On losing steam – and regaining it.
How to increase team morale when your team has every reason to feel depleted.
👋 Howdy! Claire here, CEO of Canopy. If you’ve been enjoying reading my original writing here, I wanted to share two other ways to gain even deeper leadership insights…
(1) Receive free daily leadership tips when you sign-up for Canopy (and receive them on your phone if you download our free iOS app along with it). Learn more about Canopy here 🌿
(2) Work with me personally and our team to implement a custom leadership training program for your internally-promoted managers, based on our past decade of research. Learn more about Canopy for Teams here 🏔️
We’ve arrived at that point in the year. The last corner of summer. One eye on fall, the other speculating the final “push” through Q4.
Contemplating how close or far off our year-end goals we might be. Mentally steeling ourselves for the grind until the year finds its close.
We pause to look at our team: They are tired.
Perhaps they’ve survived layoffs earlier in the year (or previous year). Worn thin from the psychological toll of worrying if they’re “next.” Mentally and physically drained from doing the same amount, if not more, of work but with a smaller team.
Perhaps they’ve gritted through a season of unprecedented growth – but growth that’s come at a cost, as the company scrambled to scale. Originally running on adrenaline, now they subsist on fumes, trying to do three people’s jobs and make sure things don’t break too much.
You ask your team how they’re doing… But you already know the answer.
They’re exhausted. Depleted beyond measure. Morale teetering on the lowest rung.
What can you do, as a leader?
You want to somehow tap into a meaningful swell of energy and inspiration. A wave of positive morale that your team can ride for a bit longer. And not in a “go-team-rah-rah” way that feels inauthentic.
How do we genuinely regain this morale and momentum, when your team has lost steam?
A few considerations…
The goal is resilience, not inflation.
First of all: Let’s be precise about what we’re trying to actually improve here.
Team morale is outlook. Their sentiment. How optimistic or energetic they feel about the work they’re doing now and the direction of the company overall.
Naturally, a team’s level of morale – just like any individual person’s – ebbs and flows. Some days and weeks it will be higher than others. Other times, it will be lower.
This is the natural pattern of how we internalize experience as humans: Never uniformly, always in comparison to previous context of how we felt prior, as a point of reference.
This means that super high, 100% levels of team morale, all-the-time, is impossible. Perpetual inflation is not the goal here.
The goal is resilience: To reignite our vivacity when the spark has flickered out. To regain sure footing when traction has slipped. To rediscover a beautiful garden under the overgrown foliage – and willingly recommit to the work to prune it.
Can your team find new and different pockets of energy? Can your team find new and different approaches to hairy challenges? Can your team find new and different avenues toward a positive, hopeful road ahead?
You’ll notice two key words here: New. Different.
The only way to shift morale in your team is to do and talk about things as a leader in a new and different way.
What worked before isn’t going to work any longer…
Here are the new and different things you can try:
Mark the new chapter loud and clear.
If you’re going to turn the page, make sure folks know it’s not just a paragraph break in the same refrain. It’s a new chapter, with a new heading. Fresh direction must be pronounced, not merely assumed.
For example, if you’ve found yourself lately saying things like:
“We just have to keep fighting…”
“We just have to keep grinding here…”
Unfortunately, these phrases are NOT an indication of anything new and different. They reinforce that you’re going to just keep doing what you’ve always been doing… So there’s no reason to feel anything new and different about the work.
Instead, you must make it unmistakably obvious that things will be new and different going forward. For example, you could say:
“This is a different phase…”
“We’re going to start doing things differently…”
“This is a new chapter for us…”
There needs to be a noticeable, believable shift in tone for morale to change. And that only happens if you make it absolutely clear that this is indeed a new chapter.
(What makes the shift believable, by the way? We’ll talk about that more below.)
Stop trying to make all-team bonding happen – and invest in 1:1 connection.
One of the more tempting leadership tactics to default to is trying to get everyone to feel good, all together, all at the same time.
This rarely generates the results we’re looking for – especially when your team is reeling from severe fatigue. Hosting more all-team happy hours on Zoom, or scheduling more in-person team meet-ups, can sometimes have the opposite effect: They can exhaust your team further, because it’s something orthogonal to the work itself that your team also needs to give energy to.
Instead, recognize that morale is personal. You cannot peer pressure people into feeling a certain way. The best way to help improve a team’s outlook is to focus on the individual: Take the time to talk with each person. Listen to what they’re facing. See if there is anything you as a leader can do to help improve things for them.
You’re creating space for them to feel heard. To let their guard down a bit, and for them to riff with you on how things could be different going forward.
Here’s helpful way to tee up the 1:1 conversation:
“Given how this has been such a trying season for us, what might be most helpful for you? For instance, can I take anything off your plate, reprioritize things, or help give greater context to any projects?”
(Note: This doesn’t mean abandoning every social event or rapport-building activity. Rather, team bonding efforts alone almost never significantly help a team rebuild momentum without a focus on each individual, as well.)
Refresh and refocus on what actually matters.
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Where is this all headed? Was this all for naught?
Your team is thinking this – and it only spirals morale even lower.
As a leader, it’s your job to make clear: Yes, your work does matter. Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, it is all for something bigger.
