Washington State EAP: Welcome to this Washington State EAP presentation on transitioning into the new work life, creating psychological safety in work teams. I'm Kari Uhlman, EAP Counselor and I'll be providing this presentation. If you'd like to download a copy of the presentation slides they are available on our website, you can find this at eap.wa.gov then click on webinars. You'll see the title of this presentation and below that you'll see a hyperlink to the PDF of this PowerPoint presentation, which you can download. During this webinar today we're going to be talking about transitioning into the new work life. We are certainly moving into a new way of working together and being together in the world, so whether it's that you have employees working from home, or returning to the work site, or perhaps a hybrid of working from home and on the work site or other changes that you're experiencing in the workplace. What we're going to do today is talk about the possible impacts on staff and employees as we transition into this new work life. We'll talk about how to create psychological safety to support your staff and employees in the workplace, as well as supports and resources available for both you and your staff. Now I'd like to note that the focus of this webinar is going to be around the mental emotional well-being of both you and your staff so we're not going to be talking about or addressing the physical safety aspect. Please refer to your organization for any work safety guidelines, protocols, policies, plans and during this time we're going to focus and on mental emotional well-being. It might be helpful to know that Washington State EAP serves all state agencies, as well as many other public service organizations throughout Washington. So that can include higher education, school districts, fire districts, tribal governments, counties and many others. If you're not sure if we are your EAP, feel free to check with your human resources department and they'll be able to let you know who your EAP is. So we have people joining this webinar from all across the State and you work in all sorts of different types of organizations. Today, when I refer to the workplace or the work site, I want to let you know that I'm talking about all the possible places where your employees or your staff might be working which could be from home or on campus, school grounds, working out in the field, or in a hospital or agency or organization or maybe somewhere else. As you view this presentation, if you find that you have questions that aren't getting addressed or you thinking that “Oh, I was kind of hoping for something different” or “I'm wanting some additional support”. I want to let you know that the Washington State EAP, employee assistance network is here for you. You can give us a call. In a moment I'm going to provide the phone number, but I wanted to let you know that I'll also provide at the end of this webinar more information about the EAP and our contact information. But I wanted to provide our phone number up front in case that's helpful, so the Washington State employee assistance program phone number is 877-313-4455. So let's begin by reflecting back on the journey that we've been on since March of 2020. The Department of Health has identified phases that people go through in response to a disaster such as the pandemic. According to the Department of Health, we have collectively been moving through four phases. The heroic phase. We experienced this at the beginning of the pandemic in March and April of 2020. When you think about this, you might think about people banging pots and pans together to acknowledge healthcare workers or you might remember some heroic acts that people did or heroic things you did in your life. Then collectively we moved into the honeymoon phase, and when I think about this phase, I think about people starting new hobbies or maybe realizing some of the benefits of not being so busy in our personal lives. The next phase we moved into collectively was a disillusionment phase, and this is a time when we can see that people were wondering when is this going to be over, maybe struggling with maintaining physical distancing, having heightened differences in beliefs. And then we moved into the reconstruction phase. As we have moved into and are in the reconstruction phase, this is a place for me, I think about it as a reconfiguration. Things are all being reconfigured as we move into this unknown and we're creating a new way forward, of being in the world and in the workplace. Now the Washington State Department of Health provides us with this model which is very helpful to consider what we've all been moving through collectively. We've been having this collective experience, but each of us have been having our own experience within the collective experience. And I think as a leader it's important to remember that each individual has been having their own experience and, within that some communities and some individuals they've been impacted more over the past year, plus than others. Many black, indigenous, and people of color have experienced significant racial trauma in the last year plus through witnessing the violence and death of people of color or experiencing racial profiling, racism, oppression or violence themselves or a loved one. And then, many other people have been experiencing other experiences and I want to talk a little bit more about that as we move forward and so we'll do that, then in the next section. But I want to note that, before we move on that, during this webinar we're not going to be able to address all of the individual and community concerns that have come up or the larger important systemic issues and concerns. What we can do though today as you're joining here today is as a leader, we can think about what we can do to support staff. How maybe we can help smooth and easy way, or at least increase our understanding of what people might be experiencing so that as leaders, we can be more thoughtful and mindful about the choices that we're making in our leadership roles. So what I thought, maybe we could do next is move into