In the coronavirus crisis, working conditions are changing at an unprecedented speed. There is no longer right and wrong – only a world running in emergency mode. Management consultant Maarika Lember writes about how, as a leader, to stay in the saddle in such uncertain conditions, guide your employees and also support them.
Today’s world is described with the acronym VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity). COVID-19 has turned people’s lives upside down. Although it is often expected of a leader, in these conditions it is not possible for one person to know and notice everything.
To achieve the best results, cooperation is needed, but even so the risk of mistakes is very, very high. It is said that there are no mistakes, only experiences to learn from. But as people we find this hard to apply, because the need to learn competes with the need for safety. If the environment isn’t safe enough, there is no courage to make mistakes. And so there is a paradox within leaders, and in fact within all other employees too – finding new solutions requires experimenting and making mistakes, but the general uncertainty doesn’t favour it. There is no longer any knowledge of what is right, because the whole world seems to be running in emergency mode.
Mistakes are human and allowed
None of us wants to look incompetent, which is why we tend to hush up all our mistakes. We mostly learn this in our childhood home and at school, where people tried to mould us into proper citizens: “Please do it right!”, “Wrong answer!”, “You mustn’t do that!”, “How can you not know such a simple thing?” and so on.
To adults, the purpose of these commands and prohibitions seems self-evident, but not to a child. If a child doesn’t understand the point of a prohibition, they carry on with their previous behaviour on instinct, but try to mask it from then on to escape unpleasant judgements. Over time, this behaviour becomes an unconscious pattern that is carried over into working life. In a work environment, however, hushing up mistakes can have serious consequences.
For example, a head of department sends a customer an offer from which, in the salesperson’s view, one important aspect has been left out. The salesperson thinks to themselves that the head surely knows what they are doing, and perhaps it is they who have misunderstood something. So they decide to stay quiet. The customer gets an offer that doesn’t meet their needs, and no order comes. If the salesperson had felt confident enough to express their opinion, they might have chosen to speak up instead of staying silent, and the sale would have happened.
Companies and leaders now face a serious challenge. What should they do, and how, to help employees break out of habits formed over a lifetime? How can they encourage them to notice, think along and speak up? How can they get them to weigh different ways and take calculated risks?
On the one hand, this requires creating a safe and supportive environment where making mistakes is allowed, and on the other, believing in people, empowering them and giving them enough freedom to decide and take responsibility.
The leader’s role is to create an environment where employees’ potential shows
Carly Fiorina, former chair of Hewlett-Packard, defines four main functions of leadership that make it possible to unlock and use people’s potential.
- A vision and meaning of work that people understand and find inspiring. Where are we heading, and why there? The leader’s role is to bring an understanding of the meaning of their work to every employee. This must be done continuously, bringing people evidence of the impact of their work and linking it to their personal values. At least once a year, a leader could review with their team: o Where are we today? o Where do we want to get to? o How will we know we have got there? o How does this relate to personal ambitions?
- Structure and systems that clearly support the company’s goal and aspirations, while also being in line with the needs of both employees and customers.
- Metrics. How do we define success? We get what we measure. Despite gripping goals and supportive systems, it may all not work if we regularly measure completely different things.
- Behaviour. Everyday behaviour matters more than words. If quality is one of the organisation’s values, but at the end of the quarter the sales figures are lower than expected and strong pressure is put on the sales department, so that salespeople can no longer ensure the quality of the projects they sell, people get a strong message that quality no longer matters.
Most of what Carly Fiorina considers important in a leader’s work falls under the concept of organisational culture. Leaders’ everyday behaviour is where organisational culture is reflected most strongly. It is this that most strongly determines both employees’ joy at work and their performance. In addition to supporting and recognising, leaders have a duty to raise unpleasant topics, ask difficult questions and be consistently demanding, while acting on jointly agreed principles and norms of behaviour.
Recommendations for leaders so that employees feel supported
What can a leader do every day so that people feel secure, want to take responsibility and cope easily with change? Amy Edmondson has studied employees’ psychological safety at work in depth and points out three main areas of focus that leaders can use to create a trusting environment at work.
- Framing the work. On the one hand, this means dealing with the meaningfulness of the work – everyone knows what we do here and why. On the other hand, it also includes constantly reminding employees that today’s world is full of uncertainty and change, and so work can also involve a lot of uncertainty, which can be hard to bear. But that is normal. We support each other and we know why we do it.
- Create as much clarity as is in your power. Clarity is an important component that reduces anxiety and makes attitudes towards change more positive. No one has long-term clarity right now. But if we have decided what our focus is for this week, expressing it clearly in words gives people a lot of confidence. Highlighting the goal or focus activity of the day also helps. And so every day, day after day. Say what you know and can say.
- Modelling the desired behaviour. As a leader, admit your mistakes and point out what you have learned from them and how they affected you. Admit when you are confused or don’t have enough information. Use it as an opportunity to ask employees for input: “I may have missed something here. I need your help and opinion.” Ask questions and involve all members of your team.
- Recognise and thank. Thank those who came up with a good idea. Recognise those who had the courage to raise a difficult topic, and point out what its impact was. When you notice behaviour in line with the company’s values, recognise the employee for it and also point out why that behaviour mattered. An everyday “thank you”, even for the small activities written in the job description (compiling a report, organising a business lunch and so on), is basic courtesy and a sign of respect and esteem.
These are just a few thoughts you can start consciously trying out right away. For many successful leaders, such behaviours come very naturally. They have an inner belief that people do things with the best intentions, and so they are sincerely interested in how things came to be the way they are. They ask questions, listen carefully and understand the person’s point of view, but don’t judge. Such leaders think about solutions together with employees as equals, which is why employees are involved, feel responsible and also cope more easily with change.
About the author: Maarika Lember is an HR management practitioner who has worked for more than 20 years as a consultant and coach, advising various companies on shaping a supportive organisational culture.
