Coping In The Midst of A Pandemic

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

- J.R.R. Tolkien

As social distancing continues for another month, shelter in place orders are given across the country, and the number of people dying from COVID-19 rises, our worries and fears increase. We struggle to keep perspective and we wonder when this all shall pass. Some days, in the midst of our anger, grief and hopelessness, it is hard to decide what to do with the time that is given us.

First, we must acknowledge that stress exhaustion is real. It takes a lot of energy and effort to not panic or to not become horribly depressed. We just want things to get back to normal even if we are not sure what normal will be like on the other side of this all. 

Furthermore, we must recognize that doing activities that are depleting is not the same as being depleted. The former is the cause while the later is the result. If we are drained, we need to be aware that pushing the “power through button”, quoting Brene Brown, every time has a price. We need to rediscover what gives us hope, and renews our spirits and our energy in the midst of this current, never ending journey.

One challenge as I mentioned last week is to understand that our normal systems for coping with high levels of stress and for rebuilding our energy have been significantly disrupted. Before this time, some of us would have gone to the gym to work out. A good sweat can make a world of difference during a difficult day. Others of us would have gone out with friends for drinks and a great meal. And finally, there are many of us who would have gone to our local church, synagogue, or temple for spiritual renewal and for fellowship time with others. 

However all of these helpful systems for regeneration have been shut down. Now, we find ourselves alone and disconnected. We struggle and the struggle is painful and challenging. Still, there are ways to move forward through this wildly unpredictable time. What follows are a variety of different ways to cope in the midst of a pandemic.

With everyone working out of their “new” home offices, it is important to talk about how to do this in a successful and minimally low stress way. Recently, quite a few people have asked me how to work out of a home office, because I have been doing this since 1986. I had to pause and really think about it. For the most part, it is an unconscious habit. Upon reflection, I do have a couple of tips for people who are new to home office life.

First, stick to regular office hours. This is important for you, your family and your colleagues. It defines when you are available and when you are not available. As part of your regular office hours, I also recommend you have a regular lunch hour where you can step away from the office work, check in at home, and help where you are needed.

Second, define what is and what is not an acceptable interruption by family during home office work time. This was a big challenge in our family during my first years of working from home, but over time we all learned and it made a major difference on stress levels. I would include with this definition that a closed door to the office means do not interrupt unless something quite serious has taken place, and then knock before entering. Both of these first two tips will require significant self discipline but I assure you that they will make a major difference, especially if this is to continue for another 60+ days.

Finally, when it comes to having a home office, there is one more tip I want to share with you. The distance from my home office to the kitchen is fifteen steps. The transition from work to home is too short. 

So, at the end of every work day, I create a transition time period. I call it my “daily commute”. Some days I go for a fifteen to twenty minute walk just to get out of my office mental work space and arrive home ready for what ever has taken place there over the course of the day. Other times, I go out and do a small bit of yard work such as pulling some weeds, enjoying some spring flowers or doing a touch of raking. The key is to unwind from the pressures of the home office and to enter our home life ready to be fully present.

Once I am home, I know I will need to pitch in and help out. Our challenge is to recognize that the entire family is going through this time of social distancing, not just myself. We all have been disrupted by COVID-19 and we all are figuring out how to cope with it.

In particular, I get the concept of social distancing. However, I want to remind us that it is really physical distancing, not social disconnecting. We need to stay in touch with family and friends. We need them and they need us. Therefore, I suggest we call or FaceTime with a different friend or family member each day. By reaching out to them, we are helping them and helping ourselves remember that we are all in this together. 

Next, we need to have fun. I suggest more families create a special event like Movie Monday and then choose a fun and uplifting film to watch together. Of course, popcorn is mandatory! Or cook an unusual meal such as breakfast for supper. How about a candle light dinner? Whatever works make sure you are having fun times together. Creating new experiences is a great, rejuvenating exercise.

Finally, step away from the TV or your electronic device of choice, and read something each day which restores your spirit and soul. Daily devotional time is healing and helpful. It puts it all back into perspective.

As Brene Brown recently wrote on her Instagram account:

“This pandemic experience is a massive experiment in collective vulnerability. We can be our worst selves when we’re afraid or our very best, bravest selves. In the context of fear and vulnerability, there is often very little in between because when we are uncertain and afraid our default is self-protection. We don’t have to be scary when we’re scared. Let’s choose awkward, brave, and kind. And let’s choose each other.”

At the end of every day, I am most grateful for my friends, my family and for you. This week, stay healthy, stay safe, and keep in touch. I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Observations From A Home Office In The Midst Of A Pandemic

Given how rapidly current events have been unfolding, it is hard to step back and look at the bigger picture. Right now, many of us have been sucked into a state of hyper-vigilance and reactive paranoia. Every bit of new information indicates another possible worst case scenario. And leaders at all levels are desperately focused on reducing these uncontrollable risks to a manageable level of chaos.  

Nevertheless, there will come a time period in the future when all of this will be a story told to children and grandchildren. As in the past, some generations talk about where they were when JFK was assassinated or when Nixon resigned. Other generations talk about where they were on 9/11. For those living at this time period, COVID-19 will be a similar defining event and experience. 

Still, for those of us who are in the midst of it on a day to day basis, there are significant short and long term impacts. As one who is visiting regularly with a large and diverse collection of people in leadership positions, I would like to share five observations about what is happening. 

First, with every one moving out of the corporate office and working from home, we have now entered into a world where all sorts of new problems are starting to surface. I recognize that not all homes and not all families are set up for a home office. One of the big problems happening right now is that our homes are our homes, our home office and now our local school, given that schools, colleges and universities have all closed for an indefinite time period. 