the individual experience. One way I thought that we could do this is by looking at William bridges transition model. Now William Bridges, is most well-known for his work around the human side of change and he's written a book about this called Managing Transitions. I would highly suggest this book, managing transitions, for all of you in a leadership position as it can be really helpful to understand what's happening for our employees and our staff in the workplace. Bridges talks about this transition model which identifies the psychological process that we move through when we're experiencing change and he's named it managing transitions. I want to review this model with you and, as I do, I invite you to consider your staff and your employees, when you think about what's happening for you in the workplace noticing if you're recognizing your staff being in any of these phases, or more than one of these phases. Alright, so let's talk about the model. Again this transition model is a three phase process that people go through as they internalize and come to terms with change. So let me explain that a little bit further. So there's a change that happens and its external so that could be employees returning to being on the work site, for example, that is an external change. What we're going to be talking about next is what happens psychologically internally within the person experiencing the change. So the psychological process that someone moves through the first phase is called endings, and this is a phase where people are in the process of letting go of how things were done before. And sometimes with that there's a letting go of one's identity that was associated with how things were done previously. So let me give some offer some examples to help us understand this phase, a little bit more. So say as a leader, you have announced to your staff that they will be returning to the work site and you might have employees that are returning there or that have already been on the work site and other people will be joining them. So you make this announcement to your employees and people have a response. Some people might express feeling shocked I can't believe this is happening. Denial I'm not going to go back on the work site. Worry how can I pay for childcare again. Anxiety, how's this going to work out. How we're going to be safe in doing this. Anger, and many other feelings or combination of feelings that can come up. Now, as a leader, sometimes that can feel surprising and there's not always intensity, but sometimes there can be a lot of intensity with the feelings that people are having and it may show up in how they're expressing themselves or through their behaviors. And so you might be wondering well what's happening here. This phase is called the endings because internally people have realized that something has changed and now they're starting to move through this process of endings. Something is ending for them with this change. And when we experience endings we can experience loss and different types of loss. And so I want to name some of the types of losses that that people can feel and it's not limited, of course, to this. With the change that you announced, changes happening in the workplace for you coming up people can feel a loss of power or influence. They can feel a loss of membership in groups or loss of relationships. Perhaps it's feeling less competent or losing some status or control or their routines and structures. For some it might be this loss of identity, which could be their work identity, their personal identity, their cultural identity or some other type of identity. It could also be a person's work or personal future loss that they're experiencing some kind of loss around that. With the endings people often experience loss in some form or another. This is expected, so this is a natural process that people go through in response to change something's changing externally. A person is going to have a response internally as they're trying to process what's going on and shifting through. So as a leader, you can expect that people are going to have a reaction to change and it's really a natural process that people move through as they psychologically move through the internal process of change. Now, a little bit later in this webinar I'm going to talk more specifically about what you can do when your staff are in the ending phase. But for now let's talk about the second phase, which is the neutral zone. The neutral zone is the in between time. Where the way things were done before, is changing, but the new way is not in place yet so there might not be processes or procedures for things in place yet. So when people are in this in between time where they know a change is going to happen, but they don't know how it's going to look it can feel like there's a lot of instability, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of confusion. So notice, if your staff might be having some experiences, or some feelings in the neutral zone. So we've looked at the ending phase and the neutral zone let's look at the moving forward phase, so I call it moving forward. William bridges identifies it as new beginnings. When I think of moving forward in this phase to me this is when you're a bit on the other side of the change and so that means that in that place there's kind of the sense of clarity, this is all this is how things are going to work. This is my role, you maybe have a new sense of purpose. This is how I'm going to do things, this is my new routine and I have a better sense of what's going on. Now some people may have feelings of hope and optimism when they get to the moving forward face they may feel like oh I'm on the other side of this change. Not everyone's going to have feelings of hope or optimism and some people may still be upset that the change had to happen or not like whatever change was put in place. But they could still be in the moving forward phase. They may not be happy about the change, but they may have a better understanding of Oh, I understand what my role is I understand how this is going to work out so it's more of that place