Heide is SVP & General Manager, Skillsoft and Adjunct Professor, Boston College. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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Now that we are almost a year into the Covid-19 crisis and are likely facing another wave, it’s imperative for business leaders to take the time to stand back and assess their leadership since the beginning of the crisis. There are five actions leaders can take today to make sure they are optimizing their leadership in these unprecedented and uncertain times.
1. Assess communication frequency and quality.
Making sure the lines of communication between you and those you lead are wide open is more critical now than ever. Employees are concerned about layoffs, lack of bonuses, increased workload and future plans for continued remote work. Evaluate the frequency of your teamwide and individual check-ins and assess whether you are sharing enough information. Also make sure that you are providing consistent messaging across the team and be as transparent as possible about what is happening in the organization.
It might be time to increase the frequency of check-ins, even if you have to cut back on meeting duration. For example, organize a quick team check-in — even 10 minutes can suffice — at the very beginning or the end of each day. How proactive have you been in organizing time for the team to bond? Put virtual coffee breaks with selected employees on your calendar several times a week for more social and intimate check-ins. When everyone is remote and stress levels are running high, it’s important to maintain social interaction and give the team time to collectively de-compress and have a little fun together. Consider adding a social hour or hang-out on Fridays at 4 p.m. just as the workweek is winding down.
2. Take the team’s pulse.
As leaders, we must constantly assess how we are spending time with the team, how we run team meetings and how we can best assure that the work of the team gets accomplished. This is harder to do when the team is remote and when leadership practices that are successful with co-located teams are less successful in a virtual setting. It’s time to check the team’s pulse.
Clear signs of team “bradycardia” — a slower-than-normal heart rate — are withdrawn team members or people focusing on their own work instead of collaborating and helping others. Team “tachycardia” — an accelerated heart rate — is evident when team tensions are escalating, for example. To get the pulse back on track, make an effort to refocus the team’s work on organizational goals and use meetings to provide employees with the chance to share challenges and barriers with one another and solicit support for solving critical problems.
Make an effort to help the team collectively celebrate small wins. Celebrating small wins can be part of the Friday social hang-out. Celebrating small wins provides an opportunity for team members to acknowledge each other’s achievements and for you to keep everyone motivated.
3. Evaluate and re-set work expectations.
Studies suggest that people tend to work longer hours during a crisis. One complaint I hear a lot these days from employees is that they believe their workloads have increased since the start of the pandemic. They are increasingly overwhelmed and they don’t think their leaders are aware of just how challenging things have become for them.
Against this backdrop, you need to be extremely clear about priorities. Ask yourself if you have provided enough guidance and support to your team regarding how best to maximize productivity while working remotely. What else can you do to leverage technology, tools and other resources to increase efficiency and balance workload demands against capacity? Should you put some projects temporarily on the back burner? Every interaction provides an opportunity to ask employees what you can do better to help them excel, remove constraints and alleviate frustrations. You may discover that it is time to reset expectations regarding how much work employees can handle.
4. Don’t take your foot off of the empathy pedal.
The best leaders are highly empathetic. Ask yourself in what ways you’ve demonstrated empathy over the last few months. Recognize that everyone on your team has had to learn new coping mechanisms, work habits and behaviors. Most, if not all, are still figuring out how best to juggle work with increased home responsibilities.
If you haven’t already, now is the time to share your own experiences about how you’ve handled work challenges in light of family obligations and other stressors. Be a role model. Share your own best practices, struggles, fears and vulnerabilities. Being a strong leader and providing reassurance to the team is not inconsistent with coming across as human. However, always remember that your own experience as a leader may not be the same as your employees,’ so you need to remind yourself to proactively visualize things from their perspectives.
5. Check in with yourself.
We are all tested in times of crisis. With the challenges of your daily life, future uncertainties and your own fears and insecurities, you need to take care of yourself mentally and physically. Draw a line between personal and professional time so that you can devote attention to personal commitments and your family. Make sure you do not abandon the mental and physical health practices that have worked well for you in the past, whether it is regular exercise, medication or other practices. If you neglect yourself, you can’t show up to the team as the kind of leader they need you to be. So, if you’ve put your own needs on the back burner, it’s time to course-correct. Remember, your team is watching you; you set the example.
Following these five actions will help leaders reinvigorate their leadership at a moment when we all face new challenges and uncertainties.
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