How to Support Team Members Going Through Personal Challenges

"How to allow for team member personal challenges as a founder?"

Katy sent this to James Johnson and Freddie Birley for the Peer Effect Post Bag. James's immediate response: "I always struggle with this."

This question has no easy answer because personal challenges could mean anything: mental health, divorce, bereavement, or family crises.

Here's what James and Freddie break down:

The core principle James always comes back to. You should look after everyone. But you can't look after one person at the expense of everyone else.

When you overprotect one person, it impacts the whole team.

The transparency paradox. It's sensitive, so people don't want to share broadly. But without context, the team lacks empathy. When they're negatively impacted by someone's behavior or absence without understanding why, they can't be human first.

Time horizons matter. A couple of weeks is very different from six months or a year. 

What support actually means. Support doesn't mean carte blanche to behave however you want. 

You can't be a coach to someone you manage. If you can fire someone, you can't be their coach. Your incentives are conflicted. 

What can you do as a manager? Give this a listen to find out

One action: Listen to the end for how to think about boundaries in these situations.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Peer Effect Post Bag. I'm James Johnson, joined by Freddie Burley. We asked for your questions, and Freddie and I are going to tackle them together. These aren't theoretical case studies. It's the stuff that's keeping you up at 2 a.m. Let's get answering. So welcome to the Peer Effect post bag. I'm James Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

And I'm Freddie Burley. So, um what's been going on this week? What's new?

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Lots of Spanish.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Lots of Spanish?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Lots of Spanish. Nice. So so my wife's from Columbia originally, British national. And our son, my commitment to her was that I would get good at Spanish so that our son could be bilingual. And he's four and a well, four and a third now. And we're going to Columbia for Christmas this year coming. And it feels like this is the year to step it up. But it's what's been really interesting is how just clarity on the objective has really unlocked new levels of activity and performance for me. Yeah. So like last year I was like, I was committed to the idea of doing it, and I have a sort of a 500 and almost 600 day streak on Duolingo. But last year I was probably dialing us in in terms of just doing a session a night to make sure I kept my streak, which is not really going to help anyone do anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

It's still good though that you have that's a lot of days. It's a lot of days. It's a lot of days.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

But but what I realised is actually now having this deadline to myself, like the sort of Columbia Christmas, it gives me a real sort of thing to focus on. Yeah, totally. And it feels like if not now, then when? But what I've done going into this year, I was like, well, actually during linger, they have a score, so you can you can and each score correlates to a certain grade of competency. Um and I thought if I can get to score 80 by Christmas, that puts me into, I forget, whether it's B1 or B2, it puts me over like I should be able to have fluent conversations. So actually what's quite nice is I've got sort of a clear, a clear reason to do it. I've got a method, I've got something I can track progress by. And what I've seen is I've dramatically changed my behavior in two ways. One is I've been spending maybe 15-30 minutes a day doing it, but I've also been doing it at different times. I've been prioritizing it. So I've no longer been doing it in sort of the one minute before getting into bed. I'm now sort of finding time during the day to make sure I can properly do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Epic.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And actually, I'm really enjoying it. Like at anything, I'm getting a sense of progress. Yeah. And I feel good about, I can imagine what it will feel like when I'm there. But it just feels nice to be.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

It's amazing when we apply the stuff we teach our clients to ourselves. It works. And you're like, oh, this is good.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

It's so much easy when we don't have to do it then.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

It's true. So true. Oh, that's amazing. I love it. You've inspired me. I am horribly English and I only speak English. I tried to learn Mandarin for a year, and I was like, wow, this is actually incredibly hard. Um, at some point in my life, I would love to learn another another language. It's that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Well, actually, I do speak Mandarin. So actually, it I would say living in very hard to do it without living in China.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

This is that's the conclusion I came to. I got to conversational level and I could read all the signs on the road. I was like, wow, this feels pretty, this feels pretty epic. And um, and then I was like, no, right, I didn't have a big enough why, I was just doing it for fun. So, questions. Um question from Katie. Ooh, how to allow for team member personal challenges as a founder?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I mean, this this is this is something I always struggle with as a as a founder. Actually, I've struggled with my throughout my whole career hitting this question. So, Katie, I I feel your pain on this. Yeah. I mean, personal challenges can mean a whole range of different things. I mean, it could mean someone going, like it could be mental health challenges, could be divorce, it could be bereavement. Bereavement. So I think it's very hard to give a blanket answer to this, but that also means why it's such a hard one to fix, in my experience, because I always come back to one principle, which is you should look after everyone, but you can't look at any one person at the expense of all other one people in in your team. And I think when you start thinking around this question, you very clearly can. You can put you can overprotect one person, which can have significant consequences for other people. Yeah. Um, for example, like if someone's due to divorce, going through a tough time and starts sort of behaving differently or doing things that maybe they shouldn't, like that can really impact everyone else's workability, work enjoyment, mental health. So while you have a duty of care to sort of the person who's going through a tough time, yeah, you also have a duty of care to all the other people. So I I don't think I have an answer to this. But what what what have you seen?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