when you get to them moving forward phase. Now as I'm talking about these phases I'm talking about them as if they are linear and they're not and William Bridges did not intend for them to be a linear process because it's not how we as humans we move through the psychological process internally and moving through this is not a linear process. What can happen is your staff, your employees can move back and forth between these phases. So, say, for example, the plan has been for your staff to return on site by a certain date and then something's happened say with the pandemic, something has shifted and then you realize that staff are not able to return by that date, and maybe you're in the unknown. And so, people may have been moving forward like, oh there's a date we're returning something's changed, now they might move back into the neutral zone into the unknown, we don't know what's going to happen next. People can be in more than one phase, at the same time, they can be in the ending phase feel really sad about this change that's happening feeling some losses there, and at the same time be in the neutral zone. How's this going to work out and feeling instability, like the floor is moving underneath their feet. We can be in more than one phase at the same time. So I just invite you to consider where your staff might be with what's happening for you in wherever you're at with workplace changes that are there happening at this moment in time. And you might want to at some point pause this webinar and even kind of think about where you would place yourself on this transition model and where you would place your staff. And when you do that you'll notice that there's a difference between where you are and where your staff are with the same change. As a leader it's important to remember that you're going to be in a different place. Even if you're in the same phase it's going to be a little bit different flavor for you as you're in a leadership role. It’s just different than being in a staff role. Knowing this and that you're in different places, or even where you are then you can be more thoughtful about how you're communicating with your staff. Rather than speaking to them from where you're at in the transition, you might be in the moving forward phase and you're feeling like you're on the other side of the change, and you have staff that are in a different place. They're still feeling confused and unsure how this is all going to work out. So as a leader, we want to be clear where you're at versus where your staff are at so we can communicate with them where they're at. Not trying to communicate from where we're at. We'll talk more about specific strategies to help staff in each of these phases in a little while. But before we do that, I want to talk about some of the experiences that people have been having because what I'd like to do is hopefully broaden our perspectives of what people might be experiencing. As leaders we have more knowledge and a broader perspective of how our staff and employees might be showing up in the workplace, and that will be helpful for us in helping to support them or helping provide them with resources or helping to continue to move things forward in the workplace. So let's start off with stress. Certainly many people have been experiencing a significant amount of stress, with the pandemic over a prolonged period of time. Now our minds and bodies are not meant to be under this level of stress for such a long period of time, and what can happen is when we're under a lot of stress for a significant period of time our nervous system can really get over activated. And with that we can find ourselves feeling very drained and tired and we can have a smaller window of tolerance. If you imagine a window pane and it's open and you imagine everything with the pandemic happening and, that being piled on top of the window pane and it's just pushing that window pane down, so the opening gets smaller and smaller. That is what the window of tolerance is like it makes it harder to manage our mood, to manage stress, to be able to problem solve, to make decisions, to be tolerant and open minded, it can impact our physical health and much more. So as leaders, what we can count on is that many of our staff has been under a significant amount of stress over the past year plus and for many the transition into whatever's happening next in the workplace can feel very difficult, on top of all the other stressors that they've been experiencing. I want to give you just a few statistics about stress just to illustrate the impact the pandemic has had on the stress level of many, many people. According to Forbes seven out of 10 workers, said the pandemic has been the most stressful time in their professional careers. The American Psychological Association has found that nearly eight and 10 say that the pandemic has been a significant source of stress in their life. And there are many more statistics that we could add here, but I think that it's safe to say that many people, we can see from those statistics, many people have been experiencing a significant amount of stress and it's been a significant portion of the population. Now for some what's happening for them is more specific there's their stress overall and then there's something more specific it's this reentry anxiety. Or, this is not a clinical term FOGO, fear of going out, so for some they're having specific fears around interacting with others. As we've been physically distance for a long time, and now the thought of being around others can feel very worrisome and stressful and, of course, there are safety concerns that people are having. And in addition to that, for some people, or for many people, we've been training our brains to physically distance and to use for precautionary measures, and so we can't expect that when we're asked to return on site, even if there are safety measures in place, can't expect our brains to just say oh everything's fine because we have really been working hard to maintain our safety so it's not like a light switch we can just turn on and off, so I think that's important to remember