When You are in a Life-Quake - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Nurse leaders tell me that nurses still seem anxious and fearful months into the pandemic. Some things that by now you would have expected to normalize have not. While initially, we may have thought that moving through COVID-19 would be a sprint, it turned into a marathon. Everyone is waiting for things to return to normal, but most of us realize that some things may have changed forever. COVID-19 is described as a global life-quake. In his new book, Life is in the Transitions; Bruce Feiler describes a life-quake as a massive life change that is high on the Richter scale of consequences and has aftershocks for years.

When people experience life-quakes, their top two emotions are fear and sadness. These are the emotions that leaders are observing with their staff. Feiler suggests that it is not surprising that we are seeing these two emotions right now during the pandemic. Globally, we are coming to grips with the reality that the future will not be like the past. This pandemic will change most of us but in different ways. This experience has challenged some of our core beliefs. It may lead us to rethink our fundamental values. When a young nurse tells you that he or she “did not sign up for this,” it is an honest reaction to a change in a core belief about what a nursing career might involve.

The good news is that life-quakes don’t last forever. We will transition through it. Feiler contends that the first phase of moving through a life-quake is to recognize that you are in one and need to let go of some aspects of the past. Sometimes it can be a long goodbye when we get stuck in grief over what we have lost. Most nurses are in this long goodbye phase right now. They are battling against change, and this can create negative emotions that impact team morale. Some are more emotionally agile than others.

The second phase is what he describes as the messy middle. This messy middle can last for an extended time, and it is hard. It is during this phase that we shed habits, routines, and beliefs that no longer work for us. It is during this messy middle that we can be at our creative best because we need to be to heal. The final phase is a new beginning. Life-quakes serve as an important reminder that none of us lead linear lives. Transitions will always be part of life, and some will be massive.

Over the past months, many nurse leaders have asked me how to make sense of everything that has happened so they can move forward into a new beginning. The first step is to recalibrate and acknowledge any shattered core beliefs. These are meaningful discussions to have with your teams. Ask questions like, How have your thoughts about life and nursing changed? What have you had to let go of in your life?

The second step to moving forward is to develop an authentic narrative about your experience. Ask questions like, What have we learned about ourselves as a team? How has this experience challenged our thinking or required new priorities?

The final step is to decide how you can use what you have learned to serve others. Feiler found in his research that people who developed service as their healing theme rebounded more quickly. As leaders, we can do this by asking what our staff needs from us to help them to move forward. Ask questions like, How can we use this experience to inform our future work? What do nurses need from us now to move on from this experience? How can we take what we have learned to educate our future nursing workforce better?

We know from the work of both Feiler and Brene Brown that life-quakes can be transformative. The first step is to recognize that we are in one. The reactions of nurses right now are quite normal as they try to make sense in both their personal and professional lives what will be different in the future.

Reference

Feiler B. Life is in the transitions: Mastering change at any age. New York: Penguin Press; 2020.

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Read Rose Sherman’s book available now – The Nurse Leader Coach: Become the Boss No One Wants to Leave