Now, “bigger” isn’t necessarily the Q3 goal or OKR you’re trying to hit. Increasing customer retention by 5% or operational speed by 10% are the tactical milestones that lead to what’s bigger. But they are not the “bigger” thing itself.
“Bigger” is the vision: That customers’ lives are easier and more pleasant because of the work you’ve done. That folks in the world are able to do things more enjoyably and with less friction because of the work you’ve done.
Vision is what the world looks like because of your work. The resulting impact of your team’s work. A picture of a better place. That’s what matters to your team.
So then, what is your team’s vision? Is it clear how the world is better because of the work you do? Or have you been overly fixated on the tactical goals and milestones to reach that vision? If you want your team to regain momentum, vision can be a energy source. There are few things more powerful than recommitting to and reconnecting to what your team and company vision is.
(Admittedly, vision can be tough to get a handle on. If you’ve ever struggled to define and operationalize vision as a leader, I’d highly recommend our module on “How to Set Vision” in Canopy 🌿 which gives a solid primer on it.)
Give real value to recovery.
Energy is finite. If you want your team to be less tired, they must have time to recover. Your team has to draw energy from somewhere. And if their own energy stores are expended, there is no alternative than to rest, recover, and replenish them.
This doesn’t mean necessarily telling everyone on your team to go take a 3-week vacation. (Although, I’m sure your team could use it!)
Recovery and renewal can come in small but meaningful ways. For example:
Consider offering your team an extra day off each month. Perhaps you personally can model this by also taking an extra day off yourself, to indicate this is something that the whole team should value and act on.
Consider adding a week of 'buffer time’ of smaller, less intensive tasks between major projects. This way your team doesn’t feel they’re constantly pushing themselves to the brink, but have time to recover between big projects.
Consider reprioritizing a less urgent project, so your team feels less “stacked” with a timeline.
Consider changing up timelines on less urgent projects, so there is more wiggle room for execution and less feeling “hair on fire.”
Consider removing a priority for every single team member and making it clear that you’re doing this in response to wanting your team to enable rest, recovery, and then rebuild momentum.
Normalize the fatigue.
The load feels heavier if you believe you’re the only one carrying it. Low morale is exacerbated by ignoring it, and pretending everything is hunky-dory. Your team members will start to feel isolated, and performance will only get worse.
Of course, it’s scary to think about discussing low morale with your team. Like talking about how everyone is getting sick, except you – and then you do get sick. Some of us as leaders worry, “What if I am unintentionally encouraging low morale by talking about it?”
While understandable, the reality is that your team is already feeling low morale. Reality is enforcing your team’s truth – not your wishful thinking.
So your omission of reality feels tone deaf. Your team may view you as out of touch. They’ll be less likely to share their honest perspectives with you… And then you end up in the worst possible situation: Where your team’s morale is low but their terrified of admitting it to you, so it lingers in perpetuity.
Instead, normalize the fatigue. Try saying:
“I know this has been a trying season…”
“I know we’ve been asked to do a lot…”
“I know we’ve been really tested this year…”
Acknowledge the reality that already exists. Then, reality feels a bit easier to bear.
Emphasize the obstacles overcome and progress made.
How quick we are to forget how far we’ve come! But the more credit we can give ourselves, the more energy that can be gained. Confidence comes from a belief in your own capacity — and what better way to remind ourselves of that capacity then to reflect on the proof points of it.
This means, as a leader, you want to remind your team of their accomplishments, big and small. Even survival and “getting through” a season is worth the notice. Underscore what they’ve overcome, and where their effort has got them.
Some ways to communicate this progress are:
“I’m incredibly proud of how far we’ve come. Specifically…”
“I know it doesn’t always feel like it, but it’s quite amazing to see everything we’ve accomplished…”
“Let’s take stock of how resilient we’ve been during this season…”
If resilience is the goal, the explicit reminder restores our ability to uphold it.
We don’t have resort to pump-up speeches or exaggerated future promises to turn around our team’s morale.
Rather, if we can first accept the generally stochastic nature of morale, then we can focus on what’s most helpful for building team morale: Resilience.
Resilient to the inevitable headwinds of our work. Resilient to the unforeseen external forces that seek to mire us down.
But resilience emerges not from doing things the same way: Resilience is born from doing something new and different. Revisit the following, when you’re looking to restore momentum for your team:
Mark the new chapter loud and clear.
Invest in 1:1 connection (and don’t be overly concerned with all-team bonding).
Refresh and refocus on what actually matters.
Give real value to recovery.
Normalize the fatigue.
Emphasize the obstacles overcome and progress made.
Begin with one of these practices today. And slowly, you can give your team the room to regain their steam when they’ve lost it.
-Claire
✨ For a deeper dive, be sure to check out our “How to Improve Morale” module in Canopy. The first few lessons are free – as are hundreds of daily tips in Canopy 🌿✨
💚 If you’ve been enjoying reading my original writing here, I wanted to share two other ways to gain even deeper leadership insights…
(1) Receive free daily leadership tips when you sign-up for Canopy (and receive them on your phone if you download our free iOS app along with it). Learn more about Canopy here 🌿
(2) Work with me personally and our team to implement custom leadership training programs for your internally-promoted managers, based on our past decade of research. Learn more about Canopy for Teams here 🏔️
Thanks for stopping by and reading, regardless!