Leading in a Crisis: the Emotional Edge
The COVID-19 crisis has created a new reality, both at home and at work. Many of us have already been forced to adapt to new situations and take on new responsibilities — homeschooling children, setting-up a home office, working remotely for the first time — all while coping with the stress of an uncertain future. These changes are impacting us emotionally, compromising our ability to focus-on and work-through challenges effectively.
As leaders, we have a crucial role to play during these hard times. We need to find ways to regulate our emotions and the emotions of others. We need to cultivate resilience within ourselves and among those we lead so that we can continue to be productive and keep our jobs secure.
Here is some leadership advice for maintaining your own health and wellbeing and helping others to do the same during this difficult time.
Learn to regulate your emotions
Keeping track of the news during a crisis can be useful. Staying informed and up-to-date on local and regional public health directives helps us and our families stay safe. However, when we take in distressing information around the clock it can overload our system with unproductive stress. The longer we spend in this stress-state, the harder it is for us to break out of it and the harder it is to respond to challenges rationally.
Most people know this intuitively, but research in the field of neuroscience confirms it. When we are in a state of alarm, or when we experience fear, our effective I.Q. drops significantly, preventing us from being productive, much less creative. The good news is there are many simple strategies to help you spend less time in this state of mind.
Shift your thinking around remote work
More and more companies are sending employees home to work remotely. Luckily, we have the technology to stay connected and productive at a distance. Still, working remotely poses a unique set of challenges when it comes to communication. Consider taking the following actions:
Give clear, realistic direction, and set achievable goals
There is an unproven belief that when your team is working remotely, you need to manage them more closely. This is not necessarily true. There is no need to micromanage your employees. Instead, empower them, and trust them with their work task. Provide clear direction and all the information they need to be successful remotely. For example, you may want to set up micro-goals to give people a sense of accountability and accomplishment. This will motivate the team and eliminate the need for daily checking-in that may undermine their confidence.
Stay connected
It is essential for regulation and motivation that you stay connected with your team. These connections do not have to be long; they can be simple, three-minute conversations. If possible, try using video chat platforms such as FaceTime, WhatsApp, or Skype. Studies have shown that both conversation and visual interaction can help regulate people as they can see facial expressions, sense emotions, and better read reactions to what is being said.
By staying connected, you can provide relational regulation that can reassure people and help them continue to be motivated and productive.
Another useful connection tool is chat-groups or -rooms. By providing a chatroom for the team to use, you can help them interact continuously and give them a sense of connectedness throughout the day.
Cultivate a new daily rhythm
Allow for more flexibility when it comes to work schedules. It’s important for your team members to be able to take breaks and do some regulating activities throughout the day. They may also be working near family and need to engage in home activities. At the same time, structure is important for emotional wellbeing, especially in uncertain times. Schedule core hours for work and some predictable meeting times to provide structure for your team. A combination of flexibility and consistency will help them as adjust to remote work and create a new daily rhythm.
Provide resources proactively
Another way to help your team adapt during this period of rapid change is to provide concrete resources before they’re needed. Many organizations are distributing tip-sheets and information about expectations to employees transitioning to a non-traditional work environment. Some are offering educational materials about managing distractions and setting boundaries between work-life and home-life while working from home. Some have even designed dedicated programs to orient their people to working remotely. The more we can prepare our employees, the more positive their experience will be in these new conditions.
What we’re doing
At Kintla, we’re helping our clients cope with stress and uncertainty as they adjust to the new reality of the workplace. Our team has been working with businesses to build resilience among their employees and to help leaders learn and use resilience-building as part of their daily operating rhythms.
During our learning experiences, leaders find out how the brain functions under stress and discover strategies for increasing their awareness- and management-of emotional triggers. They also learn and practice emotional regulation skills to reduce their own reactivity, to reduce the reactivity of others, and to maintain high-level thinking, even under stress. Kintla’s unique language around these concepts helps people talk about how they are coping (e.g. by expressing where they are among a range of emotional zones) and how they are regulating in terms their team-members can quickly understand and respond to.
As the COVID-19 crisis evolves, we are helping some of our clients look ahead and prepare for their people to return to work in a changed world. We believe that a combination of resilience-building actions in the near-term and strategic planning for the future will be critical for the success of all businesses. Now, more than ever, we must learn new ways of relating to one another and working together.
Visit us at kintla.io to learn more about our work and our approach.
