Business Reflections Podcast Episode #32 - Managing Employee Stress with Healing Your Almond
Episode Transcript
Meredith Matics: Welcome to Business Reflections with your host Meredith Matics, and we are here to reflect on the business topics that are affecting you today and how you can better run your business.
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Today, I have Franchon Francees, Founder of Healing Your Almond. I love that name. It's super fun.
Franchon Francees: Thank you. It was fun coming up with it.
Meredith Matics: So tell us about what inspired you to creating your own company and starting Healing Your Almond.
Franchon Francees: Basically I saw a problem and I wanted to fix it, which I think is how most businesses start. I am a therapist and what I've learned is when you meet with people, you can really help them develop coping skills, which is great and deal with past issues, which is also great.
But if I were working with you and you had an issue with your coworkers, I can only help you so much as a therapist. I can't go into your work place, help you talk to your supervisors and help you talk to your teammates and really shift the way we look at workplace environments cause they really impact people a lot. Healing Your Almond is all about coming into those spaces and figuring out how to improve them from a very trauma informed clinical kind of lens.
Meredith Matics: That's super cool. We don't think about it as much as I think we should think about the fact that we spend eight hours a day at our work and with those people. If it's hard environment, it definitely puts a stressor on us that we take home to our families.
Franchon Francees: Absolutely. For a lot of us, if we're being honest, it's more than eight hours a day and then also home life, we bring into work too. It's a two way street. I heard a speaker recently say it's not work-life balance. It's work-life blend. I really love that he said that, cause I'm like, yes, that's more realistic. We try to set up these boundaries, which are super healthy but sometimes I think they're a little unrealistic.
So it makes more sense to me to focus on having a healthy home and a healthy workplace instead of worrying so much about how to separate the two.
Meredith Matics: Yeah, I think the balance element is a really good point. We're excited today to have you on Business Reflections to delve deeper and talk about team stressors and the causes and approaches and everything. Let's start off with, what do you think are the main causes of team stress?
Franchon Francees: In 2021 let's see, where do we start? The pandemic obviously is a huge stressor. Just in general workplace environment safety, both in terms of emotional and physical, I think are huge factors. Your coworkers and your supervisors. A lot of people say you don't leave a job, you leave the supervisor. That's another thing to be aware of. And then also home stress, we're all dealing with a lot of different things in home in terms of relationships and kids and financial stressors. There's also cultural differences and racial tensions. All of these things impact how we show up in the workplace.
Meredith Matics: Tell us more about your approach and working with teams.
Franchon Francees: The thing that we do that's a little different is we don't assume emotional safety. A lot of people focus on workplace safety, no accidents and things like that in terms of physical safety.
But I think we're really missing an opportunity when it comes to emotional safety. Healing Your Almond starts with asking the tough questions and we like to do that on an individual level and a confidential level. In terms of like how are people feeling? Where people are coming from? And then we like to talk to managers about what does safety look like? Do you feel safe? And then what does self-awareness really mean? How can we help increase that?
Sometimes when I say to people, like, what are your weaknesses? What are your strengths? What do you love about your job? What do you wish could change? They seem like basic questions, but I've actually interviewed a couple people and they've really struggled to answer those things. They said to me, no one's ever asked me this. Like I need a minute or can I get back to you? Wow, we're really not having these discussions at work. And they're like, no, we're talking about the bottom line or the latest marketing plan, or how we're going to meet this goal and this objectives. But no one's really asking about me and my healthiness and my self-awareness and how I'm managing things and different things like that. That's a big part of what we focus on.
Meredith Matics: How do you think businesses do in terms of operating better, worse when they bring all this in? What does it change in the dynamic?
Franchon Francees: Yeah. I think one of the major things is that people want to be at work. It's a place that people want to be. Also creativity, like if your company is the kind of company that highly relies on creativity and businesses working well together. I really consider you to bring this conversation into the workplace. Science shows us that when we feel physically and emotionally safe, we can operate at a higher level in terms of creativity, productivity, as well as focused. All of these areas increase because now work is a place we want to be as opposed to a place we have to be.
Meredith Matics: Right. Especially working with millennials and gen Zs, I feel like they have a little bit more awareness in the fact that whereas versus like the older generations tend to be like, well, it's a job. Just go and get it done. I feel like the younger generations tend to come into it like, well, what is it in a way going to do for me? What does it do for my soul? Or what does it do for my mental health? They want it to be a mutual thing instead of you just show up, work, get your paycheck, peace out.