with staff, if you have staff that are going to be returning to more in person interactions in one form or another. Now for other people, they are living with a diagnosable mental health condition which heightens their levels of fear or tension. And so, with a diagnosable mental health condition, people can experience many things, it's not limited to this, but there could be things like panic attacks, compulsive behaviors, social anxiety, they could be experiencing depression, post-traumatic stress from the pandemic. A person may have had a preexisting mental health condition before the pandemic and with the pandemic that intensified their experience or there were triggers that intensify their experience. For others, they might have developed their mental health condition during the pandemic. Now, you may be thinking well there's probably not that many people that fall into this category of a diagnosable mental health condition. I want to provide you with a statistic to help you have an understanding of how prevalent, this is right now. Washington State, we have a population of a little bit over 7 million citizens. Now, Dr Kira Mauseth, clinical psychologist for the Department of Health has said that 4 million people in Washington State have had clinically significant levels of depression or anxiety during the pandemic so out of our State of about 7 million citizens, 4 million have had a clinically significant level of depression or anxiety. Now, I think we know that that 4 million number is probably even higher than that because, not everybody reaches out for help, so they aren't counted in those numbers there. And there are also other types of mental health conditions as well, such as post-traumatic stress and so that 4 million number, we can you know just know that that's probably higher. So there's a significant number of people in our population. As a leader, I think that's important to realize that when we're working with our staff that there's a significant portion of the population that is experiencing a diagnosable mental health condition. Now for some their worries and concerns around what's happening in the workplace might be around some workplace culture issues or challenges. So, for some, they may have experienced challenges with team dynamics, interpersonal conflicts, perhaps bullying, or even harassment and during the pandemic, maybe they were working from home and had a respite from these interactions with people that they work with, with their colleagues or with a pandemic. Maybe they have been working from home and they started having some challenges with others on the work team because we can't read each other social cues as easily or other reasons that they might have had an increase in challenges with the workplace culture. I want to note that people of color, LGBTQ employees, employees with disabilities, women and other marginalized employees, they might be concerned around workplace issues because there's micro aggressions that have occurred, either in the past or currently occurring. And so, by micro aggressions I mean verbal, nonverbal, slights, snubs, insults, whether they're intentional or unintentional, which communicate in a hostile or derogatory or negative way toward an individual in a marginalized group or groups of marginalized people. And so having that awareness of this work place culture piece, I think is important as a leader. And certainly there are other challenges individual challenges that are people are having say, for instance there's been an increase in addiction, with the pandemic and so you may have employees that are struggling with that or struggling with their recovery or people who are caregiving loved ones and trying to balance that with workplace expectations and lots of different situations that people might be experiencing. So let's move into next about what you can do as a leader. I'd like to talk about psychological safety. Amy Edmundson from the Harvard Business School, she coined this term team psychological safety. Now what is psychological safety? Well when I think about it, I think about it as a leader, we can create an environment where there's a shared belief and an experience that the team is a safe place for inner personal risk taking, where people feel accepted valued and respected. Now why as a leader, would you want to do this, create this environment of psychological safety in your work groups? Well there's many reasons. When we're working in an environment that is psychologically unsafe, it can make it difficult for people to solve complex problems, foster cooperation, be creative and innovative, be satisfied with their job, and so there can be an increase in turnover, increase in safety incidents and a decrease in productivity. When an environment is psychologically safe then it's a place where people feel good about the work that they're doing, there's lower turnover, there's a decrease in safety incidents, there's an increase in productivity, people are able to solve complex problems and there's an environment which fosters cooperation, people can learn and be creative and innovative. Now, when I talk about psychological safety I'm not talking about that people can just do whatever they want to do as a leader, we still hold employees and staff accountable. It doesn't mean that people get to have unearned autonomy. Or that everything is done by consensus. It doesn't mean that there's not conflict. There can be conflict in a team or work team that has psychological safety, people are able to talk about it and work it through and come to some agreements and the be able to move forward. So when there is psychological safety you're creating an environment, as a leader, of trust, where employees and staff can be productive and they can be their best. So let's talk about some ideas around how you can increase psychological safety or create psychological safety in your work teams. So the place I'd like to start is with you as the leader. Often when I work with leaders, I find that we tend to get into these positions because we're good at problem solving, we're good at helping other people and with that we