LEADERSHIP ROADMAP, December 2020

No one is born a good leader. Instead, good leaders develop over time and reveal their potential during times of crisis. As Rich Fernandez, the director of development for Special Needs Network, Inc., commented in a March 2020 Harvard Business Review article, developing into an effective senior leader depends on “how you perceive stress and how well you’re able to adapt to, and navigate, adversity.”

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has many facets—health, economic, employment, mental, emotional—and leaders have to make tough decisions every day on how to manage the organization and its workers. This makes now the time for true leaders to reveal themselves across all sectors, from large and small businesses to government organizations at every level.

So, how can one know which people to look to in these stressful times?

In this final Leadership Roadmap column of 2020, and during what I can only describe as most unusual and adverse circumstances, I offer nine action steps current and emerging leaders can take to benefit themselves and aid their teams.

Cultivate Self-Compassion

Working to optimize organizational and personal performance saps energy and takes an emotional toll at the best of times. Doing so when some or all of one’s team is working remotely adds additional challenges related to managing the performance of direct reports, coordinating with peers and staying in touch with one’s own managers and supervisors.

Add to these realities that team members tend to pick up on their leader’s stress. When a leader gets bogged down or even just appears to cave into the pressure, so may everyone else.

Staying on course requires personal awareness and resilience. Specifically, an effective leader recognizes their triggers for stress and unhelpful emotions, and they are able to respond in ways that are not self-defeating. Developing such an ability starts with being compassionate toward oneself.

Among the first and most important things a leader should do to manage pressure in trying times is treating themselves more gently and with greater sympathy. This does not mean they should wallow in self-pity. Rather, they must give themselves leeway to make an occasional misstep. Choosing self-compassion and granting oneself the grace to accept, acknowledge and move past mistakes while learning essential lessons are keys to improving as a person and a leader. Equally importantly, individuals who give themselves leeway tend to accept mistakes by others in stride while focusing on what can be learned instead of who should be blamed. Adopting this attitude reduces pressure at a time when compounding stress will only create additional problems. It also allows a leader and the members of their team to reflect on what is working and to get creative about fixing what is not. The alternative is to become paralyzed and suffer the consequences of doing nothing.

Think Positively

Thoughts produce psychological and physical effects. Thinking positively reduces stress, strengthens the immune system and promotes emotional health. People who feel confident in themselves also assert themselves in a crisis and accept the role of problem-solver.

Additionally, the work of Daniel Goldman and others on emotional and social intelligence shows that emotions can be contagious. A leader who conveys positivity boosts the mood of team members.

Now, positive thinking is not the same as denying reality. Rather, it is a reframing exercise. Consider the difference between “I hate getting up in the morning” and “I am grateful for a new day.” Nothing changes the time the alarm sounds, but one statement creates an opportunity instead of erecting an obstacle.

Thinking positively depends on minimizing negative self-talk and finding something good to say about most situations. Simply using words such as “happy” and “enthusiastic” can alleviate anxiety.

So, while imagining COVID-19 worst-case scenarios is easy, focusing only on what the pandemic could mean for unemployment or the economy does nothing to actually help oneself or others. Currently, a leader must think about opportunities for themselves and their team members to become active participants in day-to-day crisis response. It is especially important for managers to act as role models for expressing confidence and displaying strength in the face of adversity.

Join Leadership Support Groups

It can be lonely at the top, especially during a crisis. But all leaders need support structures and sounding boards. If nothing else, engaging in social interactions helps individuals blow off steam.

The truth is that most senior managers and executives have few resources for seeking advice on leading their organizations and building teams. Forming a peer support group of individuals who have had common experiences and face similar challenges can help leaders succeed more and work less. Also, since leaders serve as role models for members of their teams, joining a peer group signals that others should seek and utilize outside support.

Each member of the leaders peer group should benefit from sharing knowledge and hearing different perspectives. Members should also hold each other accountable. Meetings of the group and one-on-one conversations among leaders are times to reveal inner fears that cannot and should not be laid on team members, to learn about successful practices and new resources, and offer personal affirmations.

