One major difference with working remotely is how hard it can be to tell when someone is feeling down. Especially when we're all working to maintain our own mental health. Let's look at some things to look for and ways you can help.
Get the weekly newsletter to read more.
Gene: All right, let's do it.
Carl: No. Gene, we are not prepared to bring the people the quality they come to expect from us.
Gene: No, at all.
Carl: I'm not crying. You're crying. Okay. I'm ready. Good to see we're still in our pee sponsors.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Somebody said the other day, I'm going to talk about pee right now. I hope that's cool. Somebody said the other day-
Gene: Episode of Sesame Street.
Carl: Yeah that they've gotten to the age where they pee in Morse code. It's all dots and dashes. I don't know. It's like, I better get some of that Flomax.
Gene: Check that prostate fellows.
Carl: Oh yeah. Check your own though. Don't check other peoples. Why are you looking at me that way like you want to check my prostate? Oh, how's it been, man? I haven't talked to you in a little bit.
Gene: It's been two weeks.
Carl: Two weeks. Yeah. What's been going on? What's happening in the life of the crawfish?
Gene: My son is away at college and he hasn't been home for two weeks.
Carl: Oh my God. Is that bizarre?
Gene: Quite.
Carl: So weird, right?
Gene: Yeah. What's weird is-
Carl: You have a grown child.
Gene: Yeah. And a son. So let's talk about myself. What's weird is when he's home and it's just like back to normal and then he's gone and you're like, wait, what's going on?
Carl: Yeah, no, I get that. We've got a Kaley's coming in from LA for the Harry Styles concert. Because evidently Harry's not going to play in LA. I don't know what's going on with that. But she's coming to Orlando for it and then we're going to Halloween horror nights and it's going to be three days of the bands back together.
Gene: That's awesome.
Carl: And then she'll head back. And it is one of those things that, that whole rebound thing. Right? So it kind of relates to what I want to talk about today. The holidays are coming up, right?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: You can't stop them. Lord knows I've tried.
Gene: No. They happen whether you want them to or not.
Carl: There were years where Christmas was just not going to be a positive experience for those expecting good stuff, but we still managed. Your neighbors leave the doors unlocked everything's fine. But, it's a tough time and there are a lot of people struggling right now with remote work anyway. For a lot of us it's like we've been doing it for a while, but even then it can be really challenging. It can be challenging on your mental health. It could be challenging if you have any tendency towards an addiction no matter how heavy or light. It can be really hard for people to know that you're struggling. So, sorry for the downer.
Carl: But I wanted to talk about this today because it's even for me, because I am above most mortals. Even for me, I know I've been thinking about these holidays. My dad passed away in May 2020 and last year was kind of really hard on my mom. They'd been together for over 60 years and she's not remote working, but one of those things to not put pressure and I'm just thinking about all the people who've lost somebody during the pandemic and then the holidays are just like an in your face reminder.
Carl: So I just wanted, I thought we could spend a little time and just kind of talk about things that we both learned over the years about how to identify when somebody you're working with or a friend is struggling and just kind of things we can do, ways we can help. So have you ever been through that? Have you ever noticed that an employee was suddenly maybe their attitude or their mood had changed, their productivity wasn't where it was?
Gene: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off you kind of have to pay attention.
Carl: It's a lot harder to remotely. You can walk by somebody's desk and notice that they look off.
Gene: Yeah. Or, yeah, if you're in the physical presence with someone and you talk to them once or twice a day, yeah, you can pick up on that a lot easier because you have body language and you they're like, "I don't want to talk to you," whatever. But yeah, remote thing is tough. I've never... The only times I've ever had employees in my team working remote, we did it, but we also got together every day or every other day in person. It was pre quarantine stuff. Right. So, we were still able to sort of sit down and either eat breakfast or lunch or whatever out before we started our day. So yeah, I don't know how to do it. I wouldn't know how to stay on top of it remote. What are some tricks you did? I mean, I know you-
Carl: I don't have any. I think this is a short episode.
Gene: I'll just stop right now.
Carl: I remember we were at one of our events, we were having a breakout and it was on health and wellness. And one of the attendees said that they had been struggling with alcohol and they work remotely. They ran their company, but it was easier for them to schedule around when they were going to be drinking or get to a certain point. And because you don't notice an absence from a desk, you don't smell anything. You don't notice that somebody maybe looks a little off balance, it's really easy. And she was going to go ahead and she did, she publicly pretty much shared what was going on. And it was one of those things though that she had to prepare for how she was going to share it with the team. And one of the things that she had told me was, and this was pre pandemic so they've said that drinking at work since the pandemic is up almost 35%. It might be over that; I can't remember the stat. But something in Forbes, I think.
