Non-work stress can certainly intrude on work life, and you can help out with that as long as you tread very carefully.
Years ago, I noticed one of my reports had been performing uncharacteristically poorly, often late to work, making sloppy mistakes etc. I dug into it a bit in one of our one-on-one meetings and turns out he had a lot of things going on in his personal life, his girlfriend had been laid off from her job, there was an illness in the family etc.
All we did as a company was give him two weeks off work so he could focus on dealing with things, and he was back to normal, and went on to have a long and successful tenure at the company.
This worked only because we were a very small company, and he and I had a pretty good personal relationship and hung out socially outside of work, so he felt comfortable enough to confide in me given the opportunity.
yes i agree but this same thing can cut both ways. Source: have spent many years building healthy teams with many directs and direct managers. There is a way to broach the subject of personal stress in a 1x1 but an internet comment box is not the right place to suggest it imho.
Years ago, I noticed one of my reports had been performing uncharacteristically poorly, often late to work, making sloppy mistakes etc. I dug into it a bit in one of our one-on-one meetings and turns out he had a lot of things going on in his personal life, his girlfriend had been laid off from her job, there was an illness in the family etc.
All we did as a company was give him two weeks off work so he could focus on dealing with things, and he was back to normal, and went on to have a long and successful tenure at the company.
This worked only because we were a very small company, and he and I had a pretty good personal relationship and hung out socially outside of work, so he felt comfortable enough to confide in me given the opportunity.