Why Waiting for Things to Settle Is Costing You Momentum

As NZ transitions to Level 2 and people head back to offices, many leaders are keen to make up for lost time after the four-plus week interruption. Some also believe that with COVID behind them, things will revert to how they were before.

I'd ask you to spare a thought for the people on your team who have been grinding through four weeks of high intensity and stress, adjusting to new circumstances outside the office while managing all manner of personal pressures. I don't believe any reversion is coming. There is, though, a real opportunity to re-engage your team, help them adjust, and set them up to perform.

This idea keeps coming back to me. Many executives and senior leaders have been in feverish planning meetings dealing with lockdown, getting through it, and getting out of it. Like riding white water rapids down a river. A river only flows in one direction, downstream. Calmer water doesn't mean you're back where you started before the rapids. You're somewhere else, surrounded by a different landscape.

Your team members have been at home working through family, partner, logistical and mental health challenges, all while trying to maintain a level of perceived productivity, real or otherwise. Some have a reasonable picture of what their leaders have been considering over the last six weeks. Others have had little to zero visibility.

Now lockdown is over, many of them are thinking: "I've got to go back to the office. Put work clothes on again. Commute." And probably much more besides.

Working from home was stressful and tiring for many. Coming back will also be stressful and tiring, because it's another change to their norms and requires a transition. There will also be some who fear walking in and hearing their leader say, "You've been off for four weeks, let's just get back into it, we've got a month to make up for." The words might not land exactly like that, but the imagined implication, and the sense that their effort has been overlooked, sits high on their anxiety radar.

Like a good white water rafting coach, you might want to check in and make sure everyone made it through unscathed. Some may have been exhilarated, others terrified. Some may have swallowed water and need immediate assistance. Take that pause.

Good leaders will also be holding space for the emotional strain employees have experienced alongside the fiscal impacts on the business, whether that's in a group setting or one on one. Ask your team members to reflect on what they experienced during lockdown. It gives both you and them greater insight into their level of resilience or fragility before you push back into delivery. Run that reflection as a structured conversation and give your team the questions in advance. My current reflection and one to one templates sit in the free resources library, including four simple questions to sharpen your one on ones.

Employee well-being has taken a hit during COVID

There has never been a more important time for leaders to acknowledge the sacrifice their teams have made and the effort they have put in to help their organisations get through COVID.

These stats from Perceptive show that employee uncertainty and angst are worth paying attention to. Well-being has been affected by how employers have responded to COVID-19.

• Almost a quarter of employees believe their employer hasn't done enough to support them.
• Just under half now hold a changed perspective of their employer. Of this group, two-thirds feel more positive while the remainder are less favourable.
• Over a third of employed New Zealanders are either considering a career change or are unsure whether they will stay with their current employer.
• Of those who are definitely changing their career, 3 out of 5 are not confident they will be able to make the transition.

With 1 in 3 employees considering a career change, this may also be the moment for leaders to examine how their business might pivot, grow and adapt to allow those people to migrate their careers and stay. CEB figures put the cost of replacing an employee at between 140 and 260% of their salary, so retaining aspirational employees by letting them work more flexibly on things they care about makes commercial sense. Melissa Wragge is a Business Pivot and Transformation Specialist who works extensively in helping businesses to pivot. She and I are happy to team up and help from a business and people transformation perspective.

Investment in coaching and mentoring with employees could also be a wise use of funds right now. Coaching assists with retention and engagement, boosts productivity, and helps employees expand their capability to take on larger, more complicated problems. Investment in people matters most during periods of high pressure.

The good news in those figures is that a lot of leaders have done a great job supporting their teams, 75% in fact. Well done NZ. There must not be complacency that things will return to normal, though, because normal is back up the river. In employees' minds, they may be experiencing what I'd call "Ultra-VUCA": an extreme version of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.

The often quoted, often misused phrase "VUCA" suggests that everything is in chaos and that we and our teams have little power to do anything about it strategically, that we are only reactive. That is not the case. There are two axes in the VUCA model.

1. How well we can predict the results of our activities, and
2. How much we know about the situation we are facing.

Consider the approaches outlined in the image below, taken from HBR, which can help you engage with and support your team to build certainty and confidence as you lead them through recovery in this Ultra-VUCA environment. Even when we don't know much and can't predict much, we can still lead proactively.

The post-lockdown approach is less about getting back to normal and more about working with your team to meet the new normal with fresh thinking, in ways that will support and encourage them as they transition to whatever comes next.

MENTAL HEALTH NOTE – If you are feeling alone or overly worried about things right now, please reach out to me directly for a chat. I am here to listen and want you to know you have someone to connect with who cares.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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