Suffering from pandemic performance anxiety? These five steps will help.

In March, Josh Steele and I wrote about leadership in an upside-down world. We’re still there and we don’t know when things will right themselves. So how do you manage performance when there’s no certainty about tomorrow, let alone begin to define the ‘right’ performance plan for six months or a year’s time?

The answer is there’s no easy answer.

You may have been flat out running an essential service during the pandemic. Or you’ve had to make the hard decision to let people go because there’s no work for them. Or you’re facing the challenge of having to re-imagine how you’ll do business. While none of this has been simple, there are five steps leaders can take as we reset and think about performance differently during the turbulence and after it subsides.

1. Build trust through words and actions

The good news is not everything is uncertain when it comes to performance. In this series of leadership articles on setting a strong tone at the top, we have emphasised the importance of building trust through open, honest communication, role modelling the standards you want to see and empowering people to contribute.

Time and time again, the Edelman Trust Barometer reinforces the importance of employers as a trusted source of information for their people. Just as trusted leadership was the biggest single factor to alleviate the effects of uncertainty following the 9/11 attacks, during the current crisis, the power of employer communication to make people feel safe and provide direction has come to the forefront. We now trust our employer more than any other source of information about the virus.

Showing your people that you care about them through your words and actions will go a long way to build an environment of trust and ensure they feel that someone has their back. When your people feel safe, comfortable and in control they’ll be better equipped to focus on getting back to business, whatever that looks like.

2. Double down on purpose

According to McKinsey, the pandemic is a wake-up call for organisations to get serious about their purpose and the value they bring to their people and society.

Things are messy and we’re busy taking action in the short term to help our organisations recover. But focusing people on working with a common mission or purpose remains a critical factor in positively impacting employee engagement and, in turn, performance outcomes. Purpose is also being used as a filter for decision-making, according to research by Porter Novelli/Cone, with the majority of Gen Zers using it as a consideration in where to work and what to buy. 

People have been at home for months, re-assessing what matters to them and how they want to live and work on the ‘other side’ of the crisis. Gallup research, for example, shows three in five US workers who have been working from home would prefer to continue to work remotely once health restrictions are lifted. Online sales of bread makers, weight training equipment and even ping pong sets have skyrocketed as people have sought to get in touch with their inner baker, get fit and enjoy activities with their families.   

People don’t necessarily want to return to the way things were before the onset of the pandemic, but how their employers behaved through the crisis and the recovery will still matter.

Organisations are taking steps to make a difference. Walmart has committed $25 million to support the global COVID-19 response effort in the US and internationally. AT&T is offering a service discount for first responders and public safety workers. Walgreens has updated its attendance policy supporting hourly workers to stay home to look after children or if they’re unwell. If you want to retain talent, now is the time to double down on organisational purpose and anchor your actions to it.  

3. Empower your people

We may not know what the new standards will be for post-pandemic performance, but it’s no reason to stand still. We can empower our people and help them feel more in control by focusing on short-term actions and introducing routine to create some stability while we ride the waves.

My old employer, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), ran daily telephone briefings by the CEO, Shayne Elliott, in the early days of the pandemic. Thousands of staff would join the calls, during which Shayne would be joined by an external medical expert, providing a clear voice on what employees needed to do to stay safe and look after customers. These calls are now weekly and are increasingly focused on actions that are about running the business. In ANZ’s Technology team, staff whose normal work and access was reduced, were given the option to focus on their learning and become an AWS Cloud Practitioner in a week. Together, these activities and many more helped ANZ people feel in control, safe and relevant in an uncertain environment, better enabling them to perform.

4. Pay it forward

People’s memories are long. In a time of uncertainty how and why you make decisions about what you’re doing matters to your people, your customers and the community.

Leaders who come across as transactionally focused or self-serving during recovery will not do themselves or their organisations any favours.

 When Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky cut a quarter of his workforce in April, he went into great detail to explain how he’d arrived at the decision and outlined the extensive support that would be provided to departing teammates. Since then, Chesky has launched an Alumni Talent Directory and re-directed a number of the company’s recruiters to help displaced Airbnb people find new jobs.

Instead of worrying about the non-compete agreements of people leaving or cutting them loose, Chesky decided it was more important to make a genuine effort to help displaced teammates get back on their feet. By the middle of May, the directory had been viewed 350,000 times and workers were being approached about jobs.

5. Reset digital workplaces and mindsets

Forced to work from home, people have discovered a different way of getting things done. Forward-thinking leaders are already resetting the terms for the future of work so we can retain what’s been positive from the chaos. Twitter and Square are good early examples of this, with their CEOs telling people they can work from home forever if they want to. 

The transition from the office to home hasn’t been easy, as we learn the lesson that turning on the technology is just the beginning of the shift to a permanent world of distributed work.

To power performance, leaders will need to do more to cultivate their digital workplaces, including building people’s confidence and capability to work in visible ways; investing in roles such as community managers to better facilitate real work online; and rewarding the behaviours we need to encourage and sustain work in a virtual world, such as breaking down silos to enable multi-directional conversation and collaboration.

Survival of the fittest leader

You may be wondering what’s happening to the traditional performance management cycle in organisations in this environment. Anecdotally, I’m seeing some organisations are parking some formal processes for now, instead encouraging people leaders to engage more frequently and organically with their team members about business outcomes. In any case, history has always shown us that if the outcome of your performance review is a complete surprise, then something’s gone awry. Pandemic or not, the best conversations about performance are the ongoing ones. 

Leading through this crisis has not been for the faint-hearted so far and no one knows when we’ll hit smooth waters. Resilient, agile leaders who can make a wholesale shift in mindset from managing for an old world to a new one – as uncertain and full of course corrections as that may be – will be more successful in driving performance than those who cannot. 

As we come out of hibernation and begin to re-imagine the world of work, park your performance anxiety and be confident that helping your people feel safe, in control and prepared to put one foot in front of the other is the right thing to do and enough to take care of performance right now.

Clean, simple leadership ideas for a messy, muddled world

Once upon a time, a right-brained Australian (Rita Zonius) and a left-brained American (Josh Steele) met on a long trip from the US to Australia (remember flying?). They started chatting about good leaders, bad leaders and what makes them so. Over the course of several conversations, they agreed that the next wave of leaders and influencers is operating by a different playbook. Enjoy their functional ideas for leading in a dysfunctional world.