3  Equipping yourself to support the wellbeing of others

Supporting workplace wellbeing can be rewarding and motivating. However, it can also be challenging, draining and difficult. For example, it is important to consider your own boundaries to ensure that you are not being drawn into providing individual or emotional support which is out of the scope of your wellbeing-related work. It is also important that you are provided with appropriate resources to enable you to do your role, as well as signal to others the scope and remit of your wellbeing work. This should include allocated time, budget and the provision of appropriate training and support. If you do not currently have these, you should consider whether you are able to negotiate more resources, training and support. If this is not possible, it is important to pause and question whether you can and should undertake the wellbeing-related role you are being asked to perform.

Next, go to 3.1  Developing emotional competence and professional resilience.

To support others, it is important to develop specific skills. Many of these are covered in Fit for Law 1 Managing and understanding yourself and Fit for Law 2 Working with others.

The following video emphasises the importance of emotional competence and professional resilience within workplaces.

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Transcript: Video 3  Emotional competence and professional resilience

MATHIJS:

Emotional competence is, of course, really important. A lot of the time-- and we can assume that all adults are going to be emotionally competent at all times and will be really skilful at regulating their emotions. But that's actually really quite difficult to do, especially when workplaces can get very stressful, and it can get really difficult to do that, especially when under pressure.

RAJ:

Yeah. So I think emotional competence is about managing your emotions, understanding your emotions, recognising them, and sort of balance that out against the challenges in the environment. And with professional resilience, I think that's a term that people are hearing a lot about now, resilience and thinking about surviving and thriving. But I think that resilience is interesting because it's dynamic. So being resilient might mean changing, adapting to your environment and basically dealing with the challenges, and reflecting that back and being resilient about bouncing back.

MATHIJS:

Bouncing back can be quite tough to do, especially during rough times at work. And I think in part it's recognising that we will have ebbs and flows, times when we'll feel most on top of our emotions, and regulating that at work, and times when I guess our resilience will be stretched and stressed.

RAJ:

Yeah, I think it's really important for employers to know that it's not just important for individuals within the firm, but it has implications for the firm as a whole, how your employees are doing emotionally and how they are resilience-wise. It has implications for their relationships with clients and coworkers, because people that can regulate their emotions really well, they can develop better relationships with clients and coworkers, and they can strengthen bonds, and they can diffuse difficult or emotional situations a bit better. And that's one of the benefits for employers.

MATHIJS:

Yeah, and that skill development is so important in terms of emotional competence, because people can have periods where they might do something that's not seen as appropriate, like laughing at the wrong time, or they might be tearful at a time when that's not appropriate. Or they could have an angry outburst. And if people have the skills to manage those strong emotions, they can avoid, I guess, times that would be really awkward and challenging at work and can potentially make it more difficult for everyone in the workplace.

RAJ:

Yeah, I agree. And I think reflecting on these, if individuals really struggle to manage their emotions, it has implications for the employers because they're more likely to find work unrewarding. They may be more likely to leave the profession actually, because it's constantly stressing them out and they can't respond to it. And so it's probably cost effective to look at emotional competence and resiliency. And also, I think a lot of people will know that if you can't really manage your emotions, that can lead to professional burnout, which also has implications for managing staff, lots of staff having sickness and burnout.

MATHIJS:

Which is not good for the firm because you're going to lose talent. You're going to have sick days when you don't want to have sick days. And you're just going to have staff that aren't going to work at their optimum.

RAJ:

Yeah. So I think that competence and resilience is important for the individuals, but also at the higher levels within the firms.

End transcript: Video 3  Emotional competence and professional resilience

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Video 3  Emotional competence and professional resilience

This section highlights some specific skills which are particularly important when you are involved in supporting workplace wellbeing. The two skills that are focused on are cultivating psychological detachment from work and assertiveness. Each of these have been found to shield legal professionals from work overload stressors. This is hypothesised to be due to developing the individual’s ability to manage and respond to their workload appropriately and with a view to their own capacities.

Read about psychological detachment and assertiveness below.

Building up relationships and connections across your workplace is likely to be key to supporting workplace wellbeing effectively. Aspects of this highlighted by Fit for Law interviewees included practising active listening, understanding differing personalities, learning and sharing a little about personal lives, and being empathetic.

