Mike Brewer

On December 22, 1944, at about 11:30 in the morning in Bastogne, Belgium, a group of four German soldiers, waving two white flags, approached the American lines carrying a letter demanding the surrender of the US to Germany. The letter warned that the American troops were surrounded and that failure to surrender would result in their total annihilation. When Brig. General Anthony C. McAuliffe was awakened with this news; his initial and written response was “NUTS!” It wasn’t exactly elegant, and the colloquial terminology was lost a bit in translation, but a few other choice words eventually got the General’s point across. Although he couldn’t have been certain of the outcome, his fortitude that the US would never surrender to the Germans under any circumstance proved him right in the end.

There are more reasons than we can tackle that support the importance of a strong anti-surrender stance in wartime. Still, I think the term surrender takes on different importance when considering the workplace. It can play a critical role in company culture.

When a company stresses the importance of work/life harmony as a core value but ignores obvious evidence of team members routinely working late into the night, that may create a cultural problem. If we believe that team members are more productive, happier, and healthier when they have the freedom to leave work at the end of their workday, it’s important to reinforce those cultural expectations. If we fail as leaders to correct behaviors because they benefit us, it weakens an organization’s culture.

I encourage you to engage with team members who routinely send late-night emails, make commitments they can’t keep, and seem to be running at a pace that is not sustainable. The goal is to seek to understand, provide resources to support, and coach the team member to succeed within the standard workday. Making it safe for an employee to admit to feeling overwhelmed without fear of negative repercussions is fundamental to aligning stated culture with actual practice. 

Leaving cultural misalignment unresolved leads to burnout and chronic stress, one of the most common health issues related to the workplace. It can even lead to hypertension, digestive difficulties and is linked to a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and insomnia.

Surround your team members with support, resources, respite, and candor. Correct behaviors that don’t align with values early on. Pay attention to the clues that a team member is struggling with. Listen for the discordant notes of “busy-ness.” Model raising your hand for help. Come alongside and help a team member unpack the load they’re carrying to get to the source of the problem. Please encourage them to surrender whatever they are holding onto so tightly that it doesn’t serve them.

Some questions/conversation starters:

• What is one thing that we can eliminate that would make your work life more balanced? It’s surprising how often the answer is an easy fix. The team member may be laboring for hours over a report that is no longer needed but was never fully phased out. Any duplicate work needs to be surgically removed asap.
• Does your current schedule work for you or does it contribute to your stress? Sometimes, a shift of fifteen minutes makes a huge difference in traffic patterns or school drop off/pick up timing.
• Your happiness and success are important to me. What can I do to better support you?

Create relationships and systems that surround your employees with resources and allow them to surrender when stuck. Doing so helps maintain a healthy culture and permits your team members to flourish on and off the clock.

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“Hello. How are you?” “Fine. How are you?”  Some version of this rote greeting happens at the beginning of almost every conversation around the workplace. That brief interaction serves as the whole mental and physical health check-in before diving into the business at hand. Whether the dialogue is in person or via video conference, the basic greeting hasn’t changed in decades.

As the pandemic begins to lose its deadly grip, questions loom in its aftermath about the long-term impact on — just about everything. Back to the office? Work from home? Some hybrid model? What about the unused office space and its lease?  The logistical questions facing business leaders are vast.

But when considering the pandemic’s effect on their workforce, businesses are quite reasonably concerned with the myriad physical health challenges facing their employees. From my perspective, it is equally important to consider the mental well-being of our team members.

There is some disagreement about whether the pandemic causes the uptick in mental illness diagnoses or whether they were there all along, and the pandemic made them more obvious. Chicken or egg? It doesn’t really matter. We are here now, and what we are seeing may just be the tip of the mental health iceberg. According to some experts, more than half of all Americans struggle with mental health due to the impact of Covid-19.

I want to encourage leaders to take a deeper dive into how the workplace impacts mental health and what resources are available to meet the growing need for mental illness services. Like most taboo subjects, the de-stigmatizing of mental illness starts with acknowledgment, conversation, and listening with an open heart. Mental health is directly intertwined with physical wellness. Most of us have little difficulty supporting an employee with a broken ankle, a migraine, or some other physical malady.

When it comes to mental illness, people are often afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. It is not necessary to become a therapist to be supportive of someone struggling with their mental health. Doing the work to understand the conversations around mental health today is the first step. Resources on the topic are abundant. The CDC publishes an extensive list of tools for Mental Health in the Workplace. The job before us is more significant than what most companies offer in a standard benefits package. The people who are struggling are OUR people. They need us, and we need them.

It’s time to get serious about mental health.

“How are you? No. Really. How are you?”

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The Cold War was a time of intense geopolitical tension between the USA and the Soviet Union. The “Us vs Them” mentality defined the era and paranoia was rampant as these two superpower nations engaged in a political rivalry for dominance, influence, and nuclear proliferation.  

The movie WarGames was released in 1983 starring the fresh-faced Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. Using very early technology and his love of computer games, this young hacker accidentally accesses the US military centralized computer system. Things don’t go so well when he engages in a “game” labeled Global Thermonuclear War and plays it in the role of the Soviet Union.  

The United States believes the Soviet Union is actually launching nuclear missiles and plans a counter-attack. Spoiler alert: no actual nuclear missiles were launched and all of America learned what DEFCON levels were as a measure of defense readiness. DEFCON 5 – normal readiness. DEFCON 1 – maximum readiness/immediate response (nuclear war is imminent).  

The movie makes a profound statement that applies to our industry today. As the computer simulates all the potential outcomes of a global thermonuclear war, it learns (early AI reference!) that the game is very strange.  

The only winning move is not to play. Profound.  

How many times do we engage in conflicts that have no real winner? When front line team members become frustrated by residents who are rude, upset, or just plain difficult, there can be a tendency to escalate the conflict in order to win the dispute through the heavy-handed use of “that is our policy” or “we don’t allow (fill in the blank)”, or “I can’t do what you want because of fair housing”.  Most of the time, these statements cannot be linked back to a valid written policy, rule, or any particular fair housing guideline. They are simply employed as weapons to win the argument.  

Entering into a dispute with a resident with the goal of winning at all costs is playing to lose.  

Take a beat – a breath or two – and ask yourself: What do I really want? Do I just want to be right? Do I want to punish? To be the boss? To win! If the answer in your truthful gut is yes – then your motivation is wrong, and your pride and adrenalin are likely running the show.  

What do you truly want? You want that angry resident to feel heard and to turn an upset customer into a fan. You want to make your job easier by making your customer happy.  

The only way to win the war game with residents is not to play.  

Companies in the multifamily space must invest in the education of their team members. The art of engaging in Crucial Conversations and conflict resolution are skills that can and should be learned.  When all team members learn to speak the language of elevated customer satisfaction and begin to naturally strive for stronger resident relationships – that is a game worth playing.  

When your Resident Satisfaction State of Alert is at DEFCON 5 – all is well on the home front.