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“All managers know that they need to help their employees through challenging times. But almost no manager is prepared for when one of their direct reports announces that he or she has cancer.” – Anne Sugar
Everyone has a story…here’s hers…
- 36 years old
- Stage 3 Invasive Ductal Carcinoma with 6 positive lymph nodes
- 9 surgeries – 16 rounds of chemo – 27 rounds of radiation
- Wife, married for 14 years; Mother to two boys 5 and 7
- COVID – no others permitted in the hospital for appointments or surgeries, dropped at the front door to face it alone
- COVID – no others permitted in chemo clinic – rang the bell with husband and boys watching from a window outside of the chemo clinic building
- Fulltime educator
- Living in Virginia, with extended family living in Texas
- Husband active-duty Air Force Special Warfare Officer with a demanding job at Air Combat Command Headquarters
- Her warrior spirit sparked while her drive and determination became even greater as she fought cancer with her charge: “#FinishStrong”!
How Will you Lead?
As a leader, are you prepared to address adversity with a teammate when she informs you that she has just been diagnosed with breast cancer?
According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 50% of them diagnosed during their working years. For today’s leaders, it’s not “if”, but rather “when”, they will face this situation.
How will you lead? This diagnosis will change the lives of not only the employee, but her family, and her work family. With October designated as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it’s a good topic for leaders reflection.
Leadership Lessons for the Leader
When someone is “put through the paces”, they are being tested or examined to determine their status and to identify gaps. Similarly, when a leader is faced with an employee informing them of her breast cancer diagnosis, they need to put themselves “through the P.A.C.E.S.” to ensure they are doing everything for this direct report, their team, the organization, while not forgetting their mission.
Privacy –
Most important when initially informed of the employee’s situation and throughout her journey is privacy. It was tough enough to come forward to share her diagnosis. Your trust at this point is critical to her as she engages in her own melting pot of emotions. Follow the lead of your employee. If she chooses to share it with the team, then know that it is ok to reach out to show your support. If she doesn’t share, then respect her privacy.
Help your employee to take the lead in making these decisions. As a leader, facilitate this discussion, don’t direct it. Remember that this challenge is the employees. Don’t take control of the situation. In a time when she has no control over so many things, this can be her time to take charge, with your assistance when asked.
Whatever decision is made about notification, it must never be violated. Your team will expect and honor your trust with her. Besides HIPPA laws, this bond and trust will be important moving forward to retain your relationship with her and your team.
Adapt –
Help her to develop a Plan A and Plan B so she can gain comfort about the role she will play moving forward, to assist the team to understand how gaps will be filled, and for customers, if the employee is a key interface. The important word here is “help” vs “do”.
Be prepared for the need to develop a Plan C and Plan D. There will be too many unknowns at the beginning to have everything covered in initial planning, and things are bound to change along the way.
Consider any special accommodations such as a liberal telework policy to meet the needs of the employee, family, and the organization. Allow her to retain “work purpose” while allowing time for “life purpose”. Determine which, if any deliverables should be shifted, and who are the backups for designated key tasks. Identify tasks that can be aligned to this employee that were not included in her scope of duties previously that will benefit the team, while supporting her self-worth.
Care –
One way of caring is to be an advocate. With so many new things coming about quickly, an advocate who can help think through it all may be welcomed. A caring gesture is to offer to walk with her to your organization’s Human Resources to learn of her obligations and to explore the organization’s offers of assistance.
Saying the words that she matters to your organization will resonate for a long time. Tell her that you welcome her continued contributions, but her main job is to heal because you want and need her for the long term.
Caring includes giving her space but keeping her informed and including her in as many things as possible. Include her family and caregiver in your caring.
Empathy –
Emotions may be running rampant for this person with questions about her survivability, concerns for family, financial obligations, fear of medical treatments, and the unknown. Contributing to her realistic yet positive attitude will be helpful for her and your team.
To best understand, consider taking time for your education about breast cancer. As appropriate, this can be shared with the team.
Don’t use the approach “I understand what you are going through”, because you don’t. Even if a survivor, remember that no two cases of cancer are the same and everyone reacts to treatment differently. Acknowledging that you can’t imagine how she is feeling but will try to understand is a far better tactic.
Dignity and self-respect, with a desire to remain a part of the team are important to her. She wants to be held accountable, but in a manner commensurate with her ability to perform her job.
Support –
Support may look very different for each person dealing with an illness such as breast cancer. As the leader, let her team decide what and how they want to provide support. You can assist with guidance, if needed. Participate as a member of the team, and then do your part as her boss.
It’s important that she see you often to underscore that you and your leadership care about her. Your short visits to just show your presence can be a bright spot in her constant stress. Even the most rock solid and organized people, during this disruptive time, may be overwhelmed with emotional and medical concerns spinning through their minds.
Continuous support is essential, breast cancer is not a sprint. Weeks or months into her journey is when a kind text, email, or note will be most welcomed.
