As a leader within your industry or company, how are you interacting with your junior staff? Hopefully, you’re not a take from Horrible Bosses, exhaustingly micro-managing, or computer auditing these fellows. I know, it’s hard to let out the reins when you’re used to steering the carriage, but I challenge you to approach this unique situation as an opportunity. I can remember working my way up the rungs of the corporate ladder, always looking for an opportunity to introduce ideas, make an impact, and be heard. For the right person, right now is that opportunity. This is their time to show how they can contribute in their own unique and innovative way. Sure, on the flip side, it can also shed light on the dead weight you’ve been dragging, but that’s also a positive gain. If you can’t hear the squeaky wheel how can you grease it, or replace it if it's too far gone? But, once you've got your players in the right places it's a game you're sure to win.
Step one: Make sure your expectations are crystal clear. How can you expect your team to do a job if they’re not 100% clear on their role? This may have changed since starting to work from home. That’s okay, most understand this. Take a breath and reevaluate the expectations. Is there anything that needs to be tweaked? If so, make it clear, in private or group if involving multiple people, and ask for input. Follow up so that any unanswered questions can be acknowledged in a timely fashion.
Keep it simple: Less is more, especially when it comes to project rules. Assert the goals and define the rules within. Simple rules are short cut strategies (specific to a certain activity) that save time and effort by focusing attention and simplifying thinking. If there are too many rules they become harder to follow or even remember, and ultimately end up wasting time. For example, let's say at a certain time of the day everyone seems to go on break and nothing gets done for that period of time. It then takes longer to catch up resulting in delays, OT, and decreased job satisfaction for those having to stay on. Instead of assigning break times which I imagine would be extremely tedious, time-consuming, and hard to remember, try a simple rule that no more than two people in any department can take a break at any given time. Create a Google Doc, or whatever tool is readily available, where employees can easily access this info and self manage their breaks. Easy to remember and solves the problem. Make it easy on you and your team!
Listen: I can’t stress enough how vital effective communication is to the lifeline of any company. This article on communication has some great insight. Your team will thank you. Make it collaborative especially if there’s any restructuring or responsibility distribution.
Check-in: Create time and space for individual feedback. Your team wants to hear from you, and how they’re doing. If you can do this visually even better! It’s nice to see the face attached to feedback. This is a crucial pivoting point that when done effectively can motivate an employee to continue pushing themselves to new highs. When done poorly, however, they can leave feeling meaningless, or questioning what just happened, which is worse since now they don't trust YOU know what you're doing either! To get the most out of this topic, I’ll expand more on performance feedback in an upcoming article.
You want to foster an adaptive culture where considerable changes, such as where we find ourselves today, have less of an impact on business. This type of workplace environment opens the door to change and cozies up alongside it with a blanket, changing the dynamics in an instant. Are you ready for that? We have to be ahead of the game, take advantage of change, and not let it take advantage of us. After all, “The only constant is that everything is changing." - Heraclitus