State and Work Toward a Personal Purpose

Reassessing one’s purpose and resetting goals can make the pressures of leading through a crisis more bearable. Crisis situations make the future uncertain. Adopting the survival and thriving of the organization as their personal mission—essentially making the organization’s goals their own—confers on leaders a sense of control over what can happen.

Introspection allows a leader to identify and analyze the value they place on the work they do. That, in turn, enables them to clearly decide what motivates them and how they can best focus their efforts in responding to the current crisis. The alternative is to remain adrift and unsure of what awaits.

Remaining grounded and realistic is important, however. It can be easy for a leader to overidentify with the organization and feel that they are nothing if the organization performs poorly. Simply checking in with peers and team members can help a leader retain the all-important sense of who they are, where they are going and what their career trajectory looks like regardless of the immediate outcomes of the crisis.

Losing personal direction will negatively affect one’s self-worth and, potentially, cripple team dynamics. Which brings things back to reassessing one’s purpose and resetting goals, as well the first step of practicing self-compassion.

Set Achievable Goals

Keeping a record of achievements helps individuals move forward despite uncertainty. Each mission accomplished creates confidence for overcoming the next challenge.

During a crisis, leaders must take a short-term focus and set daily, perhaps even hourly, measurable goals for themselves and their team members. Management analysts call this focusing on “localized, contained tasks.” When circumstances permit, leaders should celebrate the achievement of goals by their team.

Respect Differences

Especially as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, leaders must recognize that each team member is going through a different experience. For instance, frontline workers feel different pressures than employees who are working from home and acting as caretakers for their family members.

Single employees working from home are lonely. Those with families are overwhelmed. Frontline workers have safety concerns that employers cannot always adequately address.

Remote employees can no longer sharply distinguish between their work responsibilities and their personal life. It does not help that daily routines such as dressing up for the office and listening to a podcast on the commute home which eased people into and out of the workday no longer exist. Even casual conversations with colleagues about weekend plans and activities have become rare. Now, the lines between work and life are blurred for many. As a result, focus, efficiency and ingenuity may suffer.

Leaders can assist team members and preserve organizational culture by creating new norms and conventions regarding work schedules and by encouraging the use of collaborative platforms such as Teams and Zoom. Ensuring that every remote employer is at their computer for exactly the same eight hours is less important than ensuring that priority tasks are completed and long-term projects remain on track. Letting workers set their own schedules to some degree reduces anxiety and accommodates family care.

Using collaboration software encourages teamwork, enables regular communication and fosters the development of mentoring and caching relationships. Dome respectfully, collaboration also leads to more experimentation and innovations.

Keep Busy

Allowing people to sit idly and watch a crisis unfold is a recipe for disaster. Throughout history, great leaders have convinced people to buckle down in the face of fear and work toward solutions.

Motivating team members, keeping team members involved and acting on good ideas regardless of who offers them remain as important as ever. People need to feel like they have a role to play. Issuing a powerful call to action can mean the difference between success and failure.

Maintain Constant, Quality Communications

Communicating regularly and clearly with each team member keeps everyone on the same page and reduces anxiety by reducing uncertainty. In the absence of information, imaginations can run wild. Leaders should also take every opportunity to assure team members that they are doing a good job and to listen to and address concerns.

It will help a leader to schedule and structure group and individual check-ins. As a rule, these meetings should increase in frequency during a crisis. Another good rule is to limit each meeting to only the time it takes to share necessary information and answer pressing questions. Some team members will require more attention, and a leader should provide that within reason.

Practice Self-Care

Getting sufficient sleep, nourishment and hydration are essential for any leader who wishes to maintain a baseline level of physiological and psychological health. An unhealthy leader is a poor leader. It is important to keep this in mind when self-doubts about acting selfishly or neglecting one’s duty in order to sleep or eat creep into one’s mind.

Despite the hardships, even a protracted crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic can have a silver lining for organizations. Teams that successfully meet challenges while physically separated, economically threatened, under great stress and at risk for losing members to illness will be able to handle anything. Already, leaders and workers are learning to be more flexible and acquiring skills for the high-tech workforce of the 21st century.