Franchon Francees: Right. Yeah. I hear people say young people don't value this and young people don't that. And I don't think it's that that generation doesn't care.
I think what they care about is different. That doesn't mean they don't have values. It just means we need to shift the focus a little bit in terms of making sure that everyone's value system is met, as opposed to just the older generations dictating what value looks like.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. It's finding this balance, okay what is needed for our futures and to give back to our employees and what's like realistic.
Franchon Francees: Right. I love that you say balance because I think that's really where it's at. Let's not throw all the old school way of doing things completely out the window because we still have different generations in the workforce. So there's this middle ground that needs to happen and what I'm learning is a lot of organizations are struggling, trying to navigate what that looks like. That's a big part of who my clients are.
Meredith Matics: What are some tangible steps business owners or business leaders can take in addressing the stress with their team?
Franchon Francees: First of all, know your team. Relationships are everything, right? That's with any generation. Different generations put a stronger emphasis on it than others, but ultimately it's all about building relationships. So make sure that you know your team and if you think you know your team, then still get to know them, like spend time with them in terms of individually.
Asking them direct questions. Like one of my favorite questions as a leader is what do you need? It does two things. It lets them know that I'm that I'm paying attention and I'm listening. It also puts the responsibility to verbalize their needs on them, because it's not my job to guess and figure it out. It's my job to listen to the answer and then be ready to try to meet that need if it's within my capabilities.
Meredith Matics: When you first said that part about asking them what they need, at first, I was like, Oh yeah, I do that. And then I went, no, I say need anything. There's a difference.
Franchon Francees: There is a difference. Sometimes people say like I'll catch myself saying, call me if you need me. I say that a lot nowadays because I'm moving at warp speed. When I was much more intentional about my leadership style, I would always say, hey, we got a five o'clock coffee today. I need you to have your need list ready. So they always came with like, hey, here are the top three things that I need in order to be productive. Once you train a team like that, it's really amazing because it creates this true open door policy and then what ends up happening is what you need from them as a manager or a business owner, they naturally do because they want to. They want to take care of you. They want to meet goals. If you show up for them, then they show up for you without you having to do scorecards and different things like that.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. As you say that I'm thinking we've talked about in some of the other episodes, like with some salespeople and stuff about how if a customer likes you they'll come back, but the same is true of your business relationships within your own team. If your team member likes you and likes who they're around, they're more likely to stick around.
Franchon Francees: Absolutely, retention is one of our bigger outcomes that we really focus on. People sometimes will talk to me about business and things like that, and I'll ask them what their budget is. They get a little nervous because they're like that's a lot of money and I'm like, it is, depending on how you look at it. Because how much does it cost for you to hire a new person? How much time? How much money are you spending in hiring new people? A big term, I don't know if you've heard this yet. If it has been on any of your other episodes, presenteeism.
Meredith Matics: No! What is that?
Franchon Frances: You have not heard of present. So...
Meredith Matics: Apparently, we're behind the times over here.
Franchon Francees: Presenteeism is basically when your employee comes to work and is present.
Meredith Matics: I've just never heard it phrased like that.
Franchon Francees: Right. There's a lot of employees who are, and this was pre COVID days. There's a lot of studies done that basically showed the percentage of time that an employee spends actually working while at work is like less than 50% in most industries. I'm thinking of my tech people, like they can really zero in on that and they're losing a significant amount of money.
Cause you're not getting that return on investment for that salary person. And again, with the tech industry, it's really hard to replace people because everybody has skills, but then you gotta bring them in. You have to train them, you have to figure out how the team's going to work together.
Like I said, a tech company that brought that to my attention and they were like, we really see your need because you can address presenteeism like how do we get people to come to work and be at work? What does that look like without having to increase productivity expectations, and micro-managing and things like that, which actually doesn't help, but makes people feel like they're doing something.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. We would love to get your advice on a potential scenario that we've seen often in our business leaders. If a business owner who has one team member in particular that is struggling, seems to be having like a lot going on or appears to be really stressed. How would you recommend that, that business owner approach the topic and offer support to that particular team member?
