Leaders: Forget About Normal, Focus on New Norms

I’ve found myself wincing at the word “normal” lately. 

There are two phrases in particular that make me concerned that leaders aren’t doing the work needed to prepare our teams for the path ahead: “back to normal” and “the new normal.”

The first assumes that we are just in a temporary holding pattern and that eventually, everything is going to snap back to the way it was. The second assumes that our current state has somehow reached a level of stability that we’ve all comfortably adjusted to.

It seems clearer each day that we won’t be going back to normal any time soon. Even as the shelter-in-place orders start to lift, our workplaces are not going to feel “normal” for a long awhile. Just about every state government is stressing a slow and phased emergence from the global quarantine. Whatever comes next is still going to look and feel very different from where we were just a few months ago.

Even really great leaders can’t make everything normal when reality is so far from it. Normal happens on its own eventually.

Leaders can’t make normal happen. But they can cultivate norms.

At the heart of every team is a set of norms—the rules that define how we normally communicate, set goals, deal with conflict, clarify and assign roles, etc.

As a culture coach and advisor, I can tell you, that no two organizations have the same set of norms. Every team has a unique system at work—it’s the invisible current that pushes productive teams forward and sends dysfunctioning teams into a swirl.

A primary task of leadership at any time is to assemble a strong set of team norms by which a team operates. An event like the pandemic is sure to up-end the basic operations of just about any team, and many leaders are starting to see that they can’t just reconstruct the same old scaffolding of team norms that they had before. 

The new reality is forcing teams to change how they interact, how they discuss and make decisions, how they set goals, how they build trust, how they give feedback, how they deal with conflict, how they hold themselves accountable, and how they collaborate.

At Employee Strategies, we’ve been helping leaders get clear about the norms that drive how their teams operate for 15. We’re already partnering with leaders to help them assess their teams and reset their cultures for the next phase of recovery. On May 13, we’ll be digging into the topic during our weekly Goat Rodeo Coffee Conversation. 

The Goat Rodeo Coffees are a virtual gathering of leaders from across the region meeting to talk about the messier side of leadership.

If you’d like to join us on May 13 or for any of the other Goat Rodeo Coffee sessions, you may register at www.esinc.mn/grcoffee.

If you’d like to chat about assessing your team’s effectiveness and preparedness for the Great Reset, drop us a line at [email protected].

Normal may be hard to come by these days. But effective teamwork doesn’t need to be.