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Just like everyone else, most executive leaders and managers are susceptible to the personal stresses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. They deserve to be educated and trained so they can be effective leaders during these times of crisis and challenge.
The first, and arguably the most valuable, education & training they should receive is in the area of personal stress management. Recall that 70% of the behavior of employees is attributable to the behavior of their managers. Stressed out, dishevelled or near-catatonic managers will result in stressed out, leader-less, employees running wild.
Leadership should recognize the profound difference between managing teams in normal times and managing teams in times of crisis. The leadership challenge is how to quickly and intelligently adapt one’s daily operations and management practices to face the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To get us started, there are six actions a manager can take now, and do on a daily basis to reduce their own stress and anxiety levels, and thus improve the well-being, focus and productivity of most employees. Many of the steps are as simple as putting on a pair of pants.
At 10:00 a.m. (Moscow Time), Tuesday, August 25, 1998, the Russian Financial Crisis (ironically, also known by bankers as the “Russia Flu”) has hit hard. The Russian government and the Russian Central Bank have devalued the ruble and defaulted on its international debt payments. After two days of shock, any company doing business in Russia was acting swiftly to protect their financial positions. So did we. At this Tuesday morning meeting, as the COO I would report that 96% of our service contracts valued in rubles had been suspended. Before that week, my biggest worry was not being ready for an end-of-August vacation. On August 25th, 1998, my challenge was what do I need to do to recover 80% of our lost revenues and find a way to keep about 1,600 people in 72 cities gainfully employed.
What I learned in that month, and in the months that followed are lessons I have been able to draw these past two decades when facing similar revenue-crushing crises and seemingly insurmountable operations challenges. They are lessons that are applicable to many of the trials and tribulations that executive leadership and managers across the U.S. are today experiencing because of COVID-19. What I know to be true is that in every crisis there is opportunity; crisis, favor the confident, the focused, the bold and the decisive.
If being able to focus, to think clearly, to act boldly and decisively will help you become the leader you hope to be during this crisis, then here are six recommendations for managers to reduce their personal stresses, and thus be in a better position to lead their teams.
Recognize just how compromised you are, and make adjustments
This pandemic will have physical health, mental health, personal financial, and inter-personal social implications for nearly the entire adult, working population of the United States. It is not credible to suggest that managers are in some way immune to fear, anxiety, stress in addition to all of the other risk areas mentioned (health, financial inter-personal).
How negatively impacted you are as an individual is a matter of personal circumstance. Start by insisting your company is making an accurate forecast of the COVID-19 crisis and how long it will take to resolve. Second, take an inventory of your personal and family’s vulnerabilities. (An excellent online tool to help you do this can be found at XKaliber Health & Wellness, Personal and Family Threat Assessment).
Hope for the best, and plan for the worst is not a cliche. If you yourself or your loved ones are very vulnerable, know that you need contingency plans so that your teams and their important work continues if you become unavailable or incapacitated. Answering the following questions will help you get started on such a plan and make real time adjustments: Who is my deputy? Who is their deputy? Are they fully up to speed on all the current issues? What more can I do to prepare them? How will they know if I am in trouble and need help? Have I set up a procedure to have them take over? Will the team accept this? What do I need to do to communicate my contingency plans? Who should I share these back-up plans with? Have I improved communications during this time? Are we communicating frequently enough? Am I the only one showing leadership? Who else seems to be dealing well and remaining positive? What assignments can they take on to help others in a weaker state?
It goes without saying, the time to ask and answer these questions, and to make adjustments is before you have a fever, massive sinus headache, a bad cough and difficulty breathing.
Don’t solve today, solve for four weeks down the road.
Trust your team to do what they already know how to do. You may need to monitor and direct their activities more closely, but aim to avoid what is known as the “activity trap.” The activity trap is the trap managers and leaders fall into when they become singularity focus on daily crisis management and daily operations. You are in an activity trap when you are doing 30 things at once, and think you are doing them all well. You are in a bad place if you are doing the job of your team members, and not managing well and preparing for what happens next.
Consider this, if everyone on the team - including yourself - is focused on today, who is preparing the team for what comes next. On the day of this article’s writing - April 9-10 - the chances are that the national health, economic and social situation are all going to get worse - even much worse - before they get better.
