<h1 id="ab0b65ba-02d1-4608-a97f-98ff4f8d25cd" data-toc-id="ab0b65ba-02d1-4608-a97f-98ff4f8d25cd"><strong>How today’s emotional challenges at work create space for lasting growth and real learning</strong></h1><p>If we go back approximately 40 years, work was a refuge for many of us. Especially if we worked in a commercial / professional setting, we would don a virtual cloak to go to work – a thick layer that covered up the real us and meant we could go into work and pretend to be something we weren’t. Everyone was doing it – the work/life barrier was immense. Nowadays because of technology the work/life barrier has come crushing down. While this has resulted in a slew of positives, it also means we are more susceptible to negative experiences in the workplace. We are here to normalise those negative experiences and to offer solutions.</p><h2 id="abe0f2bb-7dee-4291-9a71-f3ed09b58913" data-toc-id="abe0f2bb-7dee-4291-9a71-f3ed09b58913"><strong>Inauthenticity in the workplace seemingly had some positives</strong></h2><p>There is an erroneous view that the negative emotions experienced in the workplace now simply were not experienced in the good old days of toughing things out. As an example, did people worry about the Imposter Syndrome in 1985? Yes, they absolutely did, but it didn’t have a name as it was nothing more than a research project. The Imposter Syndrome was first identified in 1978, specifically as part of the experience of many high-flying women, and the chief characteristics were defined in 1985. However, it wasn’t added to the Oxford English Dictionary until 2017. If you had it, you had it without being able to define it. And you certainly didn’t have it if you were a man.</p><p>And that’s what the cloak of inauthenticity did – it pushed all our problems to one side. Even worse, it made it seem like work was that refuge I mentioned earlier. Countless people mistakenly believed that work was their happy place, but it was merely the place where they pretended everything was hunky dory. My father worked on Fleet Street and his “Sunday night dread” began somewhere on a Saturday afternoon, but he was successful and would have said he liked his job. It was easier to be at work than anywhere else, because outside work he would have had to admit to not really liking his job much at all.</p><h2 id="9f7d2906-4ba8-4425-b8f7-d6d003a47349" data-toc-id="9f7d2906-4ba8-4425-b8f7-d6d003a47349"><strong>If we accept the work / life barrier has diminished, the cloak has to go too</strong></h2><p>So nowadays the work / life barrier has come crashing down – technology, Covid, a greater emphasis on parental role sharing... The wall has all but disappeared for many. People feel a lot less that they have to conform, but this has opened us up to being judged as ourselves, and not as a minion in a cloak. Fear of judgement has increased resultantly. Bosses too don’t care as much as they did about showing they are stressed – and a lot of bosses are currently very stressed – and this has led to a diminution of psychological safety in the workplace. If your boss is more than happy to blame you for something that actually wasn’t your fault – just out of human frustration – how many of us can withstand that unfair onslaught? Furthermore, a workplace isn’t a self-help group, so some members of the team can be completely under the cosh, while others are breezily getting their work done by 5:30pm – if you aren’t in the office together, it is hard to avoid a negative self-judgement that says you’re slow, inept, unskilled… Then we create a huge weight that leads to stresses and strains that bleed into every aspect of our lives with no impediment.</p><h2 id="dc8c75e3-b8fb-4cde-8054-6256a4bb3917" data-toc-id="dc8c75e3-b8fb-4cde-8054-6256a4bb3917"><strong>This is no reason to return to inauthenticity</strong></h2><p>When we ignore our issues – whether or not they are principally work-focused – then we rob ourselves of productivity. When we push our issues down, we work slower, we are less satisfied. Cognitive dissonance increases, which simply means that the conflict between our true selves and the persona we present at work causes stress. Innovation and creativity go out of the window – we all need to be truly firing on all cylinders to create anything worthwhile – we need access to our full faculties. And I can’t think of a single role of any kind that doesn’t require some level of creativity, because that’s how we react to new challenges of any kind. We are all on the innovation bus, whether we’re accountants, executive coaches or graphic artists.</p><h2 id="2aab72fc-7592-418a-b2ec-7ae03af92269" data-toc-id="2aab72fc-7592-418a-b2ec-7ae03af92269"><strong>The answer is simple – learn to overcome our challenges</strong></h2><p>We cover some very specific wellbeing-centred challenges on our program. The Imposter Syndrome is enormously prevalent, and not just in women. We all need ways to control spikes of stress and nervousness that seem to come from nowhere. We all need to actually be able to recognise that we are in a stressed state, something that the generations before us faced and used to tackle in the pub. However, there is more than this to learn, for example being able to recognise stress in others – it quite often looks like something very different to what we imagine - and learning how to deal with people who are at the end of their tether. And then there is coping with life changing events, like returning to work after the birth of a child, or dealing with the early days of the perimenopause, before any treatment can kick in.</p><p>These are all amazing opportunities for learning and growth. Like everything else, we will delve into the psychology, look for the barriers to success, and give people the courage and skills to overcome their challenges and emerge stronger than before.</p><p></p>

We outline some reasons why we face such challenges at work, but suggest that this isn't a bad thing overall, especially when it leads to genuine growth.

Work is no longer a refuge - and that's a good thing

How today’s emotional challenges at work create space for lasting growth and real learning

Inauthenticity in the workplace seemingly had some positives

If we accept the work / life barrier has diminished, the cloak has to go too

This is no reason to return to inauthenticity

The answer is simple – learn to overcome our challenges

Learn why understanding your own psychology and that of those around you is the key to building skills that stick. 

Forget the hacks: learn to work smarter for good

Learn why understanding your own psychology and that of those around you is the key to gaining work-based skills that will grow with you.

Work is no longer a refuge - and that's a good thing

Work is no longer a refuge - and that's a good thing

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