Carl: And they were just saying that this is just a thing. You're just... nobody's there and you're kind of stressed out and you're at home and you just go over and you get that glass of wine or that beer or whatever you're drinking.
Gene: Pick it up or start earlier, yeah, totally.
Carl: 3:00 p.m. scotch or whatever. But she found out that everybody was super supportive and other people were struggling with things as well. And I think that's the big part. The first thing is just to have really, really good open non-judgemental conversations. If anybody was going through anything before the pandemic, it's definitely amplified and this thing just keeps dragging on, right? So I think the first thing is just to make sure you have really good open communication and you're paying extra attention. You're talking more. That's the thing you find out from a lot of people who run successful remote companies. I think we did it really well. They're talking all the time.
Carl: When you're in person, you schedule a time to talk. When you're online, you're just dropping stuff left and right. And I think it's probably evolved a lot since I was running a shop, but that's a big part of it. I think you start to notice that somebody's got their camera off, right? Because another person that we had on, on the Bureau briefing early on was somebody who had... was anorexic. So had an eating challenge and that was the kind of thing also that can be really easy to hide if you're working remotely and not have anybody help you. But I think it's like you start to notice that maybe they're agitated easier. They're not delivering on their work. They're asking more questions. They're asking the same question, multiple times. Just little things like that. And just with the holidays coming up, I think we're all going to see a little bit more of this. More people who they're normally really quick to respond, it's taken a while.
Gene: Yeah, that's interesting. I can think of from a different perspective, maybe this doesn't help you if you're supposed to be the leader, right? It doesn't help you personally. As a leader you are going to feel more alone, more in this by yourself or whatever that's going to happen. Maybe we can get into that. But from that leader perspective, the person listening. From a coach's perspective, I will say that some things I try to do is listen more. Listen more, which is the same as talk less, but don't give advice. And as you're going into the holiday season, maybe it's family, maybe it's a coworker or whatever, and you do get that moment where you check in with them or you get that moment where they ask you to talk or whatever, just be there and listen. And don't give advice unless specifically ask for it.
Gene: And I know that sounds like, well, why are they talking to me because they want advice; they don't. Sometimes being a good coach or a good listener or a good friend is just listening. Just be there with them. And we are all, especially, I think in our industry, we're all problem solvers. We want to solve it and fix it especially if it's somebody you love. You want to make them feel better quickly. But just spouting out solutions really fast or just your concept of what they're going through or just sharing a story that, "Hey, well, I have this same thing happen," whatever. You don't know what effect that might have so maybe the best thing to do is to just listen.
Carl: No, I think that's great. The challenge becomes if they're not talking. But I think there are ways that you can open up the door so that they feel comfortable to talk. I think the biggest thing to avoid is accusatory tones of any kind. Like say somebody starts to... they're slipping on deadlines and you're just like, "Hey, what is going on? What's going on with the project?" Versus, "Hey, everybody's really busy right now. Do you need some help? You got too much on your plate. What's going on?" Or also, we had a situation where we had somebody who was having some mood swings during meetings and stuff, and actually made a comment that they were just going to be under their desk hiding. "Hey, I'll just be under my desk hiding if anybody needs me." And it was kind of a joke, but I could tell it was also a little bit of a phone a friend.
Carl: They were just like, "Please somebody." And I remember I called them after and I said, Hey, how's it going? And it wasn't, I didn't want to, and I probably wasn't even conscious of it because at the time I don't think I was trying to be a leader. I was just trying to keep the damn thing together, which I guess is part of it too. But it was just a, "How are you doing that? That joke didn't seem like a joke. Are you, are you good?" And it was just this open torrent of...
Gene: Finally somebody asked me.
Carl: Well, yeah, "The work, I can't this, I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I'm this. I'm that. I'm way too important. It feels like I have to be a part of everything right now." And we gave that person a mandatory week off. We called all the clients. We said, "Hey, we are going to give this person a week off. They have been really burning the midnight oil, and we want to make sure we keep them fresh for your project and stay on track so it's going to be a little quiet for the next week." We cut them off at the server. We wouldn't let them see emails. We wouldn't let them get to the repository of any of the work. We wouldn't let them... that was what we had to do because they needed it. But I think that was just your point that was listening. "Okay. That was a little weird to say in front of the team that you'd be under your desk hiding."
