Leaders can check whether employees are in a stressed "red zone" or calm "blue zone" state. Pushing work onto stressed people shrinks their brain capacity and hurts both productivity and their families. Organizations that keep people in the blue zone maintain full performance.
Every team member that you're talking to has some mix of chemistry and circuitry going on. And if you check in with that, if you can have conversation about that, if you can find out where somebody's like, are they in the red zone fight-flight? Are they in the blue zone calm-connect? If you try to get people to work when they're in red zone fight-flight, you're only going to push them further into red zone fight-flight. You're only going to lose half of their brain or more. We need every person working to the full capacity. And if, if they can't do that, our companies aren't competitive. We don't have paychecks. We send workers home at night to spouses and children and family that are like, would you get a better job, please?
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
