You don’t have to fly the plane: The impact of survival mode on our decision making

Words by Rob Bravo

For the last 20-or-so months, our threat detection system has been on high alert. Because of the pandemic, we’ve got little-to-no tolerance to distress and difficult situations. And we haven’t yet recovered because we’re in afterburn.

Afterburn is when someone emerges from a period of drastic change or trauma, and they’re emotionally hungover. It’s painful, and difficult, and challenging – and it’s what we’re going through as a society.

But how is it affecting your business?

Are ‘survival’ decisions taking over your business?

When we make a decision, we have the choice to react or to respond. Right now, we’re in a reactive place: we feel out of control and stressed, so we make immediate decisions. Survival decisions.

But it’s key to remember there’s a space between reaction and response. And in that space, we have the opportunity to make proportionate decisions. The opportunity to think about our plans for the upcoming week and whether half a tank of petrol is enough – rather than the knee-jerk reaction to fill up.

Afterburn, and its long-term effect on mental health, is something you need to closely monitor in your organisation. Because when someone’s mental health spirals, their ability to give a proportionate response lessens. And decisions made in survival mode – reactive and immediate – are rarely the best ones.

It’s one thing to sit in a queue for an hour while panic-buying petrol: that’s just affecting you. But at work, an individual’s decision can impact many people. What happens if someone makes a reactive decision during the hiring process? What are the consequences of survival mode when budget planning?

So, help your people recover from afterburn – and move your organisation out of the react zone, and into the respond zone. There’s plenty you can do: from prioritising care in the workplace to creating safe spaces to discuss issues.

But to get started, here are three changes you can make in the workplace:

Encourage time without notifications

At the start of the pandemic, one of my coachees switched on notifications from BBC News. But the app threw up so many alerts that she got trapped in a cycle of needing to know the latest news headline.

When you’re being bombarded by notifications and updates and changes, it’s hard to focus on your response. Instead, you get panicked into immediate action.

And often, as the saying goes, that hasty decision isn’t the right one.

So, encourage your teams to turn off their notifications. Not just for their newsfeeds either: emails, Slack, Teams – all of it. Start off with an hour a day, or on Friday afternoons.

Not only will this remind people the world won’t end if they don’t reply to that email instantly, but it gives them the chance to get some deep work done. And if this is organisation-wide (or, at the very least, department-wide), employees will feel able to commit.

Likewise, encourage digital detoxes.

Detoxing for a week or two can help bring down levels of cortisol – the stress hormone – in our bloodstream. When that runs rampant through our veins, it limits our ability to think well or think clearly. A short break then makes it easier to respond, rather than to react.

Adopt work-life choice rather than work-life balance

I often tell my coachees not to strive for work-life balance. Instead, we should own a work-life choice, recognising there are consequences of the choices we make.

It’s a subtle but empowering switch, and helps people feel more in control of their world, rather than letting external events control them.

For example, maybe Jane from Accounts knows she has a busy week coming up, so makes an active choice to work an hour extra every day. Instead of framing this as ‘failing’ to keep her work-life balance in check, she owns the decision of choosing to work late. 

Mental health starts to spiral when circumstances control us. And taking back agency is a solid step towards protecting ourselves.

Understand responsibilities at work

A colleague once explained that her fear of flying came down to a lack of control: she wouldn’t be able to help if there was a problem with the plane.

And here’s the thing: no one’s going to ask you to fly the plane. No one’s going to ask you to solve the shortage of HGV drivers, or to fix import issues with the EU.

In the workplace, make sure your people have control and autonomy over what they do. When people feel over-faced, those feelings of helplessness and stress erode resilience and send them straight back into that state of reactive decision-making.

Save hyper-vigilance for the zombie films

There’s a real sense of dis-ease in society at the moment, and it’s not good for anyone’s mental health. And it will take time for us to rest, recover, and rejuvenate.

But adopting the three practices above will give your teams the control they need to protect their mental health and to work sustainably – without fear of crashing the plane.

Rob Bravo is the coaching director and head of wellbeing at Talking Talent, which helps organisations accelerate advancement for under-represented talent.