Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

The world has been observing an unprecedented amount of suffering these past few months. Every person, irrespective of age, amount of wealth, or amount of power has been affected by this. If there has been a time to be more humane & empathetic towards everyone around us, it’s now.

I have been hearing a lot from my previous colleagues and juniors, about how they have been facing mental stress, sadly not just because of the COVID19 impact on their lives, but also due to situations at work.

While I understand that most of the managers/leaders are coming from the right place, expecting faster & better results during these trying times to stay afloat (survival of the fittest), here are some very important points that I think most of these people are missing:

• The world is going through a crisis right now. Your company, your team, your financial results & your financial predictions all are set to change, dramatically. The sooner you make peace with that, the better.
• Once you’ve made peace with above, you now need to turn your team around, re-evaluate your goals, KRAs/KPIs & set a new mission path towards your company’s North Star.
• When a team is forced to move to a remote setup from an in-office one, all of a sudden, during an existential crisis (both literally & figuratively), mistakes are bound to happen. The best thing that a manager can do is let the team know about the impact areas where the mistakes will hurt the business the most so that everyone has their priorities straight.
• You’re going to lose some clients. While they might blame this on the product quality or feature parity with another product, know that there is a good chance that this isn’t true. Everyone is trying to cut costs wherever they can, while some people have the decency to be upfront about it, others not so much.

Having said that, here are some steps that I think all managers/leaders should take to cope with the crisis, at least during the first few months:

• Let your team know that their mental, physical and emotional health is of utmost importance right now, not just for their own sake but also for the sake of their family & their company.
• Come clean with your team about the company’s financial status & job security. People deserve to know if they’re getting laid off or if they should expect a salary cut, this will help ease their anxiety and give them enough time to plan ahead.
• Ask your team to set healthy work habits:
  • Set preferences regarding work hours (with at least some overlap with the standard company working hours). Tell the team that they should not try to compensate for lost productivity by working longer hours.
  • Setting work boundaries (as long as it’s not absolute comfort zone because no challenges mean no excitement which means loss of interest in work at a longer horizon).
  • Letting colleagues know about their family obligations (which might end up eating into some productivity so the team can plan for it).
  • Being consistent with the above commitments (as much as they can).
• Have regular 1:1s with your team (best case once a weak, worst case once every 2 weeks).
• Don’t micro-manage, please. Managers, especially the ones who are not remote team managers by nature, usually get too insecure & bothered with even the small setbacks. Micro-management can hurt the team’s confidence, leading to a drop in productivity & work quality over time. It can also foster a culture of distrust & lack of transparency amongst the managers & their team. Instead of micro-management, focus on goal-setting and trust the team to deliver on it.
• Let your team know that even you, as a manager/leader, answer to someone. Sometimes, external pressure can drive you to push your team to deliver results beyond reason and in such cases, the team has complete freedom to push back and have an honest conversation with you about it.
• Find moments to let your team relax every once in a while. This can happen in the form of a video chit chat party or something else but the team needs to come together once in a while to discuss everything but work. This will also help keep cabin fever in check.
• Create a list of priorities for your team members and set very clear expectations & get the team to sign off on it. Be honest & empathetic about it.
• While this should always be true, it becomes especially important during these times: Value People Over Process.
• Last but not the least, ask each team member to be compassionate towards their colleagues. Everyone will cope with this crisis in a different way & at different velocities. Judging others based on how you are coping or judging yourself basis how others are coping is not justified.

While most of what I’ve shared above is applicable even during normal times but I’ve tried to focus this blog mostly on how to effectively lead a team during the current crisis. Do let me know if you think I’ve missed something, or if there is something which can be improved.