It's a really tough one, I think. It's it's so nuanced, and I think it's also very sensitive. And so it's often because it's sensitive, we people, myself included, can tiptoe around this bucket of personal challenges and not and and not manage it sort of like too hands-on. And what a few things that I've found to be very helpful is a it's this really hard tension between often it's sensitive issues, and therefore people don't want to share it more broadly in the team. But when your team lacks context and they're negatively impacted by either the person's behavior or absence, or um what they then need to take on for that chat. It without transparency, it can be quite hard for people to empathize and understand why essentially this is negatively impacting them. Um, and so where possible to try and be more transparent and almost overly communicate around it so that even if people are negatively impacted by what's going on, um, they can understand why, and then they can be human first and understand that okay, we're all gonna A support this person in the ways that we can, and then B step up in different areas. And I think that can be a leadership challenge to also communicate that. I think the other piece here is like the time. If it's a couple of weeks, a couple of months, it's a very different situation to six months, a year, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think there's also um, what's the word? There's nuance to how you then manage it moving forwards, and especially when someone's going through a big personal challenge at the beginning, it's not appropriate to be like, and when will you be back? And how long is this going to take you to recover from? And those questions are not appropriate early days. Um, a few months in, starting to work together with that person to be like, you might not have answers to these questions, that's okay, but we need to have a very open dialogue around this so we can manage this best possible between us and also in the team. And then, because at that point, you might need to start thinking about hiring someone else. You might need to start later down the line and also thinking about business priorities and what the business needs alongside what that person needs. So it's it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

I was thinking support can be different things. So support, I don't think support is carte blanche, behave how you want.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

That is also so true.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Support could be, I'll give you two weeks' paid time off. That could that could be so actually the there is still support, but it's less impact on other people. Yeah. Um, I remember I had one of these situations. Uh, I was talking to one of my my most trusted members of the team about it, and they're like, this is a really hard decision. And they looked at me like, is it? Because the behaviour that was coming out from the person we were talking about was was really quite detrimental. But you can get wrapped up in the sense of I need I like the I need to care about the person, I need to look after them and Tige and things before about sort of starting to feel like you need to overprotect your team.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

And one thing I've definitely seen as a coach is that founders will put themselves out for their team in a way they probably shouldn't, and then get very hurt when that same regard doesn't come back, when they might spend sort of six months nurturing someone back, and then three months later they go and take another job, which is paying them more.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Because I don't think we have the ownership of the problem as the founder. I think it's quite important to recognise that as well. Like we we can care about the individual, we can support them, but our role is not to solve their problems, is not to necessarily even be their lifeline, because that could have a severe impact on us, it could have a severe impact on our team. And I and I think being okay with that, and that just being normal, like I think it's such a good point.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

I think that comes back to like communication and saying this is what you can expect from me and this is what you can't expect from me. And so understanding your and sometimes it takes a couple of these situations for you to know where your boundaries are and what you can support on and what you can't support on, and then for as companies scale, policies to be in place, and so that there are actually really hard rules and guidelines around this that can be supportive when people are going through crises and people know where they stand. I think that's such a critical part of this as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, you could you can assign people to support, can't you? I think one of one of the things I think I I was quite coachy as a manager, and then say surprise, surprise good point. One thing I've learned there is that you you actually can't be a coach as a manager. Yeah. Like I mean, you have to be a coach to be a coach because if you can fire someone, you can't be their coach. Like there is a whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

That's so true, and also you'll have you're conflicted because you're not as as a coach, your your role is pure, your incentives are completely aligned. You you want the best of that human in whatever vehicle that is, and as a manager, you want the best for that human in the context of the business alongside other areas of their life, but you're you're managing a sometimes a conflicting priority set.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah. And so I think your point on communication is so good. Because I think one thing you can do as a manager is hold a mirror up and say, This is the consequence of this. If you continue down this path, this will be the consequence of that. Here are here are here are some potential options you have to change. Here's some support you might take on, here's some time you might take. Like to build context. To build context, actually and actually be radically candid and just go like push through this comfort and surface some of that stuff. Because I agree, it's so easy to sort of tiptoe round it.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Um, or support in actually quite an inauthentic way because you're not you're not someone's coach, you're not their therapist, you're not their doctor.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Whatever the challenge is, yeah. You are their manager or their founder. It's it's it's quite different.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

I think this is so important for people to remember because I think exactly what you shared earlier, but because situations can be sensitive and people can be going through really hard times, it can be I've seen some people lean so far into it that they then can't perform and then they can't function in the team, and then they lose their um ground as a leader, and it can actually have really negative consequences on them as well. So remembering um what you need as well when that person's going through challenge or change or whatever it is, so that you're managing yourself appropriately too.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Yeah. I mean, I suppose it ties into the whole bigger topic of boundaries and how important it is to hold them and expectations, but it's it's very tricky. Um I'm trying to think of there's ever one case where someone's where I've seen someone do it really well. I'm not sure I have. Like it's it's just it's just so hard to you've got someone almost in an impossible position.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

I've seen a few examples where people have gone through and actually also in co-founder dynamics where co-founders have gone through um deaths and divorces and um and health crises and like really, really scary big existential challenging seasons and communication. I think it was just that it was it was managed well through communication and both sides being really clear about what they needed and what their expectations were and what they could do and what they couldn't do, and then finding really as a team finding a way to navigate through it. So I've seen it managed really powerfully in a few co-founder dynamics. Um but I and I think it all just comes down to communication.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

And actually something you've raised that it's quite nice. I suppose it depends on the rate that you have at the point. True.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

It comes up.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

So if it's someone that's come into your business three months ago, it probably is fair to treat that person differently than if you've been working with someone for three years and they're a top performer and they've done like you You've earned a lot more trust. You've earned a lot more trust, you've earned a lot more support, and it gives you more things on the table. You're you're acting from a position of strength and stronger relationship.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

So it's one of the things that you don't have to treat everyone the same. I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

And I think as a company, again, as your company grows up and matures, you'll have policies in place or more standard operating principles. But ultimately, a lot of this is like what we're talking about, it's very relational. So sort of taking a step back, it's A, it's incredibly nuanced and hard. A lot of it comes down to trust and the relationship itself and communicating honestly, especially when it's really nuanced. And um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Amazing, tricky, tricky, tricky but communicate.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

That's the tricky but talk kids, and all will be well.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Uh so that's it for today. Um, we will see you next week. And as ever, if any questions, just reach out at hello at peer hyphen effect.com. Happy scaling