If it's urgent, call my cell

Photo by gdtography.

It's late December. And by the time this newsletter goes out, many of you will have set your out-of-office notices. Which means we will get back a flurry of auto-replies. We don't mind. We sorta like hearing what you're up to. And it's helpful to know that if we need anything, we can check with Lisa in accounting in your stead.

We see your out-of-offices all year long. There's a spike of them through North American summer. And then a small cluster when Australia takes off. The Europeans, bless their hearts, don't seem to share the awkward OOO tradition of "if it's urgent, call my cell."

This year, amidst the OOOs for vacation and trips to warm destinations, many of you were off for other reasons. For bereavement. On extended medical leave. Taking care of aging parents. Taking care of snotty children. Taking care of aging parents and snotty children at the same time.

We tell bosses that if they choose management as a career, every aspect of the human condition will at some point show up for someone they manage. Feel free to re-read that. Every aspect of the human condition. The highest highs. And the lowest lows. And if you manage a large team, they may happen in the same week.

We occasionally meet bosses who think work should function as some sort of magic eraser. Where crossing over the office threshold or logging into slack makes everything else disappear. That's the plot of a TV show. Not real life.

In real life, 2023 has been a lot. And nearly everyone we talk to says this year is ending right on time. We feel that, too. That this has been a run-all-the-way-to-the-finish-line type of year. That we can't collectively stomach even one more week. It's time for it to be done done.

But just before we call it done done...

Playoff season

We know it might be uncomfortable, but can you take a minute to reflect on your subjective experience of 2023 as a whole? All of the chaos of it, and how it has landed on you? Can you feel it? It has a physicality. Maybe in your shoulders or neck. Maybe in your chest. Or a nervous energy in your legs. You are human, and when so many things come at you all at once, it's worth noticing that there's no clean divide between your mental state and your physical one.

Seven years into running RSG, we've learned that our work has a seasonality. There are times when everyone, around the world, seems to simultaneously decide that developing their leaders is urgent. When it happens, we talk about being "in our season." We're not professional athletes, but the idea of a playoff season has been really helpful for us. When you're in the playoffs, you don't mess around, you stick to the playbook. You get to sleep early. You take care of yourself. You don't overcommit because you can anticipate that you're in a period of intensity and need to prioritize your ability to show up well for that work. You make beans.

More than anything, the idea of being in our season gives us language and permission to take care of ourselves physically during periods of mental intensity. Which, you know, isn't a thing anyone should need permission to do. But it still helps. Though it does lead to the obvious question: what happens when the season ends?

The unfurl

As we're writing this, the kids are snoozing, our inboxes are quieter, we are not in the playoffs. Maybe you're somewhere similar.

For some of you, the downtime will be enough. But not all downtime is rest. Time off of work can be restful. But it can also be a week of workload stress, or guilt, or spiraling about the fact that you're doing time off wrong. The difference comes back to a conversation we had two years ago:

We were talking about research on rest and recovery. And Dr. Clark, almost offhand, mentioned that there was a clear and lasting benefit to having a thing. A thing that pushes work out of your brain. Some kind of task that occupies you enough that work thoughts don't make it in.

Our family does jigsaw puzzles and that seems to work. We try to get down to the water on New Year's Day, whatever the weather. One way to understand those is as traditions, as nostalgia. There's nothing incorrect about that interpretation. But we also think of them as a practice. Deliberate investments in letting our shoulders come down for a minute. Slowing down our breathing. They're ways that we unfurl.

So, look. We know that any talk of self-care teeters dangerously over the precipice of platitudes, and we try to spare you that. But if you can't stomach taking self-care as an end in itself (which it is!) then let us ask you this. When you think about the physicality of the last year, what do you imagine it was like to work with you? To report to you? To look to you for guidance, and to try to figure out whether today was a good day to bring you bad news?

Once again, do this work long enough and every aspect of the human condition will at some point show up for someone you manage. Or for yourself. A lot of your year can feel like playoff season. And it means that an unofficial, but crucial, part of your job as a leader is to build your own playbook. If you pay attention, there are bits of it scattered everywhere. Foods that bring you back, and foods that make you feel like shit. Exercise you hate, and walks in the woods that clear your head. Relationships that empty you out, and relationships that fill you up.

One of our closest friends gets irrationally angry about jigsaw puzzles. So, you know, they probably shouldn't run our playbook. And neither should you. But we have a week of weird liminal space between 2023 and 2024, and it's a place where you can update your own.

What supports do you need during playoff season, and what helps you unfurl and reset when you need to? Those aren't platitudes, that's your playbook. It's not selfish to invest in those things, it's self-aware.

Happy New Year, friends. We're excited to catch up with you all in January.

- Melissa and Johnathan