Timely Advice for Leaders during the Coronavirus corporate office transition
5 tips on leading others well
Are you leading a team in a corporate environment that is all of a sudden transitioning from a brick-and-mortar office to an all-digital telework world? If so, here are some five tips based on my own personal experience from today:
1. Have grace
This is new for everyone. The majority of American’s have not teleworked before. For those that haven’t, it can be really confusing as years of habits formed by working in an office environment are disrupted over night. Be patient with your colleagues and offer to help them out if they are having trouble making the transition. If you are someone that is used to teleworking, take time to (proactively) help others. I promise you that there are way more questions than answer right now, so be the type of person that is willing to serve others.
2. Be polite (especially to your IT team)
As millions of people try a grand experiment in working from home, all at the same time, things will break. At NASA, our telecom system went down within the first few hours of the day — even after we “tested” all our systems last week. It’s inevitable, organizations are just not setup for this yet. There will be hundreds of things (systems, tools, processes, approaches) that will break under the surge of digital activity that is about to take place. Your IT department is currently overwhelmed with everything that is breaking, but this will soon spread to everyone else on the team as well as the way you have always done things no longer works in this new environment. Remember, it wasn’t really working before, it’s just that now all the holes are being exposed. Be patient with others, and especially your IT team, as they struggle to fill the holes of the sinking ship. This is actually a huge opportunity for you to make things better.
3. Check in regularly with your colleagues
Working from home can be a lonely experience under normal circumstances, so in a time that is riddled with anxiety and fear, be the type of leader that has compassion and empathy and is taking time to check in on others. There is nothing more important at work than this right now.
4. Please do not reprimand others
This is not the time to try to enforce your worldview or outdated corporate rules on others who are not only learning to telework at this moment, but are also trying to figure out what life looks like when their kids are not in school, when their bank accounts are tanking and when they are being overwhelmed with news. It does not help to tell your team that “your home office is not a daycare”. They know that already, and are struggling as their kiddo is crying at the exact moment they are trying to be on a conference call. It will take some time for families to figure out how to manage this well. I’ve teleworked for nearly 10 years, but it’s always been when my own kids were at school or daycare. I know what I’m doing, and even I have to make an adjustment. It took about 1.5 hours this morning before my middle child was trying to help me keep my youngest child quite during a conference call. This photo is a picture moments later after my youngest child was dragged out of the office by her left arm by her older brother, of course crying all the way. Thankfully I work with some really awesome leaders who completely understood, but I know that not everyone is as fortunate. Please be the type of leader that chooses to have empathy.
5. Be positive!
Look for the things that you can celebrate, and spread joy, not fear.
I’ll update this post quite a bit as I think of more things, but if you have any insight or advice to add here, please post it below as a comment.