Thinking about what is the most likely future state, and what new challenges that might arise, is the key to being prepared if and when they do arrive. Think of the confidence you will be able to project if four weeks from now, a new challenge emerges and you already have some solid thinking in place. Think of how calming and reassuring you will sound if when the team conversation rolls around to “what might happen” and you already have well-researched, thoughtful perspectives and insights about the future to share.
Yes, this will be a lot of extra work on your part, but consider the alternative: what kind of leader are you if you are as blindsided by the next big challenge as your team is? What are you if you have no informed perspectives, no insights, and are just as bewildered as the next team member?
Break today’s problems down into simple choices and simple processes.
In times of stress, our limbic brains express themselves to a much greater degree than in normal times. The limbic brain is a collective term for the brain structures that are involved in processing emotions. The limbic brain is also responsible for all human behaviour, all decision-making, and has no capacity for language. It is not the center of logic, organization and linear processing. It also processes information 200 times faster than our cognitive brains, and today, when everyone has a tsunami of emotions in their heads, this part of the brain is really driving behavior.
Why do we care? Because complex business problem solving and complex business processes are very difficult for emotional, upset, or nervous people. Your very best logical and process oriented person might turn out to be your most flighty and unfocused team member you have got during this crisis because they have become especially emotional, upset, or nervous. Look for the persons on your team who are less emotional and more focused then try to steer daily task management work their way.
To make it easier on everyone, break down the complex problems in advance (like the day before) into extremely simple choices: We can do “A” or “B”; which is better? Discuss the merits so all can feel the process at work. Encourage alternative views by being inclusive and asking those who might not normally speak up, to offer their ideas. Then agree in writing, what are the steps to be taken to build the solution.
If this sounds very mechanical, yeah! You’ve got it! Mechanical steps get processed by the cognitive brain and puts the limbic brain in the background for a little while. This will be a relief to you and your team.
Call out good behavior, don’t catch bad behaviors.
One day in the future, we can discuss the nuances of motivational theory, but for now, here is the bottom line on one useful theory. Employees seek pleasure as much as they aim to avoid pain. It is pleasurable to get visibly recognized for doing something right. It is painful to get visibly called out for doing something wrong. No one has ever enjoyed being made to feel small, stupid, or unworthy of respect. Catching someone behaving badly should not be the standard practice as it almost always is during normal times. Calling out good behavior, especially during times like these, produces far greater returns on a manager’s investment of time and effort.
In times of crisis and challenge, employee motivation and engagement is best maintained by constant and elevated positive reinforcement. To be practical about it: complement the daylights out of each team member’s contribution, and even their effort, if they tried their best. Do this on a daily basis. You can give out compliments during working sessions when they happen, during morning stand-ups or afternoon-wrap ups. They can be over the phone or while on a video conference. They can be sent via text, messenger, or email. The only critical requirement is that the compliment or praise be genuine and that it is given out fairly without bias.
At the same time, calling out bad behavior is an absolute must. Depending on the situation it might be that a visible call out is best for the team, or it might be that a separate conversation with the offending individual is more appropriate. Either way, just as good behaviors need to be called out, bad behaviors must not be tolerated, and especially in times of crisis and challenge.
Start by putting on your pants.
As a society we have tried to push the mantra – it matters how you perform, not how you look. And yes, in a perfect world that would be true; but we don't live in a perfect world. How you are perceived by others before you open your mouth - even on a video conference call - depends mostly on the physical signals you send with your appearance. There are close to a dozen reasons why dressing matters. Here are a couple of the strongest ones.
Clothing is the primary instrument in creating a positive first impression. People are superficial, not just as a cultural phenomenon but as a hardwired instinct: Is that a tiger and is it going to eat me? Do not think for a moment that the unwashed, uncombed, pyjama look is helping anyone feel like you are someone in control. Don’t let your inner slob make your fashion choices during times of work-from-home isolation. Know this, we tend to be done formulating our initial opinion of someone before we've actually spoken to them.
