decide what you would like your new response to be, get specific. Don’t leave it up to chance, set up a reminder for yourself, be intentional about creating this new response. When life happens, our brain goes into action, directly to the path it knows from experience, and until you replace it with the with new one it would consider it as part of the process. During your next mindful moment, reflect on how it’s going? Are there adjustments that need to be made? Are you ready to step it up?

Don’t rush, take your time, small steps to set yourself up for success. By taking the time to create this awareness and challenging yourself to new and more thought-out behaviors and actions you are actively participating in the process of creating new experiences with your brain. You are working as the architect and your brain is executing based on the responses you are designing.

Working with a Blank Canvas

Posted on February 10, 2021November 11, 2022 by Maria Bruederlin

I think of all the times we are asked to share ideas, to help solve problems, to brainstorm new ideas, how many of those times do we hold ourselves back? How many of those times do we question our ideas? In a conversation with a friend, I asked her to describe a leader she really admired that was inspiring and supportive. She told me that she considered herself lucky because she did have an example for me. This leader would often sit with the team to brainstorm, and ask many questions to get her team to engage and just say whatever was on their mind. She would bring a blank canvas to a meeting and challenge her team to fill it. The idea was meant to inspire them and to challenge them to think outside of the box, but also to trust that she was listening. They would come up with the most amazing ideas that they could. The sky was the limit. And in our conversation my friend and I talked about the importance of encouraging and engaging our teams to want to share their ideas, their thoughts, to question processes and investigate possibilities. What would you do if you were given a blank canvas? How would you fill the space? What would you be willing to share? Express?

A big blank canvas can be daunting, exciting and so freeing all at the same time. But what happens if the blank canvas frightens you and rather than getting your creative juices flowing, it stops you. What if in the past your thoughts and ideas weren’t heard or considered? I think we’ve all been there at one time or another – it can be scary, it gets even scarier when your inner critic constantly reminds you of that time when your ideas weren’t that great, and it keeps telling you all of the reasons you’ll fail at this task. The inner critic can take you from “your idea isn’t good” all the way to “everyone knows more than you, it’s best to stay quiet.” Our inner critic is the one voice that can keep us from trying something new, missing an opportunity or keeping us stuck. But our inner critic is not the only voice that speaks to us, behind that louder voice is a softer voice reminding us that all things are possible, that we are capable and that we definitely deserve to try. Our inner critic is a risk avoider, and our inner ally is our supporter, reminding us that there is no failure, only a win or learn.

So how do we make sure we are listening to the right voice? How do we create a mindset shift to remind ourselves that we can only win or learn?

The first step is creating a reframe, replacing the negative thought with a positive thought. What do you want rather than what you want to avoid? Make it into a positive affirmation. Secondly, ask yourself, what is the best that can happen? What is the worst that can happen?

The fear that comes from a blank canvas is uncertainty, and once we know what can happen, best and worst, we can be as creative as we want with all of the in between. And finally, knowing both extremes, now is the time to ask yourself, If I had a magic wand and all of the resources in the world, what would I say? do? suggest? Share?

Try this for yourself when you are staring at the blank canvas, and try it on your teams to get the innovative juices flowing. Whether your team is at the office, or at home, it’s a great way to empower and engage others and create a masterpiece from a blank canvas.