How should a leader prepare themselves and their team for the return to office given that nothing will be the same again. Tips and tricks for getting ready on an individual and team level.
It was difficult for me to write this. Not because I cannot come up with a few ideas about what a leader could do for their team, and not because the steps that they could take are not clear to me. I will provide the details below. It was difficult because, if we analyse the current situation from a bird’s eye view, I do not know what we are going back to.
Here are a few details about the current situation:
The traffic is better
We can work from home, many times more efficiently
The price of oil decreased
Children spend more time with their parents
Parents take care of their children, cook for them, eat together
We can have business meetings online, without having to wander around the city
Business travelling in other countries for a day to take part in a meeting has been replaced pretty quickly by virtual meetings, with significantly lower costs
We are more careful about our hygiene, we wash our hands more frequently and with greater care
We care more about others, we find the time to think about those who matter to us and call them
Doctors, teachers and scientists have become more important, appreciated in this society where they were forgotten
We no longer have that frantic need to keep up with the trends, to buy and buy again
Therefore, many of the things that seemed normal before are no longer relevant now. We change the way we look at things, other things matter now.
We can say that if we change our perspective we change our experience – it is a principle that underpins the cognitive behavioural theory that people maintain their endurance, bringing to the surface the inner resources against adversity.
Thus, we can analyse what we can learn from this. Do we want to go back to the ‘normal’ before or do we want to think about what we go back to?
I think many will not want to go back but will want a different normality, maybe more flexible, more concentrated on true values, more relaxed, based more on the output of value for all the parties involved.
At the same time, there will be many who would want to hold on to the system that existed before. In this context, it is good to redefine our roles.
What will not fundamentally change is human nature. We are social animals, we have the need to meet, to hug, to touch. Those aspects will be prohibited for a while but will not disappear.
Having said that, here are a few steps that I recommend:
- The leader should put on the oxygen mask first. This means that it is better to take care of your anxieties first, in order to manage the ones from others.
We talk a lot about how a leader should be, and we get the impression that we are wonderful. There is a big discrepancy, many times, between how we perceive ourselves and who we are in fact, or what face we show to our teams. This is accentuated the higher the power the leader has, and the higher the position in the organization. There is also a large discrepancy between what we say and what we do, many leaders ‘don’t walk the talk’, they do not do what they expect from others to do.
What could help here is 360 or even 720 feedback ( meaning it should include not only the professional environment but also friends and family), a coach who will make the leader look in the mirror from time to time.
Leaders are containers for all the anxieties from the company in this period. They need to have genuine conversations with their people, to ensure a safe psychological environment. The question is: who contains them? That is why I consider to be critical for a leader to have an executive coach, a best friend, the same way Pinocchio had Jiminy Cricket.
I would suggest for the leader to pay attention: everyone is super sensitive, emotionally charged. There are many situations that can escalate due to the low tolerance in this period.
In 1955, at a Formula 1 race on the Le Mans circuit, a Mercedes racer had a moment of inattention, he lost control of the car after a turn and killed more than 80 people. Behind him, at approximately 350 meters before the turn, the previous world champion was approaching. He was used to people cheering for him, awaiting his arrival. However, he noticed that the spectators were looking in the opposite direction. He figured that something was wrong and stopped immediately before the turn, losing the race but avoiding another crash. The attention to what seemed as an insignificant detail saved his life.
The leader’s attention to details, to what is beyond people’s words, will be extremely helpful in understanding human emotions and adapting to them. I suggest that the weekly meetings should take place virtually, so that they can see each other.
- The leader should show others how to put on their masks
Analysing yourself, working with yourself, represents only the first step. The leader puts on the oxygen masks in order to help others to the best of their abilities. Therefore, some of the steps that could be taken into consideration are:
To communicate with people – I would say that the manager should communicate much more than usual. Everyone is super stressed. They fear that they might lose their jobs, but first of all, they fear for their health and those dear to them. Basic needs, physiological and of security, come first now. For a manager it is good to understand those things, to communicate with the people in their team, to ask them how they feel, to listen to them.
To be transparent with the team – by this I mean being open regarding the firm’s situation. It is better to treat people as adults, rather than believe they would not understand some situations and try to hide reality.
To show empathy – I have friends who tell me about managers who do not care about them, who behave badly, sending them dozens of messages, even during holidays, they control how much time they stay online, talk aggressively. This is not the time for such a behaviour. On the contrary, it is time we reveal our side of a leader, of light, of compassion, of understanding. A good manager must be able to manage different stances necessary in different contexts. People expect from the manager to understand them now, to guide them, to give them space, confidence, to simplify processes, to understand what is useful, important, and what is just ‘another document, another Excel or ppt’ no one will look at.
To show vulnerability and to accept vulnerability from others – I would suggest that managers show a bit of vulnerability, especially now. However, I recommend vulnerability in medium doses, as people might get scared if they see their manager crying or fearful.
To give people hope – Napoleon said that leaders are the merchants of hope. I believe that a good leader is the one who in spite of difficulties, of contextual adversities, in spite of daily activities, is capable of rising above the challenge, watching everything as if it is a show, sitting on the balcony, rethinking the scene, rethinking the directing, so that the show would be worthy of an Oscar.
Be fair and tell the team that the future is uncertain for all who strive together to rebuild it. We all know that we have no predictability.
- The leader should prepare the space where people will return:
To ensure that they can work at an adequate distance from one another
To provide the disinfecting measures for common spaces: the office, kitchen, toilets, hallways, meeting rooms, lifts
To create a flexible schedule, so that those who come to and leave the office do not bump into each other
To ensure that the air conditioning filters are replaced often, in order to have better air quality in the office
To provide masks for those who go to the office
To allow people to work from home if they want to and can
To clarify what everyone must do, at what standard and until when
To have small teams for projects
To continue to have virtual or hybrid meetings, physical and virtual
I think that medium term, office spaces should be redesigned, for employees to keep their distance from one another
The schedule should be rethought, so that not everyone is at the office at the same time
To make a checklist with things to follow to ensure that everyone follows hygiene and distancing rules:
To do when they leave home and are on the way (what people should pay attention to) – it is not like they do not know, but it acts as a reminder, so it becomes a routine
To do at the office
To do from the office to home
Maybe it seems trivial to write in these lists that someone has to wear a mask and change it every few hours; that the mask is removed by pulling the elastic behind the ear, not from the front. The idea with this list is that when we relax there is a very high risk of not paying attention to details, of making mistakes.