Depleted?

By Vik Bangia, CEO Verum Consulting, LLC

I drove to Chicago last Thursday for a series of business meetings on Friday. My girlfriend joined me on this road trip, and we stayed in the city for the weekend to visit friends and enjoy a few days away from our home in Minneapolis.

I am still not ready to fly yet, but I do have my first flight booked for a mid-August visit to a long-term client in St. Louis.

I’m coming around slowly with respect to air travel. How far around? I have no idea. I just know I’m extremely cautious...and very curious.

Thinking back to my pre-pandemic life. I had a regular Monday 4:00am wakeup call to catch my Uber ride to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Even on the days I didn't travel, I never slept past 6am.

But by 6am on most Mondays, I was at the airport. I did a one or two city (and sometimes 3-city) weekly junket. Plus, I took an average of 4 international trips every year to EMEA and APAC. That’s not counting my European and Asian vacation flights. 

Early in my career I was one of those see-you-on-the-weekend dads.

I burned bright and flamed out. Multiple times. I never learned from the experiences. With every new employer, I kept going back to my old habits of non-stop travel. When I re-launched Verum Consulting in 2015, those habits continued…and actually got worse.

By 2019, I had grown accustomed to my Diamond-level Million-miler status on Delta Airlines. I loved receiving handwritten notes from the London flight crew. Loved the personal shuttle in a Porsche Cayenne to a private lounge during the connection in Tokyo on my way to Singapore. Loved the neck and shoulder massages at the Virgin Atlantic Lounge at Heathrow. Loved flying first class on the A380 to Hong Kong.

Ah…loving the good life. Or maybe not.

Once the pandemic hit, I was 100% grounded. I have not been on a plane since February, 2020. But I have taken stock of my life, my work, my career, my health, and my personal relationships.

What I learned is I was depleted. I still have enormous drive, ambition, zest for life and sunny optimism. I just realized that I never really, truly recharged my batteries even though I made videos like this one encouraging other folks to do so. 

I did get some of the rest and relaxation I prescribed back then and I did allow myself the ability to recharge somewhat, but I now know I was only giving minimal spark to my own severely drained battery.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been able to ask my clients, colleagues and industry peers some really deep and personal questions during our collective work-from-home experience. I’ve learned that many of us are exhausted. Tired…but not the sleepy kind. Worn out…but not the post-10K run kind. Spent…but not the “A good night’s sleep and I’ll be fine tomorrow,” kind.  

What’s going on, I discovered, is a malaise of an altogether different variety.

What’s happening is that we are persevering. We are coping. We are putting on brave faces. We are enduring. That might sound like a set of positive statements. It might sound like we are showing our collective resiliency and that we ought to be high fiving ourselves for the valiant effort. It does sound like something we should be celebrating.

However, the definition of ‘persevere’ is to continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty or with little or no prospect of success. Because the future direction of our eventual return to the workplace is unknown, and because as humans, we like some certainty, we have an enormous challenge to overcome just in order to persevere. Did you catch that? We have to fight a battle just to have the opportunity to fight a second battle that has an indeterminate outcome. That’s exhausting!

Then there’s coping. Coping can be adaptive where we deal with existing stressors. That’s normal behavior and something we all do through sleep, exercise, mediation, relaxation, eating well, etc. Proactive coping requires a conscious effort to deal with a future stressor – but one we usually can anticipate such as doing one’s taxes or planning a wedding. Where it becomes problematic is when it’s a moving target such as a new COVID variant, or the unknown path forward that our employers might be dictating to us in their re-opening plans. When we try to proactively cope, especially around the future of workplace and the return to the office, we don’t do very well. And our coping response has been very worrisome. It’s too easy for some of us to fall into bad habits such as alcohol, drugs, or other bad behaviors. A simple look at social media posts and debate and you can feel the tension and angst.

So, you see, despite what it looks like on the surface, many folks are depleted. If you are an employer, I would encourage you to keep this in mind because the physical and social environment you create once we are all back to the office will be a determining factor of the long-term. active, healthy workforce you employ.

By recognizing and addressing the depletion your employees feel, and addressing the potential mental health and wellness challenges your employees face, you can provide them a sense of social solidarity, increasing the level of trust and collaboration you desire. Verum Consulting and members of Verum's OutsourceUSA network are all focused on the employee-centric future of work and can help you navigate the best path forward.

If you’re an employee, I just want you to know you’re not alone.