Infinite Raven

Coaching & Consultancy

The Raven Recovers: Joy, Trust and Capacity

7–11 minutes

I’ve been nursing a poorly dog for months and my engagement is at a low ebb. In this post, I use my experience now and in the past to demonstrate how to use Kahn’s three elements of engagement – meaning, psychological safety and availability (Kahn, 1990), to make good decisions when you are feeling tired and emotional. I introduce my version of the elements – joy, trust and capacity – and explain why you shouldn’t confuse a change in capacity with a change of heart. Don’t rush to resign or change your dreams. The what and the why of your work may still be as solid and compelling as they ever were. It is the how, when and where that might need to be rethought.

The dog ate my homework

The last time I wrote here, I talked about why this blog matters to me and how writing keeps the Raven part of my brain happy while I slowly build a nest for myself in a different field. Then Watson, my dog, became seriously ill.

He had a high-grade tumour removed. The surgery went well, but the aftermath did not feel like “after”. It became months of wound management, infections, daily or near-daily vet visits, constant vigilance, and a smouldering tightness in my neck made worse by nights on the sofa.

At the same time, my mortgage-job has built new storeys of pressure on what was already a high-flow workload. Volume is unending, clients are getting dimmer and more demanding at the same time, and hiring has become an unattainable dream rather than a planned rescue.

There have been days when I drove to the vet, came home, worked until late evening to make up hours, slept, and repeated. I ploughed the hours with a rusty brain, and had nothing to show for it except a changing calendar.

The Raven became a nagging absence that has come to represent all the wishes and dreams that I feel I put aside over the years. I did it wilfully, numbly, arrogantly; always thinking that there would be more time.

But time is not the limiting factor – it’s capacity.

The end of the road

Before Watson got sick, I was stressed but not burnt out; I was tired but not exhausted; I was distracted but not absent. Then my life cracked open. I ran out of fuel, and then ran out of road.

William Kahn, in his 1990 paper on engagement, describes three elements that enable people to bring themselves fully and authentically to their work: meaning, safety and availability (Kahn, 1990). Or as I like to think of them: joy, trust and capacity.

  • Joy – This job rewards me
  • Trust – I feel secure and accepted
  • Capacity – I can do this

Capacity (what Kahn called availability) is about having enough physical, emotional and cognitive resources. During Watson’s recovery, my availability went to zero. It was not that I had stopped caring about my work, or about my Chartership, my future or this blog. It’s not that I am lacking in support. There’s just nothing left in the tank right now.

Past choices

This was not the first time I found myself by the side of the road, my mental and emotional tanks dry. I can think of two other times in my career when life got complicated and I came to a standstill.

I can see the pattern now, with my bird’s-eye view. General stress, increasing workload, accumulating pressure, background health or life stuff, then one big out-of-nowhere boondoggle that’s the last straw. In both cases, I left my job after grimly trying for months to make things go back to how they were before.

  • I remember thinking: “If I had a different job, I would be able to handle this.”
  • I remember thinking: “It’s broken. It’s ruined.”
  • I remember thinking: “This obviously isn’t the right job for me.”

So I left. At the time it felt like clarity and courage.

Looking back, I can see a more complicated picture. I see a woman who went through a series of events which drained and distracted her. I see that it was easier to put the blame on work than to look at the constellation of pressures that were crushing me. Work is a problem that can be fixed, after all.

The nuclear option

In the years that followed the COVID pandemic, the number of people quitting their jobs went up dramatically (Demirkaya, 2022; Jiskrova, 2022). Anthony Klotz, an organisational psychologist who specialises in organisational behaviour, called it the Great Resignation (World Economic Forum, 2021). See, for example, a BBC interview in which Klotz talks about the wave of people who felt newly empowered to quit because it no longer felt taboo when so many others were doing the same (Morgan, 2023). But as I tell my daughter: ‘just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should’.

At the time I left the two jobs I mentioned above, I thought I was solving my problems.

In one of the cases I mentioned, I got it right. By the time I left, my capacity was completely drained, but there were other problems too. The culture was systemically toxic and the people were unforgiving. The job didn’t give me joy or meaning, and I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone.

When I left the other job, I made a big mistake. After an extended period of compassionate leave, I went back to work and tried to fill the same shoes I had been wearing when I had left. Senior management understood what I did not – that I was a different person now. They tried to give me different projects, and change my focus, and I saw it as rejection.

I decided that my disengagement was terminal, associating my exhaustion with my role. But looking back, the work that I did at that company actually gave me a great deal of joy. And looking back, I remember senior executives who trusted and respected me.

I walked away from a role and a career path that might have been repairable, because I could not separate “I cannot do this right now” from “I must never have been meant to do this at all”.

I applied the ‘affect heuristic’, leaning into my feelings and making big judgements with little honest reflection about the real cause of my problems. (Go read Slovic et al (2022) to find out more about the affect heuristic).

I thought my heart was no longer in it – but really I was just running on empty.

There is a concept in addiction and recovery circles called ‘doing a geographic’. It is based on the belief that if you move house, change city, switch jobs, relocate your life, your problems will magically resolve. It’s easy to apply this to work; quit your job and your problems will go away, go into a new field and you’ll be a new shiny person.

You take yourself with you, though.

My problems didn’t go away when I left that job. They simmered and festered for a few more years and the knock-on effects of walking away then have led to the huge task I have now, rebuilding part of the identity I lost. It is a big source of personal regret for me.

Checking the road

Kahn’s three conditions of engagement are useful yardsticks to help us understand whether the road we have chosen continues past our current struggles.

I’ve used the framework to guide a little self-coaching, so you can see how it might work:

  • Joy: My mortgage-job still gives me joy. I am challenged and capable, and the bills are paid. The Raven is waiting for me when I have more bandwidth, and continues to strike a spark in my mind. So that’s good, both of them score on the joy factor.
  • Trust: I have begun to talk with my mortgage-job boss about different ways of working, distribution of tasks, and how to shape my role so it fits the tired person I am right now rather than the more energised person I was before Watson’s surgery. I am supported and heard. That’s a big tick. The Raven also supports me, by giving me a place to be authentic and expressive.
  • Capacity: I’ve just come through six months of dog-pocalypse while being pummelled by long hours. Watson is much better. The bandages are gone. The daily vet visits have stopped. I’m exhausted and still work too hard. I feel guilty and frustrated that I’m not posting to my blog more often. So my capacity is low. But I’ve noticed it and I’m looking for ways to recover and reset.

Conclusion: Both sides of my working coin are still right for me. Yes I’m disengaged, but it’s not fatal. The tank is empty but the road I’m on is still the right one. And it’s waiting for me when I get myself back on my feet again.

Recommendation: Hang in there. Write when you can. Work what works.

Why not have a look at your own levels of joy, trust and capacity and see how you are engaging with your working world right now? Let me and Watson know how you get on in the comments below.

I’m off to curl up with a cup of tea.

References

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