Opinion

Glass

HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY?

COVID-19 has brought the topic of health and well-being to the forefront like never before. But rather than distinguishing between work and play or young and old, the notion of wellness is all about striking a balance, says Lyreco Germany’s Falko Köhler

Special Issue VENDOR SPECIAL

The origin of happiness is one of the most personal and individual things to contemplate and discover. And often, there is a deep interdependency between the personal, social and work setting.

Over the past ten years, I’ve had the opportunity to experience a couple of entirely diverse working universes and cultures. I started my career in professional sports and then joined Lyreco. All the while, my social environment remained pretty much the same.

For me, and with this background in mind, there are two major points when it comes to well-being:

• There is no silver bullet to achieving a mindset of true ‘well-being’. • Even though it is most definitely a balancing exercise, it’s not about private versus working life, mental versus physical health, etc. Instead, it’s more about deciding what you like to do and what you don’t like to do. The aim should be to reach a state of mind where there’s more on the

“I like” than on the “I don’t like” side, and to build up resilience to overcome negative events more easily and focus on the good stuff in life.

My current remit is to establish a new dimension of the customer experience for Lyreco Germany and set a benchmark for the industry. The team around me is vital in this task and I see it as part of my job to make this team successful. After all, it’s much easier to succeed when you’re happy.

LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES

Broadly speaking, it is up to an organisation’s leadership to create the framework for a positive working culture. Two key elements are crucial here in my opinion – among a long list of other things to work on. First, leaders should enable everybody to have a true sense of value creation – for themselves, the team and the company as a whole. Goals are as important as the specific tasks you allocate to individuals to achieve them. Employees need to have a good perception of what they’re doing and strive to achieve goals – it’s absolutely vital.

Coming from professional sports, I can guarantee that hours and hours of practice and doing what you love doing are not nearly as satisfying as the tantalising promise of success when you train for long-awaited competitions.

At Lyreco specifically, I learned this during the implementation of our global digital transformation initiative. It’s not enough to have people working on cool projects with many fun tasks. At some point, they will start to get tired and frustrated. Devising a clear, long-term strategy with desirable goals and then establishing a connection between individuals and their daily jobs will ensure a positive perception and also generate a lot of resilience for the hurdles ahead. Second, there needs to be a lot of room for personality and emotion, and less focus on some arbitrary distinction between ‘business’ and ‘pleasure’. Again, it’s about likes and dislikes

and I would argue that much of what is typically regarded as a ‘business need’ as opposed to a ‘private need’ should be banished. Likes and dislikes are not the same every day – they are often influenced by our mood, physical health or even the weather.

Diversity in a team can be a real simplifier and I’m specifically referring to generation diversity in this instance. My experience is that the older generation has largely been taught and trained to separate work from play – emotionally and practically. Younger generations, on the other hand, are more open about their feelings – and this includes the work environment.

The latter creates room for likes and dislikes, failure and success, frustration and fun, all of which need to be well balanced and also accepted. Diversity – in a broader sense and away from just generational aspects – further helps to generate different views on the same topic. This increases the chances of perceiving opinions from an opportunity, not just a problem, point of view in your team.

And, by the way, for me the concept of sharing is the default definition of the word ‘team’. I’ve never understood the narrow-minded interpretation by some companies whereby being part of a team is akin to being pigeonholed to the extent where everyone does ‘the same stuff’. It’s so wrong and in fact quite offensive.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Aside from leadership duties, there are also individual responsibilities in terms of personal health and well-being. Again, I highlight two points that strike me as important. First, take care of yourself: listen to your body, work smartly and sensibly, and be transparent about how you feel. This is how you enable the people around you to support you, guide you and celebrate with you. Second, compensate. After a long week of mental work – having meetings, concepting, workshopping, projecting, etc – you need to switch to something else. For me, this means taking out my bike and going for long rides at the weekend, or going for a night-long board game session with family and friends.

But the concept of compensation also needs to be realised in daily life. Balance again is the clue. After five days of pasta, you need a salad. After three weekends of family birthdays, you need a weekend to yourself. And after three days of workshops, you need a week of ‘solo focus work’. It’s not rocket science and quite simple: monotony of any kind is unhealthy.

Special Issue HEALTH & WELL-BEING Overall, I apply some basic rules to my day – and I don’t mean only the working day: don’t finish the day with something you don’t like doing, don’t plan out more than 50% of your time, get lots of sleep and go to the office at least once a week. Obviously, the last rule was triggered by the pandemic which, of course, has actually pushed the topic of health and well-being to the forefront in the first place. And it’s easy to see why, just do VENDOR SPECIAL Special Issue the math: if you reduce the number of potential activities through restrictions, you will kill some possibilities for compensation. As a result, work feels more stressful. From a personal perspective, my days did not get longer, my work did not get harder and I am still passionate about it. What has changed is that a layer of emotion and personality in meetings, Special Issue VENDOR SPECIAL small talk and even projects is missing. This is why I try to see real people at least once a week at the office. CREATING A POSITIVE FRAMEWORK Circling back to my introductory remark about the origin of happiness being very individual, I would conclude that everybody likes and dislikes different things depending on many factors. But as a leader, you can set up some mechanisms to help people perceive more things as positive and fewer as negative. It’s something companies can learn from professional sports or even the relationship between a parent and a child – let’s focus on succeeding together in a positive way. And, can I just add: please don’t get the idea of compensation wrong – a bowl of fruit is not making up for anything, certainly not bad working processes and practices. As an individual, meanwhile, you have to take care of yourself and make sure that the glass is half full more often than it is half empty.

As a leader, you can set up some mechanisms to help people perceive more things as positive and fewer as negative