Franchon Francees: Well, I think the first thing is make sure that you're okay. Meaning, make sure that you're coming from a place of safety and not super stressed and not super rushed. Sometimes people want to elicit information from people, but they're in a rush and they don't have time for those awkward silences and the act of listening that really needs to happen. There's a couple of ingredients to a really healthy, good conversation. The first ingredient is take care of everything that you can take care of on your end. So making sure you're not distracted and making sure you're paying attention, making sure you've eaten. And then also offering that to the person you want to meet with. I definitely think it's best to do this on an individual basis. Whether that be in person, if that's an option or even a private zoom conversation or whatever platform you're using.
And just kind of say the person like, Hey, I really want to check in with you. I have some things I want to talk to you about. I want to get your thoughts on something, when's a good time. And if they say eight o'clock in the morning, are they a morning person? Is that really a good time? Or is that just when they have availability in their schedule? You really want to set them up to be vulnerable with you and to be honest with you about what is actually going on.
Don't just assume that they feel comfortable telling you. Don't just assume that if you take the time to ask, they're going to tell you. It's really important to set up that environment as much as you can. Once you're asking questions, maybe ask it in a different way, make sure you're listening, make sure you're doing reflective statements.
My favorite tool that I tell all my leaders to use is a recap statement. So I would say, what I'm hearing you say is you want to know about the scenario with this outlier. Am I correct? Check for that understanding because sometimes what happens is, is people communicate and they think they're communicating effectively. And then what you heard and what they said are not the same things. Then you walk away with like this kind of half plan. It doesn't work out and you're super frustrated, but really what happened was, is they thought they articulated well, but you were not able for whatever reason to completely understand.
Like people do that with me all the time and I'm like, you know what? That's actually not what I meant. What I mean is, and then it forces me to adjust my words and think a little bit more intentionally about what it is I'm saying, because if I'm stressed out or under pressure or having depression or anxiety or any of those things, I'm not going to verbalize and articulate as well as I would, for example, right now, when I'm in my home and I'm safe and I'm calm and I'm not rushed. It's the end of the Workday. I'm not rushing off to a meeting. I totally have time to give you my attention and verbalize things.
Whereas sometimes we're just having these quick in passing conversations and expecting people to feel comfortable telling us what's really going on.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. The interesting thing is I'm thinking back to business school. I'm just realizing how what we're taught in school as business owners, if like, if any of us have gone to school for business and what is practical and what needs to happen is kind of misaligned. I remember this one exercise we had in business school where they were like, okay, what would you do in this situation? If an employee came to you and said that they were like struggling with alcohol or something, they're really trying to get over it and they're doing their best. They're going to AA meetings.
And then you end up having to let them go for being tardy And how that would open up to legal issues because now you know too much. So they always taught us in business school to know as little about your employees as possible to protect you from lawsuits.
Franchon Francees: Wow. I'm trying to remember. I did go to business school and I'm trying to remember if we, I do remember in terms of boundaries, I don't remember that it was knowing. It was more about like spending time.
Meredith Matics: So I guess my question would be, how does one manage that boundary level of getting to know your employees and being there for them, but without crossing it and being too involved in said case.
Franchon Francees: So with that scenario, I think there's a couple of things. Most people are blessed with human resources these days, and a lot of people have EAP and, or a company like mine that is available to provide them with services. You always want to let them know of resources available. But just keeping in mind that you knowing information is not the same as you engaging in the behavior. I think sometimes people think the two things are synonymous and they're not.
For example, if I know my coworker has a drinking problem, then that's just information that I'm aware of. If I never see them drunk at work, I never see any thing happening that I'm concerned about in terms of their use at work. I'm allowed to know that information.
If I'm engaging in drinking with them and we're spending a lot of time off the clock hanging out, drinking and things like that. That is a kind of a different liability issue, especially if I'm their manager but knowing something actually doesn't necessarily open you up for liability. Now I'm not an attorney.
It's not so much about knowing information as it is about witnessing behavior.
Meredith Matics: It's good to make sure then that as we learn to engage with our fellow employees or as managers with our staff to also make sure that we are still, I would say notating when things are inappropriate behaviors.
They may say they have a drinking issue, but if they show up drunk, that's different.
Franchon Francees: Right. Anytime that you observe a concerning behavior, like you definitely want to address it, but also document it and you want to document what you did about it in terms of, was there a consequence, did we refer them? Did you refer them to EAP or AA? What kind of resources do you have to? And then creating a space where they can talk to you about it in terms of the healthy side of it. Right? The healthy side of drinking is recovery.
