The Path to Recovery (4-Part Series): People Leadership Post COVID-19
Shari Angle
As an HR Strategist, I help companies align their people and business goals for success today and tomorrow.
The Path to Recovery (4-Part Series): People Leadership Post COVID-19 #StrongerOnTheOtherSide
Being a People Leader for a Great Workplace can be challenging during these times - not just developing the foundations for growth, but also successfully navigating the crisis and the recovery period.
Many People leaders better thrive in times of peace and growth, and the reality is that plenty desperately struggle during crisis situations. Empathy, caring and compassion can be draining, take an emotional toll and cause unresolved conflicts.
During crisis management, leaders are expected to make decisions quickly, with little knowledge or insight into the outcome of those decisions, all while taking care of employees and managing their own personal demands. The burden is great and the support is limited.
Our intention is to help leaders effectively manage their workforce, and their own mental health, throughout the crisis situation and beyond. We will do this by investigating and providing intervention techniques to:
- Understand the path to exhaustion in order to prevent and restore leadership fatigue and burnout;
- Prevent decision making paralysis without the need to suppress emotions; and
- Address isolation in leadership by deepening your relationship with inner resources and fostering high trust external relationships.
(Chart - Path Of Leadership COVID19: Organizations are now forced down and each period brings with it unique decision making requirements, pressures, people impacts and opportunity for failure. The pressure that the transition period has caused on leaders is tremendous. It requires crisis management.)
It can be a very challenging time during a period of crisis and many People leaders who have chosen to embark on that path to create a great workplace can easily fall from the graces.
Our purpose isn’t to stop the fall - that train has already left for many. Rather, it’s about how to transform you and your organization out of it, leaving you stronger on the other side.
The Reactionary Crisis Period - BEING FORCED TO REACT
Stay at home legislative mandates were imposed to prevent a capacity meltdown of the healthcare system. Main Street businesses were shut down. The marketplace is on a free fall. Managing a public health crisis situation has directly caused a financial recession and sky-rocketing unemployment.
People leaders and HR Professionals; like doctors, nurses and medical professionals, are now on the front lines, providing safety, security and emotional support to people in their organizations.
For many this has meant:
- Rapidly implementing work from home processes to keep your teams engaged and productive;
- Right Sizing the organization and quickly navigating crisis decisions to prioritize those that are essential to the core business;
- Move from a growth and optimistic position, even if that might mean just maintaining the struggle, and now managing the overwhelming shock;
- Establishing new reaction and recovery priorities and forming new teams; and
- Short term quick decisions in the moment and foregoing the consequences that might violate your core beliefs and values.
No amount of positive thinking and silver lining can ignore that fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a crippling blow for many, even if it’s temporary.
It has undoubtedly changed the way we look at work and life. An unprecedented time where no level of contingency planning could have prepared us for this.
As a result, many of us are experiencing our instinctive fight or flight mechanism and it has caused a tremendous toll on our mental and emotional health while we navigate a period with no clear end in sight.
Depending on your available mental and emotional capacity - or your level of psychological resilience, that could easily translate into traumatic stress during this crisis and more importantly, after everything has settled. This also applies to anyone in your organization.
Chart - The HR Paths of Great Companies During the Pandemic
Resilient Growth Organizations
If you’re an organization that has prepared for rapidly evolving changes, this is a perfect time to battle test your culture.
Having deep cash reserves, long sales cycles and project runways, little quarterly pressures and an existing successful work from home culture are probably amongst some of the conditions that would help you adapt calmly and carry forward.
Keeping calm, patient and giving space for you and your teams to orientate and regulate their relationships, family and life is key. Supporting your organization and the community in need will help to support and uplift everyone you touch.
However, it doesn’t mean you're invulnerable.
Acknowledge all the healthy and positive habits, count and share them to appreciate and reinforce all the positive actions.
But what happens when grit and resilience is not enough?
Stability to Reactionary
For most other organizations, there has been a natural regression into survival mode. Uncertainty, fear and anxiety will be the leading emotions.
That’s why many HR leaders and professionals have rapidly responded to the situation to accommodate physical distancing mandates.
In-office good practices are either lost or translated to a virtual environment.
Those that have been waiting for the day to work flexibly at home now face the struggles between the blurred lines of home life and work. Some people are experiencing shock; while it will temporarily re-adjust, it opens the chance of post traumatic stress to surface when all the volatility normalizes.
Coping strategies are recommended by all the experts, bolstered with empathy and compassion during these troubling times.
Self-care, sleep, and exercise, followed by binging Netflix, drinking a little, loosening the rules for productivity, snacking on those potato chips and foods of comfort, right?
It’s like going through a loss or breakup and indulging to find some inner peace.
