Dear Re-entry,
There’s a magnificent mix of excitement and hesitation swirling around us right now. We hoped and prayed this time would come, and now many leaders are realizing re-entry is coming much sooner than we originally thought. Deciding when and how to come back together is a lot of pressure. The good news is as a leader, it’s your job to take risks and forge into the unknown. You’ve navigated funding, tough sales, and personnel issues. You’ve kept people safe and you’ve pivoted when obstacles pop-up. Moving into uncharted territory is an area where you excel.
Yet, this challenge is different. At this time last year we wrote about how none of us were given a pandemic handbook. Standing here, with a light at the end of the tunnel, we have to remember none of us have a how-to guide for bringing back people together again.
Knowing all teams are different, here are three check-points for you to consider as the end of the pandemic unfolds:
1) Check in with your reality
How are you doing?
(Here’s permission to move beyond “Fine.”)
How are you, really?
A foundation for successful leadership is self-awareness and self-compassion. As Brené Brown says, “... We can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly.” Many of us have been working so hard to stay in business, to respond to new demands, and to tackle challenges we haven’t given ourselves time to analyze or observe the impacts this experience has given us.
To check in, take some personal time to reflect on these questions:
What’s getting you out of bed in the morning?
What’s going well that you want to continue?
What excites you about having your team back together again?
What opportunities do you see?
What’s keeping you up at night?
What are you dreading?
What concerns do you have for the team that need to be addressed together?
What rose to the top? Getting clear on where you are can allow you to put your oxygen mask on first so you can be ready to help others.
Once you’re clear on how you are doing, you can then ...
2) Check in with your team members’ realities
I recently spoke with a leader in higher education as they prepared remarks for an update on their program. They said, “I have to remember, over and over again, that no one experienced this pandemic in the exact same way. While I’m more in tune with professional impacts, I have very little idea how this past year impacted my team personally. Some spouses lost jobs. Some employees lost their partners. Kids were at home. The weight we have been carrying is enormous.”
This leader is right. We often don’t know the weight people are carrying or the trauma they are working through. As leaders, our job is not to be counselor or fixer. We can, however, be compassionate people who lead with empathy.
A simple way to begin is to schedule one-on-one conversations with your team members and start the conversation with the question, “How are you doing?”
Listen and coach your employees to move beyond “Fine.” As I did with you, go deeper with, “How are you, really?”
Stay with the conversation to uncover what’s getting people out of bed in the morning and what’s keeping them awake at night. The answers to these questions reveal motivations beyond a paycheck and can help you uncover a) what’s stressing people out and b) how you can create solutions together that serve both the business and your employee at the same time.
Be clear that you need to know what could work for your employee or team member. If you don’t think the business can provide what they are asking for, perhaps it’s time for a firm and empathetic conversation about their future.
Now that you understand where you and your employees are coming from, the next step is to start to...
3) Create opportunities to come together
It’s tempting to jump back into the office and expect things to be like they were. The reality is returning to what was may be difficult. In one of my coaching sessions this week a client said, “Chris, there’s no getting back. We can only ‘get’ forward.”
Crisis often reveals what’s most important to people. The many implications of the pandemic show us there is no one clear way forward. It may take a long time for your employees to feel safe at work. And some of your employees may have felt safe enough throughout. Perhaps some employees want their jobs to change. Others may be ready to recommit to the organization and are wondering which dials to turn to create results in the new business reality post-COVID.
As a leader, it’s up to you to steward these conversations and create spaces where people can work together to come up with solutions everyone can commit to.
Some of our clients created a shared document for employees to add and upvote/downvote concerns and suggestions, then invited the whole staff to an online meeting to talk through what rose to the top.
Others modified their regular “pulse-check” surveys with questions to surface ideas, and again, discussed them in an open group.
In each of these examples, not everyone contributed actively to the real-time conversation - yet everyone emerged with a clearer picture of what they faced and good ideas on what to do next.
While the pandemic gave us all opportunities to pivot, adapt, and tap into our resilience (buzzwords of the year, right?) it also gifted us the opportunity to assess what’s working well and what could be better. I believe supporting each other as people is the best way to support our businesses as well.
What else is on your mind? We’d love to know what questions you’re wrestling with and what’s showing up for your team. Let’s schedule a conversation to explore your successes and what could be better as you figure out how to work safely together again.
