How to be the leader your team needs: Leading in times of COVID-19
Having already spent eight full weeks operating entirely homebound, I must admit there are still some days where I wake up feeling kind of surreal, still grappling with a Working-living-exercising-interacting-everything-From-Home situation.
Indeed, the lines of work and life have been further blurred.
The course of events pertaining to the Coronavirus pandemic have evolved so rapidly within a short time span. Locally, we’ve had our Prime Minister publicly address the Nation — not once, but twice — on our Circuit Breaker measures; our daily news channels diligently track and report COVID-19 cases like a trader’s market. There has been a mammoth of measures and initiatives deployed to prevent community spread of the virus, to keep businesses afloat and to take care of the underserved segments of society (and I’ve not even talked about the happenings on a global scale, of national lockdowns, healthcare strains, economic impact and societal challenges).
The speed and pervasiveness of technology have enabled extensive information sharing, but have also brought us a lot to process and digest.
As we now adjust to the “new normal”, carrying on with work and life largely through a gadget screen, the true test for most of us has truly been how we are responding to adversity and unexpected change. For those who hold formal or informal leadership positions, leading in adversity brings added pressure and stake, as we are entrusted to also steward on behalf of our teams, organisations, family and communities.
There’s a treasure trove of ideas and solutions covering digital strategies, work & productivity, maintaining mental well-being, providing social support etc out on the internet, at our disposal. But purely having ideas cannot be the be-all and end-all, for we will get too caught up navigating the advice avalanche.
At the heart of this leadership practice, we need to learn to toggle between the ‘acting and doing’ with adequate balance of ‘pause and regroup’. Looking further outward for smarter and better strategies to execute is not enough, we need to take the opportunity to look deeper inward, for reflection and discernment.
In my personal process of navigating change as an organisational leader, I have deferred to a couple of strategies to keep myself anchored amidst the uncertainty. I have penned these ideas for sharing, and I hope that offers you too, an alternate perspective on how to find balance amidst the ensuing chaos.
1. Derive focus from your core identity
COVID-19 has definitely challenged leaders with fresh waves of information and constraints to respond to on a daily basis. Amidst the chaos and information (check out The Signal and The Noise), we can only sort through the clutter to make swift, decisive, and relevant decisions, if we keep our eye firmly upon our Mission compass. Instead of asking ourselves “what can we do amidst COVID-19?”, the better frame is to explore: “In spite of COVID-19, how do we still attain our mission, albeit differently?”
In our organisation’s response to COVID-19, there were many options that we could have embarked on in doing a part for the community. Serving the development of youths in the community, we could focus on coming up with digital courses, embark on youth assistance projects, laptop distribution efforts, to run campaigns and initiatives online for young people — and the list goes on. It will most certainly keep us very occupied, but what is the longer term impact and value of our work to the community if we say yes to every single idea that comes along?
As an organisation, we chose to take a step back to re-examine our core purpose and our value add to the community we serve, to prioritise where our work could make the most difference (and that we have expertise in, too). Focusing on the core principles of providing meaningful value to our stakeholders allowed us to cut through the clutter at the early onset, and ironically, be more creative to come up with options that will be of impact and value. Check out our Learning Packages initiative that seeks to empower influencers of young people to have ‘teachable moment’ conversations with them, instead of relying on our organisation’s programmes as the sole platform.
As leaders, we need to understand that it’s not always ‘the more the better’. It is sometimes tougher to walk away from what you can do, but a strong decision anchor that aligns with your core identity can give striking clarity and stability amidst uncertainty and crisis.
2. Seeing that People are the Process
Operating in an environment of efficiency and standards, leaders can be really good with structuring strategies, systems, initiatives to bring change, but at the heart of change management in any system is people. People are the process, and you cannot come out of disruptive change, if your people themselves are not part of the change equation.
Beyond organisational adjustments and tactical implementations to cope with COVID-19, leaders need to put ample focus on the welfare of your teams. As your organisation is navigating change, your people are also navigating change — not just in the capacity as employees but also in their capacity as parents, children, siblings, friends, and individuals. The better they are able to adapt to changes smoothly as individuals, the better they are able to adapt to the changing needs within an organisation.