There's the healthy side of everything. People just don't always focus on that part. If a coworker comes to me and tells me like, Hey, I'm noticing that I'm drinking too much. I'm having a problem. I refer them somewhere and then weeks later they come back and tell me like, Hey, I'm going to therapy. It's going really well. I'm going to be excited about that and encouraged by that. As opposed to not wanting to talk to about that, because what happens is it's hard for people to heal from things that they can't talk about. So that's why it causes more of a problem.
There's all these celebratory things that we do as humans to celebrate things, which is super healthy and super good. But the flip side of the coin is we don't allow space for what some people consider negative emotions. I really invite all of our listeners to recognize that all emotions are good. All behaviors are not good. There's a difference.
Meredith Matics: I think that's a great way of phrasing it.
Franchon Francees: Be emotional. Do whatever you need to do. The emotion part is good. The behavior part is where you have to be mindful where, when, who, all of those kinds of things.
Meredith Matics: Yeah, I think that's definitely a good distinction for our listeners to think about. What is one piece of advice that you have received as a business owner that you would like to share with another small business owner?
Franchon Francees: Is it okay if I share something I wish I would have received, but didn't?
Meredith Matics: I think we can make an exception.
Franchon Francees: Okay, thank you so much. You have to figure out how to be your own cheerleader and what I mean by that is growing a business from nothing or from whatever it is you're starting from is really, really hard.
It's great to have a great team, and it's great to have all these resources and all these different things. But at the end of the day, you have to figure out a way to motivate yourself because some days are really, really hard. And it's a lot of fun and I love how Healing Your Almond has really grown, but I just think nobody shares that part.
I really wish somebody would have told me like, Hey Franchon, figure out a way to make sure that you're loving yourself in the hard days. And that you motivate yourself to keep moving forward when it's hard. For example, when you launch a company and it's your first full year in business and a pandemic hits, like, because your cheer squad is not present because they're going through their own pandemic. They're going through their own issues. Finding that internal voice that reminds you of your why. This is why I'm here. This is what I'm doing. This is why this is so important. And this is why I'm going to let this go for today, but I'm going to pick it back up tomorrow.
Meredith Matics: I don't know if I ever shared this on the podcast or not, but the reason I started the podcast was I felt like being a business owner was super lonely because you're not your team is with you to a certain extent, but they're also it's their future and their lives on their own. And they're not your best friend because they can't be right. Can be, they can be your colleague at work and they can be your friend at work. But at the end of the day, if you're the owner, you have the responsibility of make or break in their livelihood and you have the owner responsibilities of firing them or choosing benefits or whatever that could come into conflict.
You need to spend all these hours with them and think of them, but you're kind of in it alone. That was why I decided to start the podcast was I thought, well, what is the way I can talk to other business owners about just businessy things without going to like, if there's none of the like business meeting groups or whatever locally. And so I was like, how can we do this? How can I talk to other business owners about what they're struggling with or what they're succeeding at and hear their stories and talk about mine and share.
That was my motivation to myself on the hard days I can think, well, at least that got somebody I can chat with on the podcast.
Franchon Francees: Yes. First of all, thank you so much for role modeling vulnerability, because I mean, huge fan of that. I love when I'm not the only one in the room doing it, so thank you. It is super lonely and I just love that you're being honest about that and, and not every day, not all day.
Meredith Matics: Yeah, like, okay. A pandemic just hit. I don't know if my people can come in or not. We have all these things that have to get done and I have no one who knows exactly in this moment or maybe I do, but I don't realize it, going through what I'm going through. Your normal day where you're just like, Oh no, my best employee just quit and I really liked her and depended on her. No! Whatever it is, at the end of the day, there's only so much you can share with others that aren't in your situation.
All right. Now I'm going to ask you that final question. Where can our listeners find you on social media?
Franchon Francees: I have an Instagram. Healing Your Almond has an Instagram. All of my names are Healing Your Almond. We also have a Facebook, I would say that really the best place is probably LinkedIn or healingyoualmond.com. I really do a good job about keeping healingyouralmond.com updated.
I don't do a great job about my social media. But you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, all Healing Your Almond, and then healingyouralmond.com is really where the most information is.
Meredith Matics: Well, thank you so much for coming on with us.
Franchon Francees: No, thank you. I was super excited. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed it.
Meredith Matics: Bye Franchon!
Franchon Francees: Bye.
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