Have you been hijacked from your work? Are you sitting in your chair right now looking like you are working, and really you have just disengaged? We all get hijacked from our work. We start to daydream, our thoughts shift to our responsibilities at home, we feel stressed and check out, or maybe we even go into a meeting with a plan to not participate so we can relax a bit.
As a leader, you get to be the model of engagement for your employees, and that means knowing how to pull yourself back to the present moment and get back in the game. Luckily there are a number of ways you can reconnect and get back to kicking you-know-what.
Top Ways to Re-Engage at Work
- Be aware. Check in occasionally to discover if you have checked out. Building an awareness creates the necessary mindset for engagement.
- Change your state. If you are sitting, stand up. Take a walk, get a breath of fresh air. The movement will bring you back to the now moment.
- If outside stressors are taking up too much of your attention keep a pen and paper notebook handy to physically write down anything that is taking your attention away. Once it has been recorded your mind can relax and you can get back to work.
- Use your senses. Look around you and see what is in your present moment. Name everything out loud. Have something handy to smell – fresh lemons are amazing for this, yet anything that can immediately connect you to this moment works. Go get a piece of ice and put it in your hand. Have a stress ball handy that has lots of nodules and bumps. The key is to get your brain to the same place as your body. Gathering sensory input is a shortcut to the system.
- Know if you have a pattern. If you are disengaging frequently as a leader of your company then you are not getting your basic needs met. It’s time to discover what need isn’t being fulfilled and find a way to meet it. If you are an employee or you see that employees are not engaged there is a 50% chance it is a problem with a manager. If this is the case, take action. Help your employee out or seek out a way to work better. If it isn’t the manager then senior leadership probably isn’t offering a steady path and employees simply don’t trust the team to lead.