As leaders, we centred a significant part of our organisation’s Business Continuity Planning efforts around strategies to maintain staff welfare and well-being. As we implemented operational plans for work, we also increased our efforts to build in community time and to support our team members through areas of their personal transitions. Ideas like having a virtual pantry, in-house fitness sessions, lunch-time games and a Parent’s Support Group (read more about these initiatives here!) help us rally the team to cope with the challenges of COVID-19 and working from home as a collective, while championing the growth of individuals, as they are supported to work through their own personal challenges.
As leaders, have you been solution-focused or people-focused? Have you been seeing your teams as fellow individuals and reaching out to partner them, as they become your champions for organisational change
3. Pay attention to communicating messages holistically
We know about the pivotal role of communication in managing work and relationships. In tough times like COVID-19, communication gaps within your teams can often get accentuated or extrapolated. Good leaders understand how tension and anxiety can interfere with how the message is being received, and learn to use varied communication strategies to diffuse doubt, worry and confusion that may be present.
In Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, the authors describe difficult conversations as a complex mesh of three conversations between two parties. A What Happened (facts) conversation, a How-I’m-Feeling (emotions) conversation, and a What-Does-This-Say-About-Me (identity) conversation. These layers of conversations are not always verbalised, and they can interfere with how the message is conveyed, received or interpreted. In delivering a message effectively, content alone is not enough.
As we convey complex, tricky or sometimes difficult messages (on potential layoffs, changes in working arrangements, uncertainties ahead etc), leaders ought to also invest time in taking pulse of their team’s emotions and concerns, to ensure that the complex, tricky or difficult messages can be received clearly and effectively.
The path to an effective conversation will not be easy, and will require some patience and grace, in some cases. But with the right conversations happening, it will be a great opportunity to build trust with your team.
As leaders, learn that communications is people business. In adversity, you need to be even more aware of your emotions and identity at play. Theirs, and yours too. Tune in to your team’s pulse to adjust your communications approach accordingly.
4. Bring a positive attitude to the table
Navigating tough times can drain a leader. After all, we’re only human.
Yet, in the midst of prolonged periods of challenge, we sometimes forget that one fundamental role of a leader is also to inspire and be a positive spark in the darkness.
Just as COVID-19 has flipped our lives upside down, it has also been a remarkable catalyst for change, speeding up the rates at which digital implementations have rolled out across multiple sectors and bringing communities (in the form of family units and neighbourhoods) much closer together.
A positive attitude is not an act or front you put up, it is a reflection of the perspective you take on to see the world, a lens that can also be developed and strengthened over time (check out Learned Optimism in the process too!). Leaders do need to know how to see opportunity in challenge, and make a conscious choice to build confidence and hope amidst tough times. As you model this for your team, you also encourage and cultivate similar attitudes in them to face up to crises.
As our organisation continues to make daily connections with youths and their communities, we have even taken this a step further to chart our own internal “Community Response Framework” to capture key positive messages we want to encourage others with. Amidst difficult times for all of us, this framework also serves as a reminder for our team, to continue looking out for the good, to sow in the lives of others. It starts from leaders, and this gets multiplied through the people whom they reach out to.
As leaders, yes you play a part in setting the tone. Good leaders know how to manage their energy and spur goodness in teams by first being the light to those you lead.
At Halogen Foundation, we believe that sustainable transformation and development of young people is focused on what’s within them — their values, beliefs and their potential.
Similarly, in adversity, what gets called out in a leader is what’s inside.
COVID-19 is not going to be over soon, and it will continue to be a period of being stretched out of our comfort zones. While we continue to cope with the impact that this pandemic brings, I hope that leaders will spend time to also nurture what’s within, for us to continue being grounded in our beliefs as we pave the way ourselves and for our teams.
We’ve got quite some more weeks to go. But we’re not going down without a fight. Fortitude. That’s what is called out in crisis.