Carl: And I think also another situation we had somebody who was just kind of laughing at weird moments. Now I do that. I freaking laugh. I'll be sitting in a room by myself, nothing will happen and I'll just be like. I don't know what it is. I know, lock me up. But if you're on a call with somebody and if somebody is making a strong point for why something should change and somebody else is just like, and it's just kind of weird. Well that person was taking substances during the work day and not ones that were recommended. Right? It wasn't like this is going to calm you down. It was more like this is going to amp you up. So that was another situation where behavior, just watching behavior.
Carl: But yeah, it's tough. But to your point, listening, that's a great place to start and just make sure they know that you're opening a door to an area that is not going to be condemning or judgmental or threaten their employment or anything of that nature. It's very much a, "Hey, what's up?"
Gene: Yeah. Talk to me goose. I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I say this with the caveat of don't always read so much into everything that's said and act on it. But, learn to listen between the lines in that, like I know in the gym world, whenever... Let's say a dude comes in for the first time. This is a typical psychological behavior of a male that comes into the gym who desperately needs to lose some weight and work out. Right?
Carl: Right.
Gene: They will start making jokes. Like, "I don't got a six pack, I got a 12 pack or a keg," and they'll start making that joke. And you're like yeah, it's a joke. But what really is happening is they're very self-conscious of being in that gym. So, learn to listen sort of like listen deeper. Like you're saying, "I'll be under the desk hiding." Well, yeah, it's a joke, but it means something's probably happening, like you said. But, that's something you can start to try to key in on with people and just trust your gut and if something's kind of tingling like something ain't right radar.
Carl: Yeah. I think this becomes one of the biggest challenges is, is it your job to pull that person out of it right? Now, obviously, if somebody is having dark thoughts about harming themselves or something like that, you need a professional, right? If somebody is on the edge and you think they might be suicidal, or they're likely to hurt themselves or whatever-
Gene: That's deep.
Carl: ... that's beyond what you can do and you just have to try to get that person somewhere where they can get help. And there are also a lot of laws around substance abuse. So there's also a liability angle where you have to be careful, and this sounds really gross in a way. But, in certain states, if you think somebody has a substance abuse problem and you document that, then you are liable for their rehab and paying for it and all of these types of things.
Carl: And I think that's great. I think sometimes your company's down a little bit and that becomes a challenge. I struggle with it. I'm going to move on from it. But the bigger thing to me is a lot of us are trying to create in office cultures online. We're trying to create fun. We're trying to have the karaoke night or we're doing somebody did this thing that looked really great, which was like this redrawing challenge where you get this picture and then you have to redraw it with something else in it and all this kind of stuff. These things I think are great. Or playing among us, or different things that your team's culture really wants. But I think that's another thing where you can see some people just don't participate. Maybe they used to, and now they don't. Maybe they never did.
Carl: That's another isolating feeling. And it's not to shut down the fun for everybody, but it's try to find a way for that person. Maybe invite them a couple more times than you normally would, if you think they've got something going on. But I'll be the first to say it. I've had a couple of beers during a Bureau session or whatever. Now I realize that I can drink NA beers, right? I found an alternate and I get the beer but not the buzz and it scratches my beer brain, and it allows me to still feel like that stress has been relieved. And I think that's probably one of the biggest underlying factors is just the stress that we're feeling. You know?
Carl: So it's funny. I heard a comedian say this the other day. You're talking about somebody coming into the gym and making fun of themselves. And this comedian's a little overweight, right? Not grossly, but not in great shape. And basically says, I found it's easier to tell people I used to weigh 380 pounds than it is to work out. Right? It's just like, wow, you look amazing. Oh my God. Right? And he said that's just... and this is my cheat day, but you know, tomorrow I won't be snacking on chips. But it's this idea that... Most of us that run shops, we really care for these people. We care for the people that work with us. We consider them friends. We want them to do well. If they do leave where they were working with us, we kind of hope that they end up in a great place and that we can keep hanging out.
Carl: But, it does become this thing of, if you think of your company as a family, well, now you kind of have this thing in your face if somebody is severely depressed or having some substance abuse issues or acting out against the rest of the team. It's just a tough one. Have you ever... I know I've heard of some people calling in somebody from the outside to help. Not a counselor so much, but I guess maybe that is kind of what it is. And they basically, like you would a coach for somebody. They bring in somebody to just kind of be a little bit of a therapist for them.
