Teams Who Re-Launch Together, Perform Together

Cast your mind back to what your life looked like last year at this time. There’s a staggering difference and we could have done without the pain but there’s so much growth and so much promise from hereon too. Even if something traumatic did happen to you and let’s admit it, dramatic as it may sound, most of us have just traversed some type of personal level tragedy be it first hand or by extension, this one is truly a case of “what doesn’t kill you”. The “promise” thing may be hard to imagine as well, in particular, while there’s (still!) no vaccine, people are losing jobs, and we don’t yet know the size of the hole in the economy, but I put it to us that if we focus on our gratitude (and we have plenty to be thankful for when hundreds of thousands of us are not even around anymore!) and on the fundamentals of the wins (having proven the POC of “remote” will allow us to unpack “flexible” and reduce some of the “human debt”; we have a new-found sense of empathy and a willingness to make things better and so on) and then commit to the work ahead, we’ll be just fine. 

Depending on what source you wish to believe, the future of work can look any which way. Articles and talks last week varied widely between “back to the office” to “offices will never be again” and every shade in between. Opinion pieces speculated on what industries will vanish completely and how to recession-proof, etc. It’s anyone’s guess and there are speculative pieces of information and research to support any side of the argument. 

I sent off the manuscript of my book “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teams in the Digital Age” last week and of course, one of the chapters was on the post-pandemic world of work. Needless to say, writing that was incredibly strange. The most surreal part was attempting to imagine not the world as it will look in 3, or 5, or 10 years, that part is relatively clear: technology won’t slow down, we would have bounced back and remote and flexible will be the norm -ideally in healthy and happy teams as well- but what the world will look like at the time that Bloomsbury publishes the book next year. That is the part that’s the hardest to see clearly. And it is that short term future that’s most unsettling for all of us, irrespective of the industry or the position we have. So much has happened that was so fundamentally wrong and hard to comprehend and we’ve expanded so much effort dealing with it, that even if we had put in the work to come out the other side a stable -or even a better- version of ourselves, we are finding it hard to keep that energy up. And sadly now is when we need it the most. 

As I was saying last week, where we need to focus next is on what’s actionable to make a dent in the work we will have to put into our humans at work to make it through the next year or two, and that most actionable part is once more - the dynamic of the team. In tomorrow’s video, we’ll detail some examples of what we’ve seen winning companies practically do, so you can organise your own Team (Re-)Launches so please make sure you steal some of those ideas and do your own.

Admittedly, a Team (Re-)Launch is not a magic wand that will fix all of your employees’ state of mind but it is a sine qua non step in the absence of which you’ll be seeing a serious drop in productivity which has already started to rear its ugly head. 

One of the main reasons why we are doing our best to unload all the tips and ideas we’ve heard of is because we will only keep our free-solution-license-for-2-months-remote-work-and-EQ-training Covid-19 offer out for another month. This is for many reasons - firstly we have to spend more time with our clients with some very exciting new ones added, secondly, we are nearly out of this crisis and we are a scale-up so we ought to stop “subsidising the HR” of various companies and lastly, because we think it’s high time every enterprise stopped shunning investment in their people and minimising human topics as an afterthought and we think that not planning to spend on software or knowledge around that, will only teach organisations they can continue their dismissive attitude towards the topic. We will still keep our 50% off the list price 2020 discount for the rest of the year though, because we know no-one is in a stable economic position. So if you wanted your teams’ Psychological Safety measured and increased even just for the free period, give us a shout in the next month as it will be gone come end of August. 

Meanwhile, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, do yourself a favour and sort out the team re-launches. 

If you’re a CxO reading this, do it for the whole shop. If you lead a team, do it for your bubble only. If you’re just part of a team and not leading it, or running the company, demand one. Ask that your leaders give you that. A space to (virtually) sit down with your teammates, whether they are new or the same ones or even if they are the “remaining” ones and talk about what good looks like in your interactions from hereon and how to make everyone Psychologically Safe and therefore productive. 

Question all the conventions on time and KPIs and find the middle ground. Focus on what matters to you all as a team, as a bubble who will make it through this and will give your very best to it, while not burning out or giving up. Re-affirm your permission to fail, renew your vows to always be honest and courageous. Focus on your “why”s, on your values, on what makes each of you happy. The teams who invest in themselves like this and who then “stay alert” and focused on their people practice, their resilience, their engagement, their learning and growing and above all, their ability to still open up and speak up, will be the ones winning. 

Take a breath if you must - find ways to go away for a few days or simply enjoy a (truly!) work-free staycation- to reconnect and recharge but then get back into it full force and start anew with true promises to each other and a hopeful smile even if it is behind a screen or a mask. 

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Don't send your teams home with a laptop, a Jira and Slack account and a prayer!

Check our COVID-19 Aid offer at www.psychologicalsafety.works/covid-19 or reach out at [email protected] and tell us more about your remote work efforts.