Employee Emotional Overdraft Protection: the CARE Model

It’s the weekend and you log into your bank account to check funds to pay your upcoming bills. The screen loads and your stomach drops as you see insufficient funds on the screen. SHIT [PANIC]. To make matters worse, you have incurred overdraft fees, putting you further into debt. Has this ever happened to you? In my early 20s I became a professional on “getting out of overdraft fees”.

I want you to take this situation and now apply it to your team. Consider your team as if each member has an emotional bank account. As a leader, your role is to regularly deposit into these accounts, so that when you need to make a withdrawal—like asking someone to meet tight deadlines, go through a significant change, or take on extra responsibilities—you'll have a team that's willing to rise to the challenge, rather than shutting down due to feeling overwhelmed or burned out.

What often gets in the way of this? Time. The demands of back-to-back meetings, tight deadlines, and preparing deliverables force us to move fast, multitask, and deprioritize actions without immediate ROI. Teaching vs. telling, being curious, and recognizing small wins get sidelined. As leaders, we don’t want to be shitty bosses, but fast-paced work leaves little time for reflection and connection. The result? Teammates may disengage, productivity drops, or they quit. Just like a bank account, if you don’t make deposits into teammates' emotional accounts, you risk overdrafting—an overdraft that can be far more detrimental than a $25 fee.

Senior or executive-level employees carry a disproportionately high turnover cost for companies, reaching up to 213% of their average salary, according to the Center for American Progress.

Ask yourself, what is the balance in your team's emotional bank account? What if I told you there is a framework you can use to build or repair your teammates emotional account? The CARE Model consists of simple, proven methods to build stronger teams that get consistent results. Read below on how you can start implementing this strategy today!

Today’s focus is on the 'C' in CARE: Connecting Authentically. Being an authentic leader is not a destination but a journey because it is the process of continuous growth. A good start is to embrace vulnerability and adopt a leader-mindset that correlates to your core values. Authentic leaders make it easier for others to lower their guard and engage genuinely, resulting in real connections which fuel team engagement and build trust. A Harvard Business Review study found that employees in high-trust organizations are 50% more productive, 76% more engaged, and 40% less burned out. Authentic leadership isn’t about lowering standards; it's about lifting teammates to meet them. Humility is key—40% of senior leaders fear that their mistakes will be held against them, according to a 2023 survey by Wiley). However, “a 2022 Harvard Business School survey highlights a growing demand for truthfulness in the workplace, with employees increasingly seeking honesty and transparency from their leaders. When leaders consistently demonstrate transparency and accountability, they build trust and boost team engagement. This culture of openness encourages effective communication, directly enhancing productivity, job satisfaction, and team cohesion”(Forbes).

How to Connect Authentically:

• Be yourself, live your values: Let your team see what matters to you at work and beyond. Create space (it only takes 5-10 minutes) in meetings and check-ins for personal updates. Connect the work back to what matters to you as a leader and human-being.
• Practice presence: This means you're not reading or sending emails during a check in.
• Share vulnerabilities: If you struggle with vulnerability, I get it! Try this:
  • Create boundaries for yourself around what you're willing to share with others that is real and true to you, and what you want to keep separate from work.
  • Practice expressing your intentions and emotions openly and speak from the ‘I’. For example, “I want to share some feedback so we can move forward together,” or “I feel a bit defeated today; the rollout didn’t go as planned.”
• Own your mistakes: Discuss your mistakes openly, highlighting them as learning opportunities. Share with your team what you learned!
• Seek feedback regularly: Ask for feedback after making mistakes to encourage collective problem-solving. Employee 1:1s is another great venue to ask for feedback but be sure to handle it without defensiveness. Thank your team, reflect, and share how you'll apply their input.

Stay tuned for the next steps in the CARE framework, where we'll cover A: Ask and Act with Curiosity.

Until Later,
Megan Markiewicz