can forget to take care of ourselves. And so I just want to for a few moments focus on you and just have you check in with yourself to see how you're doing. So the first question I have for you is, are you taking care of your own mental health and your own well-being? In order to help our staff, our employees it's really important that we have something left in the tank, in the gas tank, to be able to help others. Because what can happen if we don't is, we can burn out or we can find ourselves interacting with our staff in unhealthy ways that are not helpful for them and not creating an environment where people can be their best. Another thing to just check in with yourself around is do you have a sounding board do you have a place where you can talk to colleagues and bounce ideas off of each other. Maybe a collective mind, you come together as collective minds, this hive mind, to get creative on how to be a leader in these challenging times. Perhaps you have something already in place, and you want to start intentionally thinking about these groups as your sounding board or maybe there's something that you want to consider putting in place. You have your colleagues, and perhaps some teams that are already coming together of your colleagues. You could consider having a work buddy or work partner, where you informally check in with each other and you're there for each other to problem solve with what's going on. You could consider a mentor formal or informally. For some, leaders are even hiring coaches to help them and have someone objective that can just help them to manage their way through being a leader in this moment in time. The next thing I want to ask you is do you have support for you as a human? Do you have support in your personal life we talked about having support in your professional life, but making sure you also have support in your personal life. And just checking in with yourself to see if you've got that in place or if there's anything you need to need to adjust or create. Or perhaps it's time to reach out to the EAP or to someone to be able to think that through and making sure that you have that support personally as well. Let's talk about some additional strategies of how you can support your team and create a psychologically safe work environment. I'd like to talk about modeling vulnerability. As leaders, one of the things that we can do is, we can model vulnerability and through this we can do things like admit mistakes that we've made, challenges that we're having. You can also talk about how we're doing, of course, all of this in an appropriate way in the work setting not making it all about you. But when we can appropriately model vulnerability, it can open the door for our staff to know that it's okay to talk about making a mistake or challenges that they're having or letting staff know that they can come to you that you have an open door that they can talk to you if they're feeling challenged or overwhelmed or they've made a mistake or whatever it might be. The next thought I have is making sure that as leaders we're validating that employees are going to have a range of emotions and that's just part of being a human. They might not be the emotions that we feel comfortable with or that we want, but people are allowed to have their feelings and so when we announced the change or there's some type of change happening we can just expect that people are going to have feelings around the transition so internally they're going to go through the psychological process in response to this external change they're going to have feelings with that so as leaders, the best we can, to kind of normalize you know the experiences that people are having. You know, yes, this is stressful right now, I know this is an additional change and we weren't counting on it. Normalizing and acknowledging how people are doing and of naming perhaps where they're at. As a leader to it can be helpful to check in with yourself and recognize with the changes that are happening, if you might have any of your own biases around those changes. And notice if they might be filtering the way that you're communicating or thinking about to your staff or the change. For example, say someone is asking you about the ability to work from home, and you have a bias around that people that work from home they're not very productive. Now, if we look at the facts we know research shows that people that work from home can also be very productive, depending on the type of job that they have, if it's appropriate for them to work from home and so then, when you're talking with the staff or you're making a decision, if you have a bias, then that might be swaying the way that you communicate or the decisions that you're making. Notice if that's happening for you with some of the changes that are in front of you in the workplace right now. Prioritizing well-being. It's really helpful for you as a leader to really encourage your staff to prioritize their own well-being to help them have that work life balance. When someone has work life balance they're going to be more productive and for some people they might need some assistance in helping guide about how to create that work life balance. Consider if this is something to talk about with some of your staff and checking in on how they're doing consider if maybe you need to help them re-prioritize their workload so that they don't become burnout in the roles that they're in. As best you can offering flexibility can be really helpful and I know that many leaders have been doing this, since the beginning of the pandemic but things are shifting and changing, and so you might want to check in and see if there are any areas where maybe there needs to be a little bit more flexibility. If you have questions or wondering what's possible around the flexibility, whether that's scheduling or the times of day that the person is working, whatever that might be in your situation and feel free to check with your human resources department and they should be able to provide you with more information around what's appropriate around the flexibility. So earlier, I said