Leading others out of crisis
Leaders, what are you doing to help your team members – and your stakeholders in general – to manage their resilience as lock-down is gradually lifted?
Maybe you think I am mad, suggesting that this is your responsibility as a leader to talk about resilience and emotions.
I am not mad. I am not crazy. And this just might be the lunatic idea you’ve been looking for!
Yes you need to get the work done, but really, is that the extent of your conversations with your people – their progress in getting things done? Task-focused? Goal-oriented? Doing, doing, doing?
These are human beings you work with, not human doings. You employed them for their brains, but they are more than that. Just like you are.
You’re going to tell me you don’t have time to talk about people’s feelings.
You’re going to tell me that emotions play no part in organisational life.
You’re going to tell me that is all rather pink and fluffy and won’t help with getting the work done.
And yet, behind the reasons, excuses and justifications, there is a small voice inside your head wondering what the impact might be, if only you could find the time and override any cultural norms.
And you would be right to listen to that little voice. Because whenever we go through some kind of change at work or at home, we go through the change curve.
First posited by Elizabeh Kubler-Ross as she researched death, it then morphed into the grief curve and now we can see its application in organisations too, as the change curve.
Change and transition
In any (external) change, there is an (internal) transition. That is the psychological stuff that happens when change happens.
As lock-down hit us so fast and so deep, we had a shock to our systems.
Some people went into denial. It can’t possibly be as bad as the governments of the world are telling us. It must be a conspiracy of some kind.
Some felt betrayed (by the Chinese, by the government, by their employers, then later by the those who were not sticking to the rules of lock-down). There has been a lot of blame flying around.
Some would have been angry – and may still be (at the same organisations and the same people).
Then uncertainty and confusion – what are the rules? Anxiety – what if I get sick? What if I pass it on to others? What if I die?
Doubt about how much risk to take?
Depression – which could be about loneliness or lack of connections or feeling helpless or multiple other causes.
All feelings and emotions. All hosted in our human bodies and minds. Much of it not spoken about.
Yes, we all talked about how weird this new thing was. Unprecedented (I hate that word now!). But we didn’t necessarily go deeper than the superficial with our work colleagues. Because we never had before.
So those feelings festered. They started to shape our bodies in unhelpful ways. Hunching for example. Yes, that has something to do with our work-station set up too, but that hunch makes us small. It makes us less able to speak up and out. The smaller we become, the harder it is to express our-self and our needs. The less we express our needs, the more we put up with stuff. The more we put up with stuff, the more we allow our boundaries to be trampled upon.
How do we feel and what do we need?
There is a link between how we feel and what we need. When we can identify what we feel and translate that into needs, we then know what to ask others for in support of those needs.
For example, I feel overwhelmed > I need to figure out my priorities and drop some of those for the time being > would you help me to think through the importance and urgency of each of my priorities?
Or, I feel guilty that I am not doing any of my roles well (work, parent, partner, son/daughter….) > I need to spend more time home-schooling at the moment > could you help me to reduce my workload to enable me to have the time and energy to home-school rather than trying to do it all at only 80%?
Maybe you didn’t expect this to last so long. Maybe your team are the same. So they tried to do it all, believing that it was just a sprint. But it’s not even a marathon as there is no 26.2 mile finish line. We have no idea when this will end. It may be multiple marathons. In which case, none of us can work three jobs at full tilt for that long. We don’t have the bandwidth.
It is unlikely that your team members will instigate this conversation about what they need. Because they have their head down trying to keep up with everything you expect them to do. Not to mention they feel the pressure to comply as they don’t want to lose their job when so many other people will be competing for jobs. Or they feel guilty about having a job when others do not, so they work harder to prove they deserve their job.
So it’s down to you to instigate it – or at least to give them a place to share their emotions and identify their associated needs so that they can then come to you with their requests. That all depends on how much they trust you in the first place. They may not wish to share with you but may be willing to talk about it in “listening circles”. (Ask me if you want to know more about listening circles). Once they understand their needs, they can come to you with their requests for support. They may not have put labels on their feelings, so this might help.
