Having spent numerous hours in recent weeks on Zoom calls with professionals including business owners, executives, team facilitators, coaches, and other leaders, many themes have emerged about the challenges and successes of leading during these uncertain times.

We’ve all been hearing and reading “we’re all in this together”. And this is true – everyone is impacted by the current Coronavirus crisis. Below are some important topics on which to maintain focus and put into practice if you are not yet doing so.

Collaboration can be incredibly helpful during this time and the mindset of “we’re all in this together” is a great reminder to leverage every opportunity to collaborate. According to a study conducted in 2017 by the Institute for Corporate Productivity and Rob Cross, professor at Babson College, companies that promoted collaboration were 5 times more likely to be high performing than companies that did not.

Collaboration in the workplace has been known to be beneficial for bringing people together (community) to help learn from one another, generating innovative ideas, engaging employees which leads to higher retention rates and increases the ability to achieve goals. Leaders need to be helping and encouraging their teams, especially during this challenging and uncertain time. Collaborating with other leaders can provide a supportive community that people specifically are seeking at this time of “social distancing” and self-isolation/self-quaranteen.  It can help provide support, enabling leaders to acknowledge their feelings and realize they are not alone, and then embrace accountability so they can move forward with action.

Perspectives – Everyone reacts differently in crisis, thus sharing and hearing multiple perspectives can be beneficial in so many ways. Hearing and considering multiple perspectives can help leaders to see opportunities they may have missed if they tried to do it all on their own. If you realize that maybe you have made a decision that no longer works after reviewing with your colleagues, you can always pivot. We all need to be agile, now more than ever, when the landscape is continuously changing. It’s okay to have a change of mind; it’s most important to keep taking action.

Communicate often – As with any change management initiative, communication is critical. It’s essential to keep your employees informed. People are worried and afraid. They are worried about their own health, their families and loved ones, they are also worried about their jobs. These are uncertain times. Tell your employees as much as you can, even if you don’t know all the answers – tell them that too. And if it’s something that you may find out the answer to later, let them know you’ll share it with them when you do know. By keeping your employees informed, you maintain trust and credibility and remove some of the assumptions they might otherwise be making.

Be Available – With a large percentage of people working remote at this time, it is essential that your employees know they can reach out to you and how they can best reach you. Many people are juggling various priorities. With children at home due to school closures, balancing work and home responsibilities is challenging. Be sure your employees feel supported by you. And just as important as sharing how they can best reach you, make sure you ask them how they prefer to connect – phone, email, Zoom, etc.

Assess your behavior  – Self-awareness and modeling is always critical, now maybe more than ever. Leaders set the tone – our behaviors and attitudes are contagious. Take time to assess your own behavior and attitude, and be honest with yourself. We can only control ourselves so think about how you can model calmness and positivity while allowing yourself to be transparent and vulnerable. It’s important to be open and honest with your employees as to what’s going on for you, and it’s important to move from any negative space into a positive space in order to move forward towards accomplishing work that is essential to achieve goals. During this time, we need to focus on what we can control, and we can control our behavior and our attitude.

Listen and have human compassion – As leaders it’s important to listen to and acknowledge people’s concerns, feelings and emotions. Showing empathy and providing support is especially important during these times of uncertainty. Being honest about your own concerns can help others to not feel so alone, and to feel supported. Remember, we’re all in this together, and we all have various needs during these uncertain times.

If you are finding it difficult to bring your best self to your organization during these difficult times and would like to have support, please reach out to me. I would be honored to be of help. Wishing all my readers good health.