we're not going to really focus on the safety aspects but here I want to just touch on it for a moment, so if you have staff or employees that are returning to in person interactions one of the things that you can do is share with your employees how you're going to protect them to identify the specific steps that you're taking, what are the measures that have been put in place to keep staff safe. And then also listen to staff about what their questions or concerns are so you can answer those questions or maybe they're talking about things that you realize Oh, we don't have this piece in place yet and so maybe there's some changes that you want to make or adjustments or maybe it's talking to the leadership group at a higher level about some concerns, to see if you can influence anything at that level. And then letting staff know what happens if people violate the safety rules or policies so letting staff know how you're protecting them. We can also create psychological safety by being really clear and managing expectations that we have about our staff, being realistic about the expectations for staff, sometimes people need a bit more time. Say something's changing in the workplace and when a change happens sometimes productivity will go down because people are trying to adjust and trying to sort out how to do something in a new way and so notice, if you need to give a little bit more flexibility to that and change the expectations temporarily or re prioritize work, whatever that might be needed. Sometimes staff have unrealistic expectations of themselves. Sometimes, it can be us as leaders, but sometimes it can be staff and sometimes they might need some coaching around and talking about their workload and helping them look at different ways to manage that workload and maybe put some things on the back burner for now, but some of your high achievers they might need some assistance, knowing that that's okay for something to go on the back burner, or what would go on the back burner. As a leader, this seems really simple but it's really important it's important to maintain consistency with your staff. Have consistent staff meetings. If you're having one on ones making sure you're consistently doing that. This can be really helpful for staff when there's a lot changing around them staff meetings and one on one check ins those can be the things that are consistent for them so and they may be the only things that are consistent for them when everything else is changing. So, making sure that you're continuing with your check ins, it also gives you an opportunity to listen and hear what concerns people have an address those or validate the person's feelings or whatever might be appropriate in that situation. Celebrating and recognizing efforts right now is really important. People are working so hard with all the stressors they're experiencing. Just doing the basic job at this point in time when there's so many other stressors in the workplace and personally and in the world, it can be really difficult, so increasing your efforts to recognize people. What they're doing, their efforts, their daily wins that could be during staff meetings, check ins, emails, newsletters whatever it might be and combination of those things, most likely would be great to help encourage people so consider what can you do can continue to recognize and encourage your staff during these challenging times. The next thing I want to talk about is focusing on team building, I think this is a really key area right now. We have been physically distanced for a long time now and we're working in this new way and people have, in general, had less social interactions and so many people might be experiencing kind of an increase in anxiety and stress around communication with one another. And so I really suggest considering, including more team building. It doesn't have to be something formal, it doesn't have to be something that you pay a lot of money. I'm actually thinking about things that don't cost money, that are just integrated into the work week and that might be thinking about it as ways to connect each other. There's a lot of differences in opinions differences, in values, perspectives, so many different reasons that team building could be really helpful right now so ways that we can connect get people connected to one another, can be really helpful. So some thoughts around that or you could just in your staff meetings do things like share accomplishments in the last week or since the pandemic started or people could share an urgent task that they have on their plate right now and then that can help other people understand, maybe some of the pressures that that person is under. You can do group check ins where it's not about work necessarily it's just about how are you doing and then people can talk about how they're doing personally, professionally whatever feels right for them, of course, not pressuring people to talk about their feelings, but opening the door. So there's a lot of ways, you can do informal and formal team building activities, and this can strengthen social connections and interactions in your team. At the end of this presentation I’ve included resources and, within that I've included some links that will take you to some websites that have some possible team building activities, you could consider. And they're very simple and easy to do so I'll point that out when we get to that section. The next thing to think about with creating psychological safety is communication. Communication is key, when there has been a lot of change when we're going through some people are moving through a transition. So the reason communication is so important is because people are seeking information when they're experiencing a change, it can be very grounding and reassuring to hear to get more information, at the same time, if somebody is feeling overwhelmed by the change it's difficult for them to hear and rate retain what you're saying. So as a leader what it's important to do is to communicate often more often than you think you need to, communicate what you know, communicate what you don't know you