LEADERSHIP INSIGHT:

Be intentional in your understanding, compassion and communication with others to effectively support and lead through these continued challenging times.

Based on themes that emerged while coaching CEOs and Senior Leaders, here is the second of a three-part series of leadership learnings from the pandemic. Previously, we looked at prioritizing your own well-being in order to show up at your best.  Here we explore how to spark strong engagement and communication with others.

Prolonged stress, as in the pandemic, takes a toll on emotions, which can then impact your interactions with others and your leadership. To add to this, you are dealing with rapidly changing information and curve balls that impact best-intentioned plans to connect with others. Even if you are a strong communicator, you need to step up your game to cultivate a culture of openness, build alignment, and promote well-being and engagement.

Communication and connection points need to be:

Different – to stand out from the current “information overload” 

Frequent – to align teams to a vision, even if it’s a moving target

Consistent – to create a sense of stability, in spite of the uncertainty

Creative – to reach people in the virtual context we are in

Questions to ask yourself to turbo charge your communication: 

1. When was the last time you asked ‘your people’ how they are really doing?
2. How do you maintain the ongoing ‘pulse’ of your organization, your family? 
3. How can humour and creativity help you reach people “behind the screen”? 
4. How do you want to ‘show up’ differently for people?

Ways to cultivate and maintain a connection virtually

• Make time for ‘small talk’ 
• Create a ‘culture committee’ 
• Don’t forget your one on ones 
• Establish a virtual social ‘water cooler’
• Hire a facilitator to run virtual events
• Use virtual breakout rooms for speed networking
• Deliver loot bags to add a physical element to virtual events 
• Set up virtual ‘co-working’ on an open audio or video conference 
• Nominate a communications prime to disseminate key messages
• Implement “open door” hours when people can text with you in real time 

What’s possible? Commit to one creative new way of connecting with your team and your family in the next week and be intentional about asking and listening to what is really going on for them.

In the third and final part of this series we will look at post-pandemic planning and flexibility.