My communications coach used to tell me never to open a conversation talking about the weather. It’s not interesting enough, and it doesn’t make a connection. I’ve taken that as a challenge for years, but I’m British, so perhaps it’s in my DNA to reach for weather anyway, and we’ve certainly had a lot of it recently. It’s hard not to make it the talking point.
Holiday - what I actually remember
I looked forward to lying in the sun with a book for weeks before this year’s holiday. To pause, feel the warmth beating down on my skin, the stresses of the day-to-day melting away, losing myself in a story. That was the dream, but by the end of it, I was exhausted.
We talk about escaping to the sun. This year, as was perhaps the case for many, I found myself simply trying to escape from it.
I love slowing down and sunbathing. I equally like to be active, to get outside. But 40 degrees with no air conditioning to punctuate the heat doesn’t leave you able to do much of either. A dip in the pool, when there was one nearby wasn’t relaxation, it was survival and recovery. I struggled. I was tired and a little bored. Everything I’d expected from the holiday was there but it was different: sun, sand, water, sport, eating out, all of it in reach. What actually made the memories this year however, was the absence of things I hadn’t thought I would crave: fresh air, a cool bedroom, a full night’s sleep, a gentle breeze, shade.
I’ve travelled to hot places elsewhere in the world and never had the same struggle. The difference isn’t the heat. It’s that those places have infrastructure built as standard for these extremes. Europe, largely, does not. The conditions changed the entire experience, without the content of the holiday itself changing much.
Conditions shape the whole experience
A couple of days in London this week took just as much out of me. Pavements absorbing heat and radiating it back up at you, a tube carriage with no air moving through it, stuck in a tunnel, nowhere obvious to step into and cool down between one thing and the next. I came to love the Elizabeth line for that reason alone. I am more careful when I think about a few days in this city as the slightest sunshine can make the tube unbearable at the best of times. But heatwaves shut things down as an option. The conditions aren’t just a discomfort, they completely take over.
Holidays and busy capitals aren’t the only place this happens. Think about events, festivals, work. The things that shape our whole impression of something and determine whether we come away satisfied or drained, are almost never in the consideration set we started with up front.
The toilet facilities at a festival, or the lack of them, which nobody puts on the ticket and everybody remembers when they’re in short supply or broken. The laptop and phone, or lack thereof, that shape how you work. I was an MS office person, so a move to Google Suite between employers felt like losing an arm. Even a company’s policy on dogs in the office, something which delights some people and makes others dread coming in. None of it is in the job description or the event listing, yet it is pivotal to how we actually feel once we’re there.
Managers are the infrastructure
The manager is a perfect example of this. They shape the culture around every single day at work, long after the offer letter is signed. You apply for a job and get hired for the role, the tasks, the compensation and not the manager. They enter afterwards, and yet are more responsible for your daily experience than almost anything that was in the contract or description. A good manager sees when you’ve stopped contributing and gone quiet. A poor one doesn’t, or does and still says nothing. A good manager tells you what’s actually going on before you have to ask. A poor one lets you struggle. Just like my air conditioning, support is expected and yet you get an absence of it which stifles. The job can be exactly as advertised. But the manager seldom is, because the manager is not often a consideration up front.
We keep treating these conditions, for want of a better word, as separate from the thing itself: the job, and then, off to the side, the culture, the policies, the manager. The holiday, and then, off to the side, the infrastructure. You can’t. They co-exist, yet they are rarely described or considered as such.
The infrastructure was never a support to the experience. It is experience. We only ever notice this however, once an extreme points it out to us.
At work, that extreme has already arrived. I’m not talking heat. It’s the anxiety, the stress, the state of people’s mental health, already at a level organisations were never built to hold, nor was society. This isn’t a future risk to plan for. It’s already here, the way 40 degrees is already here in Europe, and we are treating it as an unfortunate patch of weather to get through. At work, that’s exactly the mistake we keep making with the actual weather.
Leaders can control the temperature
As leaders we can be the cause of the corporate heatwave if left unchecked. For example the relentless pace we could set without pausing to ask if it’s sustainable. The silence we accept in a meeting, assuming agreement instead of calling out what everyone can feel, disagreement. Perhaps even the unpredictability of our own requests, moods or focus, which someone else has to navigate without warning, the way I had to navigate 40 degrees without anywhere to cool down. None of that shows up in a job description either, but it will eventually show up in how someone feels by the end of the week.
But we can also be the providers of the soothing air conditioning. The leader who says the hard thing plainly, respectfully, and as constructive, useful feedback instead of letting people find it out the hard way. The leader who notices when someone’s started to withdraw and asks why, rather than waiting for a resignation letter and a question in an exit interview.
Conditions and infrastructure designed for people as they actually are, not as the job description assumed they’d be. Some leaders have already started building this. Others haven’t started at all, and the gap between the two isn’t really about planning. It’s about whether you’ve noticed the extreme is already there, and taken the time to ask what people actually need, including from you, now.
Build the barometer
I know now what I’d look for before booking that holiday again and I am hopeful that Europe will eventual catch up with provision of air conditioning. I am wiser about the bigger picture and hopeful of the possibilities. What I’m still learning and sharpening on the other hand, is what people look for before they join a team or business I’m leading. The conditions I take for granted, the moods I bring into a room, the things I assume are obvious but I may never actually say. I am, to somebody, the infrastructure. The temperature, the pressure. The question is whether I’ve ever thought of myself that way, and whether I have a leadership barometer to know how people experience me, so can see it coming, regulate myself well enough to avoid becoming somebody else’s extreme. To do this regularly I need to maintain perspective, listening, asking, staying open minded. I must accept that my weather can change, but that I can build the conditions, the infrastructure to enjoy it in all cases, rain and shine.
Look Again this week: Ask yourself what extremes you’ve experienced that took over the thing itself. Then ask, honestly, whether someone might be experiencing exactly that from you?
Have a great week.
This is a sharp distinction, Fiona. Leaders often design policies, meetings, and expectations around the average employee, then wonder why the strongest people begin to disappear into the system. Consistency matters, but too much standardization removes the very judgment and personality that made someone valuable. Before correcting an outlier, ask whether we are seeing a problem or the start of a better way.