However it’s unsustainable and a slippery slope as unhealthy behaviours can harden very quickly into habits as the current pandemic environment supports and rewards it.
Reactionary Stuck
This pandemic has created a “pattern interrupt” in the day to day work-trance that keeps us feeling normal, safe and comfortable.
So whether your mental health has been humming well or you already have been in survival mode, crisis leadership is demanding and puts us into a fight or flight way of thinking and behaving.
This can be especially tough for those who haven’t experienced harsh challenges before and lack the muscle memory for it. As a consequence, it increases stress and lowers our immune function, which coupled with our public health crisis makes it a dangerous recipe for our well being.
Being adaptive and resilient is crucial during this time, but with an unclear and changing environment, it sets an unsustainable expectation where it’s difficult for our mental and emotional well being to cope for extended periods of time.
Building character through sustained growth is much less painful than through trauma. This is where patience and foresight can make or break this pandemic experience.
It’s no secret that attempting to paint a positive future during this uncertain and erratic time is as accurate as looking through a crystal ball. Whether that means re-opening the workplace, sales forecasting, adhering to project deadlines, hiring, traveling and operational cash flow; it’s a confusing time for many businesses.
This pain, uncertainty and loss of predictability is a cause for high stress and anxiety that can lead to fatigue, burnout, overwhelm and sudden decision making paralysis within a few months.
So how do you not get stuck after falling from the graces?
Make it a proactive effort to assess the health, safety and mental well being of your organization during this time. This can be done by simply reaching out to each person in your organization, checking in and offering support, and sending out pulse or engagement related surveys.
The goal is to first identify the scope of the problem. If there has already been a baseline assessment pre-COVID, you can compare it with the new results to learn if it’s a growing problem.
As leaders, we have a responsibility, for the success of our organizations, and also, for the success of the teams. The health, safety and mental well being of those that entrust us as their leader is a significant obligation. Taking time to assess this is both an empathetic and necessary leadership responsibility.
Below are some clues that you or your team might be at risk.
- Consistently missing deadlines and/or decreased quality of work
- Increased absenteeism
- Change in demeanour
- Decrease in motivation
- Increased irritability and anxiety
- Brain fog and mental fatigue
- Sudden and more frequent emotional outbursts
- Poor quality of sleep
With the collected data, it can be used to inform and respond accordingly to the mental and emotional health and well being needs during the recovery period.
Responsive Transformation
Like all great leaders, everyone is doing what they can to support those they can.
For us, it’s helping to support People and HR leaders navigate the recovery of the crisis, while you are on the front lines compassionately uplifting your organization.
- So what are some areas to prepare for as things feel seemingly in better control?
- How do we ensure that the issues caused by this pandemic don’t permanently sink in and become part of your operating culture?
- How can we be stronger on the other side?
Read the next part of this series to learn how to: Recover from Leadership Fatigue and Burnout in the Workplace
=========================
This piece was a co-written piece by Shari Angle and Duncan So.
About Shari Angle and Loft Consulting
Shari Angle is a foremost expert in talent management and leadership development. Her purpose is to inspire invested leaders beyond traditional success and satisfaction to true purpose and personal fulfillment.
Shari brings 20 years of Human Resources experience, with more than a decade of those at the executive level. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honours Sociology from Western University and a post-graduate diploma in Human Resources Management from Humber College. Shari has experience working directly within a large, multinational service organization, as well as a mid-size, growth-focused transportation company. Her skills and knowledge base are transferable between organization, industry, and leadership level.
Shari’s work is grounded in her personal experience as a leader and VP of Human Resources. Her focus is on aligning strong talent and leadership practices with a company’s vision and strategic focus. Shari’s clients experience a relationship that is founded on trust, expertise, and results.
About Duncan So and The Burnout Clinic
Duncan So, Founder & Executive Director at The Burnout Clinic. Duncan has been a child of corporate burnout that has led him professionally into the field of human flourishing for over a decade working on . He’s a social entrepreneur and change agent, on a mission to create a more passionate world building systems and programs for companies and communities on the path of making social good. His skills and specialties include systemic change leadership and mobilizing communities of change in the areas of #futureofWork #futureofEducation #futureofPhilanthropy #futureofMoney on various social change projects.
Board Certified with the Association of Integrative Psychology. A Master Practitioner in Mental Emotional Release, NLP and Hypnosis. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Sciences, Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.
At the Burnout Clinic, we help HR Leaders and Entrepreneurs develop and integrate burnout intervention programs within their organization. Our flagship 2-day burnout intervention program stops the cycle of high anxiety, fatigue, creative slumps, and burnout, and rapidly returns leaders back happy, productive and creatively engaged at work.