know. Right now I'm not sure Sally about the answer to the question that you've asked, but then you can communicate when you can get back to them and tell them more information and sometimes you might not have more information later, but you can let them know when you'll check back in with them and let them know if you do have more information. When we're communicating one of the things you could include in your communication are what I call anchors. When you think about a boat on the water and an anchor is what's holding it what's grounding it. And so anchors can be things such as your goals, your organization mission, your values, who you're serving. You're still serving students, community members, constituents whoever it might be. Anchors can be policies, procedures, processes. As a leader, you can talk about these anchors and integrate that into what you're talking about. Yeah we're going through this change, and while we're going through this change we're still serving students. Now you as a leader, can also be an anchor you can be a calm in the storm. And this is why I, in the beginning, talked about how are you doing, because how you're doing does impact your staff. People are looking towards you as a leader. And you can be the anchor in the storm by being consistent in holding meetings, by being present, by communicating and providing information by being there for your staff. One other thing that I want to talk around about communication is rumor control. So, first of all I think it's important to just realize that there are going to be rumors. This is just what happens as humans. When people don't have information they're going to fill in the information going to create the information. And so what you can do is just one expect that there will be rumors. You can be proactive, you could ask people, ask your staff, about what concerns that they have, or what questions that they have and then you can put together a Frequently Asked Questions email or document and just address any questions or concerns that people might have and give them the answers as best you can or let them know that at this time, you don't know the answer to this question that people have. And then communicate that in as many ways, as you can and could be you know verbally during staff meetings, it could be, through email, it could be through a newsletter and multiple other ways and combination of ways, so that can help with the rumor control and then, if more rumors come up then it's just another an updated email with additional information. Alright, so towards the beginning of this webinar I talked about how we are going to come back to this transition model. Now I've talked about a lot of information during this webinar and you might be feeling that oh there's a lot of information here, and you might be looking for an anchor as a leader yourself. Something to ground you and help you in this challenging time and I want to offer this transition model as a map that you can use to help ground you, can be an anchor for you, so let me explain how that can work. So as an employee comes to you, whether it's one person or you're thinking of your team as they're in front of you, you can think to yourself, where might they be on this transition model, around this change. So there's an external change that's happening in the workplace now you're wondering, being curious, where are your staff internally. What's going on for them internally, where are they at with the psychological process that they're going through in response to this change. Now if you find that the person or group in front of you you're noticing Okay, they seem to be in the endings phase they seem to be a bit upset, experiencing a lot of different types of losses. You may be wondering what can I do as a leader well if you come back to this transition model, you can see that there's three things you can do as a leader. One is when people are in endings it's really helpful to validate their feelings. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but to validate what their experience. What they're experiencing and what their feelings are. Provide empathy, yeah this has this has been a difficult change and really seeing that this has been a difficult change. Well, you can also do is begin to create a bit of a vision of what it's going to be like, on the other side of the change, so you can start as best you can to help employees see what it might look like when you're in the moving forward phase, just a little bit of what that might be, helpful to help ground someone to know that it's not always going to feel like this or there might be some other type of vision around the change that you can help your staff understand a little bit more. If you have staff coming to you and you're finding out there in the neutral zone, feeling a lot of chaos and uncertainty, they're feeling like the ground underneath them is moving. What you can do as a leader is you can provide information, you can communicate to them and provide whatever information, you can. The other thing that you can do is you can put in place plans and structures to help hold your staff during this time, when they're feeling a lot of upheaval. Now these might be temporary plans or structures and you can let people know these are temporary, but they can help, they can be grounding for your employees. Now, if you have staff in front of you and they're in the moving forward phase around the change your job is not over. And what you can do as a leader is you can help people understand what their role is and what other people's roles are. Often, when there's a change that's happened people's roles have shifted or changed, and so, sometimes we forget that we need to communicate that and talk about that so everybody has a clear understanding of what the roles are in this new place. You can help people understand how to participate in this new place that you're in with this change. And how do they participate in this and then of course the recognizing and celebrating the wins, the hard work that people have put in around this change, is really helpful and encouraging for people and