The False Promise of Workplace Resilience: What Leaders Get Wrong About Supporting Employees Through Tough Times
The corporate expectation to "bounce back" after trauma isn't just unrealistic—it's harmful.
👋🏽 Hey, it’s Cris. Welcome to my newsletter. I’m a journalist turned tech operator. I am ambitious. I’m also an exhausted new mom. Every other week I tackle what it means to live at the intersection of these and other paradoxes.
✨ Quick note: I started this newsletter, largely, because I don’t think there is enough real talk about how to sit comfortably with nuance, especially at work. Thoughts on this essay? As I wade into complex and hairy topics, I would love to hear your take. Respond to this email or leave a comment 🙏🏽
35 working days.
That’s how much time passed from the moment I was sitting alone in an emergency room, covered in blood, listless from delivering a 4.5-month old dead fetus to when I was sitting on a zoom call with my manager, tears rolling down my face as they detailed the ways I was falling short of their expectations. Namely, they noted, I was not ramping quickly enough into a new focus area, given my level of seniority.
They weren’t wrong, I was not functioning at my normal velocity. But trying to keep up on this new project, assigned to me just four days after my pregnancy loss, felt pointless. I could not, for the life of me, bring the mental acuity and energy that I was being asked for.
Later that week, as I discussed the interaction with my leadership coach, she gently asked me a question that reframed my entire relationship with the experience, “Cris, what does your manager need to learn from this? How can you coach them to be a better leader?”
***
Emotional regulation and resilience.
These are two critical themes that often come up within the professional communities that I am a part of, the women that I coach and, as noted, in my own career.
It tends to surface within the context of three “trigger” events:
You get negative feedback and are having an emotional response.
The day-to-day pressures at work are on the rise, and the need to manage it all decreases your ability to just deal in a neutral way.
More rarely, someone actually says something that speaks directly to or hints at a lack of stoicism (which is considered the norm in these bland corporate environments that we exist in, but I digress). This can sound like, “You’re too [insert emotion] about this [topic/situation],” or “[X Person] was so [insert emotion] in that meeting.”
It’s awful to be perceived as weak or unprofessional for showing emotion. Losing confidence or motivation or trust from others because you reacted emotionally is a real, but shitty outcome.
But also, we’re human! It’s absolutely normal to react to the above-mentioned events of our lives.
I could write an entire book on ways to address emotional agility and resilience in the workplace. There are proven, tactical strategies to apply at the individual and systemic level (because let’s be real we MUST change the culture of the places we work).
But today, I want to highlight the first and most important thing you can do in these moments: find a way to accept your emotional reality and communicate it with grace to those around you.
When my coach asked me that question, encouraging me to lean in with curiosity as to how I might teach my manager to better support me, I realized that to feel championed I needed them to recognize that my current work output was not a reflection of my past, nor my future.
Here’s the email I ended up sending my boss:
The email didn’t solve the problem, but it changed the way I looked at the situation. It allowed me to reframe the issue from being wholly about my shortcomings and shifted the dynamic to something that I had agency over. It ultimately shaped my decision to quit, because I realized I wanted to work in a high empathy, high performing environment.
It’s a hard-wrought lesson that has shaped me as a leader and human.
***
There’s a difference between needing to be “resilient” in the workplace and needing to acknowledge that sometimes we are going through something difficult and need time to process.
Our corporate cultures are not that nuanced.
We are taught, especially as women, to toughen up and not let our personal lives affect our work output. But that’s largely code for, “I am uncomfortable dealing with your emotions and so I’d rather you hide them."
There are moments in life that call for emotional elasticity, but pretending that nothing happened is NOT actual resilience. The notion that it’s the standard expectation in a professional setting, is, in fact, absurd.
We can and must do better.
3 Ways To Support Staff Going Through A Difficult Time
Yes, as the manager/direct report relationship is complex. And yes, there are weird power dynamics that go both ways. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to bring more empathy and humanity to the workplace.
Here are 3 specific ways I have learned to support my direct reports when they are going through a period in which their capacity to “recover quickly” may be limited:
VALIDATE & SUPPORT: “I can see you’re really struggling, I looked into it and here are the specific leave options available to you. Is that something you’d like to discuss or learn more about?”
DISCUSS & EXPAND THE OPTION SET: “I’m worried that this project you are working on is highly visible and I value you as a human and employee too much to have it impact your career (or mine). Given what you are going through, would you like to consider working on a different, lower stakes project? Let’s chat about what stepping down might mean for your career in the near and long term.”
BE REALISTIC. BE HUMAN: “We’re under a lot of pressure right now as an organization and XYZ is what is expected by our executives. I’m concerned by your current response to the demands and I’d love to learn more about what’s behind that. Let’s come up with a realistic plan on how we might meet the needs of our organization/team while also recognizing your current constraints. I can’t promise it won’t be hard, but I promise I will do everything I can to make sure you get the support you need.”
Your turn.
Have you gone through a difficult period at work? What have you found is most helpful? I’d love to learn from your experience. Let me know in the comments below 👇🏽
Special thanks to Emma Dorge and Surekha Nair for the thoughtful edits this week.
Such a brave and important story here. Thanks for sharing, Cris 🫶💪