Work harder?

Once again, human systems have proven incredibly resilient. It took Nasdaq less than two months to catch up with its stock market value of March 2020. The Swiss economy is recovering fast towards its pre-pandemic performance only one month after the government lifted the bulk of Coronavirus restrictions.

In our enthusiasm, have we ever asked ourselves who made this impressive performance possible, and what price employees and teams may end up paying? Interesting to listen to the CIO of a French top stock exchange listed company, sharing that his entire team is in a pre-burnout state. Interesting, too, to observe how the management of an insurance company is celebrating their unexpectedly successful financial performance for the year 2020, without giving much thought to the contributions of their employees who made it possible.

What can we do, as leaders, to respond to these early signs and avoid that employees become frustrated, disengaged and exhausted in an early future, in the post covid world?

For an organization, it is crucial listen to the employees, to their fears, hopes and ideas. We would say that the most important question a leader can ask to his teams these days is “How are you? and really be curious about the answer.

As Yves Givel, Senior VP HR with the Hyatt Hotel Group put it: inviting employees to share their experiences in a climate of psychological safety is more important under the current circumstances than quarterly financials. In fact, psychological safety has become one of the buzzwords in post-Covid leadership paradigms.

Psychological safety evolves when people have the feeling that their workplace is a space where they can express themselves, share ideas and ask questions without fear of being punished or humiliated, as Amy Edmondson, pioneer of the concept, continues to underline. In other words, that means replacing a culture of finger pointing by one where trust can emerge.

A helpful starting point could be support circles where people can reconnect with each other after months of working from home, and share what is on their hearts and minds. These could be facilitated by the leader or by an external coach. Putting in place and hosting these sharing spaces does not cost much time, but is very effective.

For individuals, there are three ways to foster motivation, engagement and resilience. They use basic neurobiological processes that we can influence with our attitudes and behaviours.

For one, there is the dopamine cycle, which is activated when we experience discovery, mastery and pleasure. One way of strengthening one’s sense of mastery is creating a personal success archive. With that, we can direct our attention to what we have accomplished and create a space to treasure it amidst navigating our fast-moving and uncertain environment.

Second, oxytocin is expressed when we experience meaningful social relationships, in other words when we help each other and have a sense of belonging. This raises the question as to what kind of social climate we would like to create in our team, and with our loved ones at home, our family and friends.

Third, it is important to know how to regulate our biological stress reaction, helping our body to manage the levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. As we know from top athletes, performance requires regular phases of recovery. Taking breaks, relaxation and switching off from work prevent stress from becoming chronic, and thus an overload of the more dangerous stress hormone cortisol. Once you are in a longer lasting phase of stress, cortisol levels can be reduced by moderate physical activity, proper sleep, and eating well.

These three strategies are useful in leading ourselves , both personally as leaders or employees, and in the leadership role.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly for both individuals and organizations, we need to step out of the constant mode of crisis management and value the key learnings on what helped getting through the crisis, and what should be preserved in order to grow in capacity. Reflection is a key element of resilience, and we unfortunately often forget that in our activity-driven lives.

As a leader, we invite you consider what you can do to make your people and organization thrive in the post-COVID world, not only for the next two weeks, but with a view to our common future.

We are happy to join or initiate this conversation.

Sandra Gliffe  +41 79 566 80 30 & Beate Schulze  +41 76 416 73 72