Now that we're all watching the Summer Olympics, I wanted to share some of the strategies we used in the 2016 Rio Olympics to help our athletes get ready for competition.
But before I do that, it's important to understand a concept called the Recovery-Stress State:
The extent to which someone is physically and/or mentally stressed as well as whether the person is capable of using
individual strategies for recovery and which strategies are used. (Kellmann M. 2002)
Conceptually, this is based on the idea that not all athletes/employees/humans will respond the same way to stress or stimuli.
In the world of high-growth SaaS, your Q4 revenue sprint, the way you manage a team member, or even the amount of hours worked, will all be perceived differently based on the individual or team.
Now, if the way someone perceives stress is different for all of us, it would be fair to say that the way we perceive recovery stimulus would be the same, correct?
For example, in track & field, our Sprinters were a world away from our distance athletes when it came to recovery strategies. (I would guess that Erik Korem, PhD would say the same thing about the makeup of his football teams - although team-based sports have limitations on time and access, especially in the NFL.)
That said, LEON tends to see the same thing in different business functions.
Sales teams react differently to stress than CX teams. CX teams react differently to stress than Dev teams. (within reason)
And on the opposite end of stress, the strategy to recover differs also.
For some teams, reducing work hours or days worked seemed to have a massive impact.
Others, Playbooks based around psychological safety or fixing issues related to depersonalization or career vision moved the needle.
As with anything, it just depends. It depends on the team. The time of year. The company goals. The leadership style. The roadmap. etc. etc. etc.
The business world is full of silos, and implementing anything related to well-being and performance on a company level - while commendable - is checking the box at best. If you want to drive change in your organization, the path forward starts by empowering front-line leadership to manage these issues head-on. From intimately understanding stress and burnout to building a toolbox of mitigation best practices, the only way to protect your team from collapsing at the finish line is by building better managers.
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