(Mass Appeal) – For you managers, supervisors and business owners out there who now have staff members working from home, this can be a very difficult time to ensure employees are doing what is expected if you’ve never extended your staff the ability to work remotely.

Ken Dolan Del-Vecchio, founder of GreenGate Leadership, offers some very simple advice to those in supervisory positions with a newly remote workforce.

• Some leaders who are unfamiliar with leading dispersed teams are imposing new oversight measures on their staff members, asking them to log:
  • Workday start and end times.
  • The tasks they are devoting their time to every hour or half-hour.
  • Lunch and break start and end times.
• While perhaps well-intended, this is a bad idea because it conveys a lack of trust.
• Those on the receiving end will likely feel resentful.
• They will feel that they are wasting their time filling out a log that has the sole purpose of convincing you that they aren’t shirking.
• Your lack of trust in your staff will diminish their trust in you.
• The predictable result: lessened engagement, lower morale, and less inclination to give discretionary effort, exactly the opposite of what you hoped to achieve.
• Research shows that trusting your team, on the other hand, builds their trust in you. This, in turn, increases morale, engagement, and discretionary effort.
• If you have already implemented such a tracking log:
  • Discontinue it.
  • Apologize to your staff for launching it.
  • Tell them that you did it as a result of your own anxiety about keeping things going and that you’ve realized that you should just trust them instead of trying to monitor their every move.
• Contrary to what you may fear, apologizing in this manner will almost certainly increase your team’s respect and regard for you. We almost always appreciate it when a leader shows vulnerability by apologizing for an error and correcting it.
• It is helpful during this time to provide your staff with access to articles, webinars, and other supportive resources that can help them structure their work setting at home, manage their time, and cope with the stress associated with what’s going on.
• Providing access to these kinds of supports conveys respect for your staff during this time of great change and stress.
• Remember that what matters is performance—results achieved—not activity. You can and should communicate, as always, with your team members regarding what they are achieving, providing regular words of thanks and constructive criticism as warranted.

• Little children don’t misbehave, they do what comes naturally. They depend upon us to teach them EVERYTHING!
• Children mirror us: We are our child’s role model. We need to behave in the way we’d like them to behave.
• If we want our child to be civil and kind and respectful, we need to consistently demonstrate civility, kindness, and respect toward our child and everyone else.
• Try to only use language that you’re comfortable with your child repeating.
• Say please and thank you to your child.
• Tell the truth.
• Make every touch a loving, gentle, respectful touch.
• Keep in mind how powerful you are when compared with your child and set limits in a way that’s consistent, firm, and kind rather than unpredictable, angry, and punitive.
• Saying “no” is essential to helping your child develop self-control, frustration tolerance, and good judgement.
• We can help our child learn to soothe him or herself when frustrated, but we should generally avoid reversing a “no.”
• Provide supervision and constructive feedback when your child is in the company of smaller children and pets.
• Teach courtesy and self-control from the time they’re very small.
• Expect your child to be wary of new and potentially frightening experiences and help them get familiar and, therefore, more comfortable with them.
• Take your child with you when you have your hair cut. Let him or her sit on your lap or right nearby and talk with them about how much fun you’re having.
• Bring them along when you see your dentist and let them sit with another adult and watch.
• Take them to restaurants and other public places, pay close attention, and help shape how they behave.
• The goal is to teach your child the skills that will help them manage their own behavior and successfully navigate interpersonal relationships and the world around them.

Nurturing Our Child’s Self-Esteem

• First and most important, never attack your child personally:
  • Imagine what it feels like to be called dumb, stupid, lazy, weak, or any other name by your mom or dad.
  • Make a commitment to never verbally assault your child.
  • It helps to give your child feedback so they develop positive behaviors—“shhh, we need to be quiet in the library; remember, it’s important to pet the puppy very gently because he’s so little”— but personal attacks/name calling only hurts them.
• Notice your child’s positive behavior and compliment her or him on these:
  • I like the way you share your toys with your little brother.
  • I see the way you pay attention to the game even when you’re all the way out in left field—way to go!
  • You got a gold star on your math homework—that’s great work!
• Give them words they can hang onto that describe their strengths:
  • You’re a loving big brother.
  • You’re a good team player and you’re good at paying attention.
  • You know how to take responsibility for getting your homework done.
• Do not give your child untruthful or exaggerated compliments as this distorts their ability to accurately assess their own attributes and skills.
• It never helps to say things that lessen your child’s grasp on reality.
• Affirming your child’s self-esteem in the ways described above does not negate the need to also give your child constructive feedback.
• We all benefit from constructive criticism when it’s delivered in a way that is indeed constructive and not hurtful.

Source: https://www.wwlp.com/mass-appeal/how-to-nurture-your-child-s-self-esteem/2051830965

What Everyone Should Know About Suicide

• The frequency of suicide has bee;n increasing in the US for at least the past decade.
  • 123 /day
  • Now 45,000 a year, showing a 25% increase between 1999 and 2016
  • The male suicide rate is more than 3x that of females.
  • Native Americans have the highest suicide rate in the US, Inuits in Canada, Aboriginal People in Australia (high stress/lessened access to mental health care).
  • Worldwide, 600,000 people each year die in wars vs 800,000-1 million die by suicide.
• Most but not all people who eventually commit suicide talk about their intentions, so threats must be taken seriously and evaluated.
• Other warning signs:
  • Repeatedly saying life isn’t worth living.
  • Giving away valued possessions.
  • Checking one’s will / life insurance policy.
• You will NOT “put the idea into their head” by asking someone if they are thinking of killing themselves.
• Key questions to ask a person about whom you are concerned.
  • Do you have thoughts about wanting to be dead?
  • Have you thought of killing yourself?
    • Have you thought about ways you might do it?
    • Have you felt any intention to follow through on doing this?
  • Have you ever done any preparation (collecting pills, trying the strength of a beam in the garage)/rehearsal?
• Helping the suicidal individual stay away from their preferred method of self-harm (keeping the gun at someone else’s home, for example) can be lifesaving because the impulse to act often passes quickly.
• Clinical depression is often a major contributing factor and all medical staff should screen for this illness, but it is not always present.
• Despair (hopelessness) is a key factor even when no clinical depression is evident.
• Empathy without judgment can help to keep an open line of communication and support.
• We need to combat the stigma associated with mental health challenges so that this and other emotional health matters become easier to talk about without feeling shame.
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Source: https://www.wwlp.com/mass-appeal/how-to-detect-signs-of-suicidal-thoughts/1894857649

We may have more “friends” than ever thanks to social media, but we’re often missing the deeper connection of true friendship. Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, Founder of GreenGate Leadership tells us more.

In his book Simple Habits of Exceptional (But Not Perfect) Parents, Ken describes friendship as, “Life is a team sport and having even one or two good friends on our team boosts us in countless ways. Friends give us our first experience of loving connection outside our families. Showing us the goodness in the world, genuine friends confirm our spiritual impulse to reach beyond ourselves with kindness and hope. Friends share love, support, acceptance, understanding, positive challenges, constructive criticism, a variety of perspectives, and endless inspiration. Friends buoy one another through turbulent times, giving nurturance that, for the fortunate, will last a lifetime. Bearing witness to one another’s lives across the years, friends become the coauthors of our shared life stories, helping us remember, make sense of, and cherish our time here.”

Some skills to work at to foster deeper friendships are:

• spending time together in person
• listening without interruption
• showing sincere interest over time
• taking turns
• accepting differences
• respecting personal boundaries

Source: https://www.wwlp.com/mass-appeal/skills-to-build-stronger-lasting-friendships/1756649430