Leadership Lessons from a Survivor
Just as we learn and grow by studying successful leaders, we can benefit by learning from breast cancer survivors. These women have displayed the qualities of courage, determination, adaptability, agility, focus, grit, resiliency, and never quit even under the most grueling conditions. Hmmm…. seems like the qualities of those you would want on your team!
Leadership lessons from survivors are powerful and plentiful. Here are a few shared by one during her journey.
Seeing Through the Lens of Others
As a leader, we must take time to “see” through the lens of others to understand things from other’s perspective or vantage point. Does the CEO see things the same as the warehouse loading dock supervisor? Do we see things from our customers’ perspective? Taking the time to view things as others may perceive them, only benefits a leader’s ability to provide for best solutions.
“Nothing prepares you for life after cancer. Before the battle you are scared out of your mind about what’s to come, during the battle your cares go out the window and you will do anything and everything to beat it, and then once you get the “all clear for now message”, you bask in the celebration of just being alive and being momentarily victorious. Then weeks or months later when the adrenaline wears off, you wake up each morning and look into the mirror and see a stranger looking back.
But then I have these moments of clarity like today – my loved ones still see me exactly the same, if not with more pride and admiration. They don’t care what I look like or how I’ve changed. They love me just the way I am and always will. They love that I’m out riding bikes, hiking, chasing them on the playground, collecting shells, and spending time with them. I am so thankful for these special people in my life. They are mine and I’m so very lucky to have them.”
When Life Throws a Curve Ball, Swing for the Fence!
Two options for leaders when faced with adversity – go under or take it on as a challenge with determination and grit. It is resiliency that allows one to rebound from hardship and to have an optimistic approach when facing the next challenge.
A leader must have the ability to recover rapidly, turning each setback or impediment to an opportunity while gaining momentum moving forward.
“When life throws you a curve ball, swing for the fence!! Never give up, never curl up in defeat. I wanted them (students) to see that I truly care about them and their education, and that not even cancer could ever keep me from my love of teaching. It’s what motivated me to get up every day to continue teaching – kids are our future. And I wasn’t going to let this evil cancer change any of that.”
Inner Strength for Outward Gains
Often, during chaos or battling work’s daily “wak-a-mole” challenges, we find ourselves tiring to the point of burn-out. Maybe we fail to pay attention to detail as we had in the past. Possibly, we begin to simply go through the motions, becoming negative, forgetting about others on the team, and failing to put your all into your work as you once had done.
Developing a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) is a leader’s first step to building resiliency. A PMA approach does not mean being unrealistic or painting a rosy picture on everything. Rather, by taking an approach to focus on good things, addressing challenges and obstacles as opportunities; practicing gratitude; self-awareness by identifying areas of negativity in their own life; and beginning each day on a positive note, sets the stage for the leader and their organization.
“Through this horrible disease, I gained strength that I had not had in the past; I got strength and peace of mind through my positive attitude and having my support team with me on my journey.”
Gratitude is an Attitude
During challenging times, we may be too focused on outcomes and not on what is truly important. Do you take time to reflect regularly? How is gratitude woven into your leadership philosophy and practice? Have you created a culture of gratitude within your organization? As the leader, are you keeping people in the forefront?
“Take time to reflect on those who you are most thankful for. Life is busy and sometimes we lose sight of what really matters in this world. Take a second to reflect on those who mean so much to you in life and let them know. Even in our darkest times, we all have something to be thankful for. It’s crucial to focus on the positive aspects of life and to work hard every day to nurture those things to allow them to grow and blossom. Don’t let negativity take over and drag you down. We are all important and we all have a purpose in this world even if that isn’t very clear at this exact moment.”
Ring the Bell
Do you celebrate successes with your team? Too often we fail to take the time to celebrate accomplishments. Recognizing accomplishments of your team, even small ones, is a way to honor the achievement, while also acknowledging individuals and the team as a whole. Reward and recognition are jobs of a leader.
“After many months of chemo, I’m done! I rang the bell today, which looked just like the only other bell I’ve rung in my life. In CrossFit when you hit a major personal record, you get to ring the bell. While cancer and CrossFit are so different, in both cases you have to push your body and mind to do things that you weren’t sure were possible. You have to go to a place you never thought you could, and you can’t give up, not even on the hardest days. Worked so hard to do everything in my power (body, mind, and spirit) to never miss a treatment due to lab work. One chapter down and now we will celebrate the much-needed break until the next phase of treatment.“
Taking care of people is what leadership is all about. Those entrusted with this responsibility must be prepared to confront challenges to achieve optimum outcomes.
Integrator Leader Reflections
- As a leader, will you be empathetic, providing encouragement and support to your breast cancer diagnosed employee, and her family?
- Will you educate and engage her team so that this situation isn’t made to feel that it is about the individual, but rather the entire team?
- Will you ensure that she does not feel shunned, avoided, or made so uncomfortable in the workplace that the employee simply gives up and quits?
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