Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs
Jul 28, 2022
Discussion#3 Managing wellness at work in the face of existential challenges threatening our society.
Blogs from The Third Way Working Group
- People often feel the sense of loss of control in two situations. One is when one’s own environment is messy and difficult to be managed. The other one is when a lot of things are happening in the society and affecting some aspects of one’s life.
- The first one is controllable and the latter one is not controllable. Therefore, we should focus on the first one, our own environment, and try to get a better control over it. As for the latter one, the social changes affecting our life, we should let go and adapt as they come. There is no point in being stressed about something we can not control. When a certain social change comes within our own environment and once we can do something about it, then we should just handle it.
- One of the main reasons why we often find difficult to control and manage our own environment is due to unexpected sudden issues that happen and often become extra workload and extra working hours that force you to change your original plans. And in the business world especially if you are already a manager or a leader, you can not ignore it or just drop the ball and handle it someone.
- If we can reduce this type of sudden unexpected issues, it will help people manage their own environment better. However, due to the remote working causing isolation and communication difficulties, it is getting more and more likely and frequent that unexpected issues happen regularly, creating extra workload.
- Also, because of Japan’s serious labor shortage, many workplaces do no have enough people. When one person suddenly quits or goes on a leave, it also creates extra workload in a sudden manner for the remaining people.
- Because everybody is so overloaded and anybody’s absence could cause further deterioration of the team, taking a vacation or study leave etc is becoming very difficult. Especially for the Japanese as they don’t want to burden their colleagues. As a result, they don’t even have a chance to get refreshed and re-energized and eventually they get stressed out and mentally sick. It’s a vicious cycle.
- Therefore, it is critically important that leaders spend time with their people aside from work to listen to their current personal situations and the context of their challenges etc.
- Also, at the fundamental level, the leaders should more ruthlessly prioritize and decide what not to do or what to stop doing. Given the shrinking population and the need to give people more time to rest/recharge/re-study, companies should realize more seriously that they can not keep doing all the things they have been doing.
- The first one is controllable and the latter one is not controllable. Therefore, we should focus on the first one, our own environment, and try to get a better control over it. As for the latter one, the social changes affecting our life, we should let go and adapt as they come. There is no point in being stressed about something we can not control. When a certain social change comes within our own environment and once we can do something about it, then we should just handle it.
- One of the main reasons why we often find difficult to control and manage our own environment is due to unexpected sudden issues that happen and often become extra workload and extra working hours that force you to change your original plans. And in the business world especially if you are already a manager or a leader, you can not ignore it or just drop the ball and handle it someone.
- If we can reduce this type of sudden unexpected issues, it will help people manage their own environment better. However, due to the remote working causing isolation and communication difficulties, it is getting more and more likely and frequent that unexpected issues happen regularly, creating extra workload.
- Also, because of Japan’s serious labor shortage, many workplaces do no have enough people. When one person suddenly quits or goes on a leave, it also creates extra workload in a sudden manner for the remaining people.
- Because everybody is so overloaded and anybody’s absence could cause further deterioration of the team, taking a vacation or study leave etc is becoming very difficult. Especially for the Japanese as they don’t want to burden their colleagues. As a result, they don’t even have a chance to get refreshed and re-energized and eventually they get stressed out and mentally sick. It’s a vicious cycle.
- Therefore, it is critically important that leaders spend time with their people aside from work to listen to their current personal situations and the context of their challenges etc.
- Also, at the fundamental level, the leaders should more ruthlessly prioritize and decide what not to do or what to stop doing. Given the shrinking population and the need to give people more time to rest/recharge/re-study, companies should realize more seriously that they can not keep doing all the things they have been doing.
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