May is Mental Health Month.  We usually focus on mental illness when talking about psychological well-being and that is important as upwards of 15% of the population experience severe problems with mental illness. For the rest of us, it is far better to focus on how we can maintain and even strengthen our emotional health.  May came along just at the right time as it seems like a particularly good time to be having this conversation. One of the few...

It’s time for a little self-congratulation on how we’ve handled this Pandemic.  It has been just over 6 weeks since everything changed and our nation went into a state of shutdown and so did we. Since that time, we’ve mastered working from home, playing Pictionary with family members who live far and wide, learned to wait in line at 6 ft. intervals to buy groceries, mastered the art of making and wearing masks,  and seen how much love and care...

Much like our need to be able to do testing for the virus and antibodies, we also need to be able to assess where we and our organizations are in the phases of this pandemic and our plans for returning to work. During this first phase, which I referred to as “Getting Settled,” we moved through 3 periods which were all about accepting this current reality: Create a sense of safety and security: We got our family together, loaded up...

I’ve done nearly a dozen webinars these past three weeks speaking to global audiences about how we can strengthen our resilience in the face of this pandemic. In all these sessions, I’ve emphasized the inherent biological nature of resilience and how it is hard-wired into us. Much as gravity keeps us tethered to the earth as a physical imperative, our resilience biology forces us to confront and overcome adversity. Even though we are in the throes of a crisis never...

I talked with 2 CEO’s this past week who had two different approaches to how they were managing their teams during this Corona Virus Pandemic. One leader, who heads a global manufacturing company shared with me that being in the center of the storm was very calming for him. While he was concerned for the well-being of his employees, he found the challenges associated with the crisis to be invigorating and well within his capabilities. He had to negotiate health...