This article is written by Lauren Hunter, Director of Talent Cloud, Treasury Board Secretariat, Government of Canada

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I’m sitting in our kitchen (which is now also my office) trying to think about what to write for this article. The deadline set by Anders, my editor at Apolitical, is looming large, and my guilt is piling on. The dirty dishes in the sink have now reached critical mass and are threatening to mutiny across the entire counter. My child has missed yet another school Zoom call. My fitness regime has drowned somewhere in the bottom of a tub of ice cream.

All I can think is, “What on earth do I know about wellness?”

Groaning internally about my lack of life mastery, I find myself talking to my teammate with a similar parenting situation. We commiserate about the challenges, and how we feel we’re falling down all over. We both say we feel better for the talk. Later, I share with my co-lead that our team's funding issues are keeping me up at night, and watch as he shows concern for my sleep and stress level over the following few days. Another teammate reaches out looking for support, sharing family news and looking for options, which are plentiful and readily granted.

As a team, we lean on each other and we feel better. We feel more whole, despite our imperfections and the tricky balance of life, work and all things pandemic.

Then it comes to me. This is what’s special about our team — our great wellness tip. This is what keeps us collaborative, productive and mentally stronger together than apart.

The recipe is nothing fancy — no corporate checklist of tips to pass along or magic health dust.

We simply talk to each other.

And because of the trust we have in each other, the talk is meaningful when it needs to be, which in turn builds more trust, and more room to talk. In the midst of each of us experiencing our own version of a world turned upside down, we’re there for each other like family. And that counts for a lot.

To work on our team is to embrace a deep, continuous practice of supporting who our colleagues are as people, not just agreeing to complete tasks with them during an eight hour block, five days a week

Given that my great wellness tip has turned out to be the overwhelmingly basic “we talk to each other”, it’s worth adding a few points about how we got that way as a team.

Come as you are

First of all, we’re a team that believes in “come as you are”, and everyone on the team has a role to play in creating a space where everyone’s identity is not only accepted but embraced. When we make hiring decisions, the final test before being offered a place on our team is seeing how people treat our very diverse team. Do they respect Indigenous rights and culture? Do they support gender as a spectrum? Do they listen to and engage the introverts, the older, and the younger members of our team? To work on our team is to embrace a deep, continuous practice of supporting who our colleagues are as people, not just agreeing to complete tasks with them during an eight hour block, five days a week. So when colleagues share ideas and stories, we respect each other’s perspectives and lived experience, even if (or perhaps especially when) we don’t agree on how a particular task at work should be accomplished.

Secondly, we’re a regionally distributed team. While that’s recently become a big deal for governments around the world, at the beginning of 2020 our team was one of the only regionally distributed teams in Canada’s Treasury Board Secretariat. In addition to navigating a lot of extra bureaucracy to make that happen, we arranged all our team meetings to work for those outside the room. This was a multi-year effort in fine tuning our team’s practices, but it meant that when Covid-19 disrupted so much of government, our team didn’t miss a beat. Beyond efficiency and better accessibility, it matters to the wellness and engagement of the entire team to be connected to all colleagues, not just those in the same city. It builds trust.

When leaders emphasize the value of our common humanity, they make room for all team members to also be themselves

It also means we establish a lot of team rituals, like virtual beers on a Wednesday after work, tracking boards for everyone’s tasks, workshop designs and an annual retreat where we all get together around a key project to push forward. But everyone on the team owns part of the whole: the responsibility and the chance to shape direction.

Finally, on a personal note, I think it’s important for leaders to be willing to show vulnerability and imperfection, to own it when they don’t know something or share when they’re taking a gamble that could impact the team. So much of the leadership of the last century relied on a Western masculine command and control value system; it’s culturally hard to shake off the implicit deference to that type of management. In addition to the obvious inclusion issues, it’s not well suited to a digital age, when information is vast and flows through networks.
Today we need to rely on a wide range of people with diverse insights to build high functioning teams. We need to make room for leaders who represent themselves as humans, not archetypes of power. When leaders emphasize the value of our common humanity, they make room for all team members to also be themselves, express their ideas and evolve in their roles. They make it safe to communicate honestly. They build trust.

Trust the team you’re part of. Don’t go it alone

While it’s maybe not the most groundbreaking thing to say that our team’s big wellness secret is that we talk to each other, it takes a lot to make space for that type of trust. And working in a place where you trust and are trusted by others is a huge step towards psychological wellness in the workplace.

So maybe it’s ok that the dishes pile up, and homeschooling from the new office in the kitchen is imperfect for both parenting and work responsibilities. As long as I have people I can rely on who’ll have my back, I know I’ll get through it. And I hope my team feels that I’ve got their back too, if they need it, to help them get through whatever life adjustments they’re experiencing.

After all, we’re all only human. And that’s something worth protecting. — Lauren Hunter

(Picture credit: Death to the stock photo)

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