At a recent meetup, a Lead Dad shared a work strategy that I’d not heard of before – and I think it’s absolute genius.
He’s a consultant and is working on projects with varying lead times. In other works, he has fake flexibility when it comes to his home and work life. If a project isn’t set to close that week, he’s flexible. If it’s crunch time, he’s not.
Problem is the least predictable thing you can plan for is a child’s illness. It just happens. And if you have multiple children? High probability whatever that first kid had goes through the house, slowly, inevitably, frustratingly.
We all know this is going to happen come fall into winter. But how many of us plan for it?
This Lead Dad did. He alerts his coworkers when colds, flu, and whatever else are making the rounds of his kids’ schools and at home.
“When the germs are circulating, I’ll reach out to my team and say, ‘I might go down. We might have to change around a few meetings or I might need to reschedule some things’,” he said.
He calls it the pre-plan. Instead of waiting to be laid low by his children, he makes an assessment and starts planning.
It might sound like overkill. All kids get sick and many times they take down their parents.
But missing work because your child or you is sick is a known unknown. It’s going to happen at some point, even if you don’t know when.
So what if you gave people on your team a heads up? This dad calls it “activating readiness to be prepared with support systems.” They know that you might be distracted or you might be outright sick in the coming days. You’ll bounce back; you just need some time to sort out all the coughing, sneezing and moaning.
But there are certain conditions for it to work. Top one is years of developing relationships through work groups. That create real trust and support. It’s also a management structure that lets you feel like you can be honest.
How do you communicate with your team when you’ve got sickness at home? And if you’re a manager, how do you respond?
@The Company of Dads