Gene: No, but I've never done that. But there's a great episode of Ted Lasso if you haven't watched that, where they brought in a team therapist.
Carl: I'm like three episodes behind.
Gene: I don't want to ruin it then.
Carl: But I did see when Ted finally went in.
Gene: It was pretty awesome. Anyway. No, I've never done that.
Carl: I think that becomes in its own way it becomes shining a light on that individual. Now, maybe remotely it's a little bit different. Maybe remote people don't notice it. Right? But then again, that's kind of what we're talking about. How do we deal with this in a remote environment? And what do you do when it's just your culture in the office was one of having a 3:00 beer, right? Or having some sort of a drink. You okay, piggy, what are you doing over there?
Gene: Hmm. I don't know.
Carl: I mean, Period Three was never a big drinking shop, right?
Gene: No, we never did. The culture early on that we tried to create was if you're done with your work, go away. Go do something. You know what I mean? Like I paid for everybody's gym memberships. We would do stuff. I would try to lead excursions. We'd go trail running or whatever. Do something. The culture wasn't like let's create things to keep everyone in the office occupied when we're not working. I was like, if you're done then let's get out of here. And we wound up just doing stuff together, but I always liked that sort of a culture personally. And I know that doesn't work for everybody. It was more like... or it was more like well if you're here and you've done... do a personal project or something. We really encouraged that sort of thing. Experimentation and stuff. Not with drugs.
Carl: I'm not saying not to do drugs.
Gene: So we never got into the 3 p.m. beer thing. Although, if we were in a place where... because we also lived everybody was like five minutes away so it was real easy to hit home and come back. But I suppose if we were more people, a more formal setting, probably would've developed some kind of culture like that.
Carl: When we started Engine it was four of us. We ended up with a set of rules. I've talked about this a few times. I don't think ever on the podcast, but one of them was that if three people decided one person was just in a foul mood and it was bringing everybody down, we could tell them to go home. It just had to be two of the three people had to say, "Hey, you know what, you're really just being a jerk today. Why don't you go home and figure it out?" Which I realize now was giving somebody a personal day. I never knew it at the time like that's what it was. But, I think that's another thing, right? If you, let's say this. This is one of the probably the best things you can do to help somebody who's struggling.
Carl: Don't talk to them directly, talk to the team. And just say, look, the work we do is really hard. The situation we're in is really hard. Remote work can be great once we figured out how to deal with this sense of being removed from each other. And one of the things we want to make sure of is that everybody knows our mental health is super important. And if you need a mental health day, we'll figure that out. If you end up needing more time or things seem overloaded, it's hard to tell how busy we are. It's hard to tell. It's hard to see somebody's face and if they look strained or not. It's hard to tell when we're on a video call or if we're just doing a huddle now in Slack and we don't even get the video, right? Video's kind of getting cut out of some of this.
Carl: We can't see the body language or whatever it might be. So this is a thing. It's like make sure we're constantly talking about leaving an hour early or let's take Friday and just chill because that'll make Monday that much better. And we have to normalize it. Right? We talk about therapy a lot in the Bureau, in the channels and at the events. We talk about meditation. We talk about journaling. We talk about all these things. I think a lot of people really do it and embrace it. But I think there are a lot of people who just feel like I'm way too busy. It's like when I'm at work I'm at work and I'm going to do that. And that's great if they're keeping themselves in a healthy place.
Gene: Yeah. You talked early on about when COVID first hit, we were all stressed, but it was acute stress. And then now it's like chronic stress. I think there's something about culture in business too that at some point there's going to be a project that's going to hit and everybody's got to pull his crazy hours or whatever, get something done, pull together. You're going to be slammed. But if it becomes chronic and you're always slammed, you're always working after hours, you're always pushing some big deadline, that's your culture.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: And as the leader of that culture, you need to be identifying why are we always up against the wall? Why are we always slammed? And that's not a judgment against people who you're probably listen to this being like, well, "Fuck that guy," whatever. But that's something that I've worked on really hard over the past couple of years is to not be like that. And of the things I've done to help my own mental health and running my companies or whatever, it's been that. Because like one of my martial arts instructors, he says, if it sounds like when you first hear it, you're like, what? But he says, "I love and I do better when I can teach when I want to versus when I have to." Right? But that's the difference, right?
