Written by Craig A. Coffey, Founder & President
Way Maker Leadership LLC
YOU LOSE NOTHING by leading with compassion, reverence, intentionality, and inspiration.
It's often forgotten that leading people is a privilege, and with privilege comes responsibility. This responsibility now includes learning to lead differently, to achieve results, AND serve your team. Pre-pandemic many leaders had a "transactional" connection with their team. Previously, most leaders communicated with employees solely about deliverables, deadlines, and results. However, the pandemic shifted the paradigm between leader and employee.
The pandemic created challenges and corresponding emotions as they dealt with:
- Being or feeling isolated.
- Experiencing the impact of CV-19 that resulted in sickness or even death of a close one.
- Working remotely while facing the uncertainty of future employment.
- Losing income from a family member due to an economic downturn.
- Navigating remote learning with kids.
- The hardship of not seeing an elderly parent or relative for a year.
The advent of vaccines and an economic reopening will certainly help with some of these items. However, some of the emotions and anxiety will still linger for many affecting their overall mental well-being. A leader still using the "old playbook" of managing people will be ineffective and sew discord with employees. Successful leaders will choose to move away from the "transactional" towards "relational" connections with employees.
So, what does a “relational connection” that look like:
- Give Respect: acknowledge and appreciate people's abilities, qualities, achievements, and boundaries. Recognition and "thank you" are not expensive.
- Restore Trust: in a time of great uncertainty, provide transparency to decision-making, priorities, and the organization's purpose.
- Exhibit Empathy: demonstrate an ability to understand and feel for what someone's experiencing.
- Drive Dialogue (vs. monologue): have conversations to listen and check in on people. Try to understand and bridge the gap between your expectations as a leader and where the other person is coming from. (i.e., meet people where they are).
- Be Vulnerable: As a leader, occasionally let your guard down and express your uncertainties, challenges, and difficulties. It's ok to be authentic and genuine.
To be clear, deadlines, deliverables, and results are still vital! They are natural business requirements that everyone is accountable for. I am simply advocating that leaders need to reframe what was once viewed as "soft skills" and treat them as "essential skills." What will follow is team engagement, higher performance, unity, collaboration, and the RESULTS leaders are seeking.
In short, leaders should be HARD on the issues and be HELPFUL to people!
YOU LOSE NOTHING by leading with compassion, reverence, intentionality, and inspiration.
What other new leadership abilities would you like to see?