encouraging them for whatever next change might be down the road. So as a leader you have the opportunity to create this environment in your work team this psychologically safe work environment by using some of these strategies and supporting your staff and your employees. If you're feeling that I'm still wanting some additional support, I want to let you know the supports that we can offer for you through the Washington state EAP but also beyond that, as well, so let me talk about that. So if you are part of the Washington State employee assistance program network we provide free and confidential counseling. Not only for you, but also for your household family members that are over the age of 18 they can also access, our services. Now, if you have a child or a teen at home and you're wanting some assistance with that we can help you with that too the process is just a little bit different. So what you would do is reach out to us at the EAP. I'll provide the contact information in just a little bit you would reach out to us and you would as the adult caregiver, we would meet with you, without the child or the teen present and we would talk about how you're being impacted, how the families being impacted resources for the age and specialty that's needed for your child or your teen, and resources in the community. We have expert professionals who offer caring respectful and culturally relevant care and so I'll talk about how to connect with us in just a moment, but you can talk to us about work or personal issues or you can let your staff know that we are here for them. Now, as a leader, we have an additional service that's for you we have organizational consultation, and this is for supervisors, leaders, HR professionals. This is short term consultation that we can offer to you, and perhaps you're needing some coaching right now around what to do with your work team, perhaps there's some conflict happening or as you're moving into this new work life you're wanting to have a thought partner to help you think through how you might manage some stressors that are happening on your team, or maybe you have someone on your team that you're concerned about their mental health or substance use, so you can reach out to us for that as well. And we have expert professionals that have experienced and knowledge in working with the public sector, as well as higher education. And, and we have knowledge in a variety of topics such as anger management, suicide, trauma, organizational management, substance misuse, domestic violence and many other areas. We also have our website, and so you can go to our website at eap.wa.gov and on there you'll see a wealth of information. We have guides that you can download, we have other on demand webinars, we have additional resources and information. You can subscribe to our EAP newsletter by going to this web page so lots of information to look at there and then many organizations have this additional EAP benefit which is this work life benefit, and in order to access this benefit you go to eap.wa.gov/worklife, all one word. And if you're not sure if you have access to this additional benefit feel free to connect with your human resources representative. And they'll be able to let you know if you have this additional benefit and what your organizational code is because you need a code to access this website, and when you do, you have access to a web page with thousands of articles and expert advice for parenting, eldercare, wellness, financial health, workplace issues. It also has a database for childcare, eldercare, pet sitting, dozens of E learnings, webinars and online legal forms there's even a free will maker. Through this additional benefit people can receive legal assistance and financial consultation. So there's a lot more, we could talk about this if you'd like to learn more about this benefit, you can go to our website and there's a short orientation to this website so you can find this on demand video by going to eap.wa.gov and click on webinars and then you'll see one of the on demand webinars will be around the work life resources website. So, if you would like to connect with us for organizational consultation, for counseling services or have other questions feel free to give us a call at 877-313-4455 or visit us at our website eap.wa.gov. I wanted to let you know that when you download a copy of this presentation, if you'd like to do that, I've added some additional pages here with links that will take you to additional resources. So again if you'd like to download a copy of this presentation you go the eap.wa.gov and click on webinars, look for the title of this presentation and below that you'll see a link to a copy of the presentation slides. The Department of Enterprise services, they offer classes if you'd like to learn more about building psychological safety on your teams, or they have a remote and hybrid teams class that they're developing and so, once you download this presentation you'll be able to click on the links here and you'll see some of those course descriptions. If you have questions, you can see, an email address that you can contact. As promised, there are these resource slides. You can see I've put some asterisks by the websites that have team building activities that you can take a look at if you'd like to get some other ideas around team building activities. Also I've included links to psychological safety assessments, so you can do an assessment on how you perceive that your team is doing around psychological safety. It can give you some ideas around other things that you could also do to make some shifts or changes if you'd like. And on this page it also includes additional team building links that you can access and I've included a slide here with just some general resources that might be helpful in working with your staff. And then of course the references from this presentation. So we have reached the end of this webinar and I just again want to remind you that you can always give us a call at 877-313-4455 or visit us on our website at eap.wa.gov. Thank you so much for joining today, and I wish you a good day.