Gene: Because, and you think, "Fuck you, you should always be working." But, you take something you love and you have to get up every day and do it. It's a grind. But then when you work on this passion projects and you're like really into it, you get in the zone and you just-
Carl: Lose track of time.
Gene: ... Because you want to be doing it. There's a big difference. And you can work that culture to where it's sort of like nobody wants to be at work. We have to be there to make money. Right? I'd rather be doing things I would rather be doing clearly, but you can sort of work those together and gray those lines.
Carl: I'm going to disagree with you there. I think there are people that want to be at work.
Gene: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Carl: I think we all have different contexts. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different life situations. There's a company out of Austin and their whole focus is you start work at nine, not before nine, not after nine. You start work at nine and you work until five. Not before five, not after five. You go home at five. And their whole thing is if you work here, you're going to have a life. But when you're here, you're going to work. And that's it. It's like get in there and they're a development shop and they just get in there and they crank out code and people go home. And they're really well-respected and the people that work there, I'm not passing judgment, these are very serious people. These are not people that probably you want to like hang out and have a beer and play volleyball with. Right? They are serious people and they've got other things that they're very serious about and that's what they're going to do.
Carl: Then you have a shop like I had or like you had. And yeah, they're probably really excited about certain projects, but also they're really excited about a lot of other stuff. They want to go to that concert. They want to do this. They want to do that. I'm going to focus on one thing for a second that you said earlier, which I think is really important. And this is, I'll say right now, I'm way overworked. I'm struggling. I am. The Bureau is growing really fast and we're not... we're creating the support network to be able to do it, but I worked until about 10 last night.
Carl: Now, that's partially because I took Thursday and Friday and was hanging out at an amazing event, but I wasn't able to do that without it catching up to me. And so I couldn't even fully enjoy that event knowing that this was going to catch up. And now Friday, I'm going to Halloween horror nights with my family like we were talking about before. And so I've got this like, ah. But what I found is by organizing my day and pacing things out, I can look forward to Friday and going. And so it's like, yeah, we're recording the podcast and then I got to work on the newsletter and I got a monthly email and I've got like a backlog of emails of people who want to be a part of the community that I've got to talk with and I feel like I'm holding up progress.
Carl: But I'm also looking at it and realizing I can get through it. And I establish a finish line. I tell myself that this is going to be like this until Friday. And then I'm going to be able to relax and have fun with my family. And I think that's it. When you feel like you're in that Alfred Hitchcock movie and you're walking down the hall and you just keep stretching and you can't quite get to the core, that's what work feels like for a lot of people. And that's when you burn out because you're just not getting any energy back. And that's when you just kind of want to zone out. And that's when you decide, you know what, maybe I will put a little vodka in my OJ or whatever it might be.
Carl: And that's it. It's not always a sign of something else. Some people have chemical imbalances. Some people have challenges that they have to deal with. But when it becomes a change in behavior, a change in somebody's pattern, I think knowing that this is a temporary situation and then making it a temporary situation, making it so that they do have somewhere they can look to the future and say, this is going to ease up. It could be hiring somebody else to help. I know we probably are in that situation. We had eight people on the team at one point, and now we're back to three. But it's one of those things that I think you just have to let people know that they're not expected to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and that there is going to be help and there is going to come a time where this lets up.
Gene: Yep. Absolutely. Good stuff.
Carl: Oh my God. I'm so busy, Gene, I'm so... No, I'm just kidding. I still probably if anybody were to look at my work day, they'd be like, "You're complaining? Really? You're surfing for GIFs. You're just looking for the perfect GIF for the newsletter. That's stressing you out?"
Gene: It's a lot of work.
Carl: I can't go Teen Titans three weeks in a row.
Gene: Yes you can.
Carl: Yeah, you can. You can go that shit all year long, baby. Carl, welcome to the Bureau and Teen Titans newsletter. That Starfire, what a cracker.
Gene: What a cracker. All right, man. Any hot takes before we go? Or is that kind of...
Carl: No, I think the biggest hot take is just take care of yourself and keep your ears open. Right? Listen, watch, make sure if somebody else needs something that you at least give them the chance to let you know. Open that door and to be non-judgmental and just ask. How's it going?
Gene: Solid.
Carl: There you go.
Gene: All right, man.
Carl: All right. Gene, Gene.
Gene: Later.