The following video provides more information on empathy and how it differs from sympathy. The references to clients also apply to working with colleagues.

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Transcript: Video 4  The value of empathy

RAJ:

Empathy is about understanding another person's perspective, emotions, or experiences. It's useful in the workplace because it helps us develop relationships with people. And in the legal workplace, that will be developing client relationships and co-worker relationships.

People with good emotional regulation can use empathy to strengthen bonds, and also defuse difficult emotional situations, which will be helpful with clients, too. Research also shows that if you have an empathetic manner with clients, that they're more trusting of you and more willing to share information.

There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy comes from a perspective of caring. And it can be defined as concern for another person's wellbeing or welfare in the face of a threat or obstacle. But empathy is about understanding and recognising another person's experience or perspective. And you're not required to feel the same feelings as them.

If you experience a lot of sympathy in your role, it's important to note that that's not that productive for you or the client and it can contribute to burnout. So it's important to note that you should be working within your professional role and thinking about how you can make a positive difference to someone using your training. And that's legal. And you're not there to be their therapist or friend, so just focusing on your professional role.

It's also important to note that our feelings, our empathy, our detachment, our sympathy will change over time. This is known as professional desensitisation. So materials and cases and clients and encounters that we experience, we may not have the same reactions as we get more experience in our role. And we may become desensitised to them. So if you're finding something particularly difficult, the light at the end of the tunnel is it may not always be that way.

However, it's also important to note that if you have a lot of experience in your role, then you may be desensitised to something that is very difficult for the client. And so you have to be aware that you have to offer that empathy, because they may not know that you've experienced this many, many times and you've heard this story. So you have to take note of that.

End transcript: Video 4  The value of empathy

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Video 4  The value of empathy

Whether you consciously choose to do this or not, it is likely that your own behaviours and actions at work will influence those of others. This is particularly the case if others are aware that you are involved in wellbeing work and/or you are in a senior position. The following video emphasises the importance of modelling healthy behaviours in the workplace.

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Transcript: Video 5  The advantage of being a role model

MATHIJS:

And in the research that's been conducted in the field, it looks like a lot of that pressure comes from the top. It is this management team. It's the leadership that I guess, in some ways, might inadvertently be setting up expectations that can be quite challenging and potentially unhealthy. So just the advantage of being a role model in terms of taking a lunch break or having some time off is really important for all employees to see.

RAJ:

I totally agree with you. I think that if you want to think about practical ways to develop a healthy workplace, maybe look at the messages that are being sent out by management and think about changing that. And hopefully, that will ripple out throughout the organisation in a positive way.

MATHIJS:

Because just hours of sitting in a seat doesn't necessarily mean that people are being maximally productive, and it's productivity and quality work that matters the most.

End transcript: Video 5  The advantage of being a role model

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Video 5  The advantage of being a role model

This can be challenging as, if your actions do not align with your words, you may lose credibility. For example, imagine a Wellbeing Champion who frequently tells people they should be utilising their annual leave and switching off from work. If that Champion then proceeds to join meetings from a hotel room on their holiday, this is likely to discredit their advice and signals it is impractical or impossible to follow even for them. The people around them will likely copy their actions instead.

At the same time, being a role model provides you with a valuable opportunity to demonstrate how to put healthy working practices into action. This can be as simple as acting courteously (saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’) as well as modelling healthy working patterns, collegiate behaviour and appropriate self-care.

If you are unsure whether you are acting as a positive role model, it might be useful to have some one-to-one conversations with colleagues who you work closely with to ask for their impressions and feedback.

It is vital to prioritise your own wellbeing, otherwise you will not have the mental or physical resources to support others and your workplace. While wellbeing should not be over-individualised, practising good self-care (eating well, getting enough sleep, having regular exercise, time outdoors and taking breaks) is important.

If you do not put these routines and practices in place, you risk becoming overwhelmed and exhausted. If you find that certain routines and practices are no longer working for you, it is important to spend some time thinking about other ways you can look after your wellbeing. For example, it may be that you used to visit the gym every night after work. If you have now acquired other demands, this may no longer be possible. However, it may be that you can still attend two or three times a week and build in exercise in a different way on other days, such as getting off the bus or train a stop earlier to walk to work.

Next, go to 4  What does a well legal workplace look like?