Five Key Challenges in Crisis Leadership
COVID-19 crisis has created significant management challenges for leaders. Here are five common issues we are hearing from our clients and practical tips for addressing them
Employees have more meetings than ever before and risk reunion fatigue.
Before scheduling, ask yourself: Do we really need to have this meeting? Could it be a call or an email instead?
Take a break from video meetings and hold some meetings over the phone. Video is more taxing on the brain and leads to more meeting fatigue. (See article on Zoom fatigue here)
Even better, hold ‘walking meetings’ where employees are on their phones but able to walk while they talk. A Stanford University study concluded that walking meetings increase creativity and produce more new ideas and perspectives.
Schedule meetings to run 45 mins - not the default hour - to avoid back-to-back scheduling and allow time to follow up on action items.
Agree on “meeting-free” time slots or days with your team.
Employees need clear norms and expectations around communication.
Establish rules around video use. The person who has turned off their video is out of sight and likely out of mind. If someone is avoiding video, find out why and offer solutions, if possible.
Clarify expectations for response times to texts, calls and emails, taking into account team members’ personal constraints (i.e. young children at home) that might prevent them from responding as quickly as they used to.
Also, let people know it is okay if the dog barks or the toddler cries in the background during the meeting. Meetings are now judgement-free zones.
Employees are having difficulty letting go of previous business and strategic priorities and not making the necessary shifts to accommodate the new priorities.
Over-communicate new business and strategic priorities. You may think you have made this clear, but employees are more distracted than ever--repeat the message until it feels awkward! Patrick Lencioni says employees need to hear a message 7 times before they retain it!
Explain the rationale for the shift and clarify what people should and shouldn't be working on.
Employees risk burnout due to the new pace and structure of work.
Encourage employees to pace themselves; this “new normal” may last longer than people originally thought.
If someone needs their load lightened, and doing so doesn’t impact works in progress, then give them a temporary breather.
Employees are impacted by COVID in different ways, and may not always share their personal challenges with colleagues or superiors.
Invest the time and energy on purely personal check-ins with each team member and check everyone’s motivation temperatures.
Understand everyone’s work-from-home circumstances. Young team members may have roommate issues; others may have family who lost their jobs. Such concerns can adversely affect interest and performance.