Dressing up helps with your confidence. One of the first bits of advice in self-help books is almost always something along the lines of “Get Your Personal Appearance Under Control!” I think this is great advice. People tend to perform better in life, work, (and perhaps pandemics) when they feel that they deserve to perform better. The automatic assumption that a well-dressed person should be treated with respect works just as well when it is your well-dressed reflection in the mirror. Just a few seconds spent getting yourself ready in the mirror before you jump on today’s video conference call reinforces the idea that you are a driver of success, you have got yourself together, and you are ready to lead and solve problems. And yes, especially for the young male professionals reading this article, you really need to put on your pants even though others cannot see you in your boxers when you are on the video call.
Learn each employee’s temperaments and adjust to suit all.
To understand this idea, we will have to dedicate a whole new article to explaining what a “temperament” is. For now, here is an extremely abbreviated crash course in the new science of biological anthropology. (For the more inquisitive, I recommend reading the works of Dr. Helene Fischer). Here we go. Human brains grow up in a cocktail of hormones. Depending on the cocktail, one of four typical temperaments or “workstyles” emerge. A workstyle is simply the way we see the world, how we respond to our environment, and how we work to solve problems. The four types are workstyles are Pioneer, Driver, Integrator, and Guardian. A Pioneer is hardwired to innovate, to experiment to try new things. If they are hungry and they see something that sort of looks like food, they eat it. Guardians are almost the opposite. They are hard-wired to follow rules, to protect, to emphasize safety. If they are hungry and see something that sort of looks like food, they don’t eat it because they can’t be sure it is food. Drivers would act: hey, let’s tryg feeding it to the dog! Integrators would seek out collective knowledge: Wait, has anyone in our group seen this before? These workstyles are always present, but they are not the sole factor in defining people's behavior. Culture, policies, job requirements and other organizational factors may heavily influence behavior.
What managers need to know is that in times of stress, anxiety and emotional turmoil, people tend to revert to their hard-wired workstyles. Pioneers scream for innovation while guardians scream for safety and protection. In normal times, pioneers tend to lead in Corporate America (about 60% to 65% of U.S. Corporate leadership consists of Pioneers and Drivers). In times of stress, Guardians are usually the best equipped to think through what will keep a company safest and most protected.
What a manager must do is figure out the workstyle of each employee and be sure that those best equipped to handle the challenges of the day, get to do so. Unlike times of normalcy, where pioneers and drivers have the stage most of the time, now is the time to be sure Integrators get air time (they are instinctively best at keeping teams together) and Guardians have the chance to be in the spot-light (they are instinctively the best at preserving and protecting). Managers need to understand the different workstyles, recognize how different people are approaching the crisis and come up with ways of ensuring every workstyle is respected and being leveraged to deal with the challenges that COVID-19 puts before us.
By ensuring the calm and level-headed daily activities of managers, an organization stands the greatest chance of preserving their most valuable asset: their employees. Most managers are not trained, let alone experienced, in managing teams through times of crisis and challenge. It is grossly unfair to expect them to do so without education, training and mentoring support. Luckily, there are individuals whose experience includes navigating through times very similar to these. Small changes in daily practices and small increases in management competency (giving managers new skills for managing in a crisis) can go a long way towards empowering managers to be extraordinary rather than just ordinary in times like these.
During a crisis, leaders lead. In every crisis, there is opportunity for leaders to build something real and meaningful, even when it seems impossible. They can do this if they adjust the way they manage their teams, and if they focus on reducing their own stress levels first so they can be the best possible leader.
Like firefighters rushing into a burning building, we have to be confident, be prepared in advance, make smart management decisions, focus on the right things, and take good care of all employees because our lives - and our future business - depends on it.
Next Article: Grahampton & Co’s Leading in the COVID-19 Crisis: Understanding individual temperaments as a key to coping and productivity in times of national crisis.
About the Author: Peter R. Classen is a multinational Chief Transformation Officer and a “Leadership in times of Crisis and Challenge” expert. He is one of the Managing Partners at Grahampton & Company, a management services and advisory firm with three decades of experience helping organizations survive and thrive in some of the most complicated and thorny situations imaginable. Peter has been a hands-on c-suite leader and “chief crisis officer” in two +1,000 employee organizations during extended national crisis and disaster settings. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his strategic revenue growth and business transformation focus has shifted to working with leadership teams on revenue continuity, on survive & thrive strategies, and on proactive management in times of crisis and challenge. Find Peter and his teams at www.grahampton.com.