Traditionally, these three things are not all happening in the same space. Now we are employees, teachers, and parents all in the same physical place. The impact of this is a pressure cooker for all involved. Add to this mix, someone being in a leadership position, who has to coordinate and communicate with others in multiple home offices, and everyone’s stress levels is rising to unprecedented heights. In short, there is the potential for multiple nuclear melt downs each day.

At the same time, there are no boundaries between work, family life and school’s expectations about learning, especially given current technology and limited physical space in many homes. While this is not new on one level, now that everyone is crammed into the same space for an indefinite time period, and, if they are actually practicing social distancing, then there are limited resources to help cope with the pressures. 

For me, I struggle with the term social distancing because in reality what is needed is physical distancing not social distancing. While many are practicing social distancing, what has happened is that they have inadvertently limited their social support and they have not been able to utilize their normal stress management systems, e.g. the gym, seeing friends, church, etc.. The result is short tempered people crammed into spaces not designed for what is expected to happen within them. 

Therefore, quoting an old Gibran saying, there needs to be “space in our togetherness”. For starts, we need to maintain boundaries between when we are working at home and when we are a family at home. We need to practice not talking about work during family time so we can relax together and just be a family. We also need to go outside for a walk, when possible, so we can unwind from the pressure cooker of being in the same space at the same time. This may require us to be creative, but it is doable if we plan accordingly.

Second, when we all worked in an office on a day to day basis, some days things went well and other days we struggled. Still, most people could make progress and could connect with their boss and co-workers to solve problems. When we shifted to everyone working from home, many are struggling with how exactly to do teamwork.

Most offices utilize an analog form of teamwork. With daily face to face communications, leaders role modeled key behaviors before, during and after teamwork. These leadership behaviors were a mix of social and technical skills. These analog teams generated success through mutual trust, shared values, and a clearly defined sense of mission or purpose. To make this happen, leaders and the team had to show a lot of self-discipline and a high degree of self and group awareness.

However, with everyone working from home, we now enter into a different model of teamwork, i.e. a 4-D team. A 4-D team is defined as a group of people who are primarily connected through a digital platform and are dispersed, diverse and dynamic, namely they routinely go through frequent membership changes. As a result, 4-D teams are more global, virtual and project-driven. They often struggle because they have limited face time and are dependent on digital communication, which prevents the ability to understand nonverbal and contextual clues that often provide insight into what is going on. Furthermore, the lack of in-person meetings also removes the ability for understanding individual and collective moods of the group.

With everyone working from home in order to reduce exposure or transmission of COVID-19, team members are tending to be more consultation or coordination focused rather than typical office based, teamwork focused. As leaders, we have to understand that 4-D teams generate success through transparent performance measures, i.e. everyone being able to see the dash board results. Finally, successful 4-D teams need to know what is expected of them, how performance is measured, and why it all matters.

From my vantage place, I completely understand why everyone has moved home, but I think the challenge is that we are not assisting people in leadership positions to switch from analog based leadership choices to 4-D leadership choices. For those of you who want to be better 4-D leaders at this time period, I encourage you to read the following article: Haas, Martine and Mark Mortensen. “The Secrets of Great Teamwork.” Harvard Business Review, June 2016. The long term impact of a more virtually connected workforce is going to require people to switch how they engage in teamwork. We can make this shift but it is going to challenge all involved.

Third, we need to talk about strategic planning and strategic plans. During a normal winter into spring time period, I routinely teach multiple groups about strategic planning. One of the things I point out is that every strategic plan has a strategic decay rate, i.e. all the information that influenced people who created the plan will, over time, become obsolete. Ultimately, a strategic plan will no longer be functional because the environment within which the plan is being executed has so fundamentally shifted from what people thought was going to take place due to unforeseen variables.

Having been involved in numerous strategic planning meetings in 2018 and 2019, and having read multiple SWOT documents and PESTAL analysis documents as part of these planning processes, I can assure all of you that no one had a pandemic or COVID-19 level event on their radar screen. For large and small companies, this a black swan event, namely something that is so far outside the norm of possibilities that they are completely overwhelmed strategically and operationally.

So, here we are at the end of the first quarter of 2020, and all of this year’s strategic plans are highly dysfunctional. The organization’s strategic intent, e.g. to grow into multiple markets with multiple products and services, may still be the desire, but how we are going to execute this will have to change during the next 12-18 months given the huge amount of day to day technical problems and rampant and unforeseeable adaptive challenges that keep surfacing.

Therefore, I believe two things will take place this summer. First, there will be a lot of strategic re-planning which will include some major SWOT analysis work. Some companies may choose to create 6-9 month strategic bridge plans instead of normal 3-5 year plans so that they can see how things settle out economically. 

Simultaneously, there are going to be some intense After Action Reports created to make sure the lessons learned from the first and second quarter of 2020 are not lost and not repeated during future challenges of this magnitude. If past is prologue, many senior leaders will be extremely focused and diligent in this level of work. In short, everyone is going to be way more prepared moving forward.

Fourth, we need to understand the importance of proactive re-recruitment and retention in the midst of this pandemic. If you entered this time period on a dysfunctional team, more likely it has become more dysfunctional. If you entered this time period on a highly functional team, it just got better because of the focus and the urgency of getting things done together.

Our challenge as leaders is to recognize that many key people are putting in a lot extra effort and attention to make sure things run smoothly. We need to notice these actions, praise them, and assure them that all they are doing is not going unnoticed. Good people respond well to this kind of support and ultimately they will want to stay with the company.

But if an A player is working on a poor team and the team has gotten worse, then they will start looking for a new job. The frustrating thing is that a solid A player who is not re-recruited and encouraged to stay will be long gone before certain leaders even knew there was a problem. Therefore, I am encouraging all leaders to reach out to their people on a one to one basis. Now is the time to talk to them, to listen to them, and to reassure them that they are an important member of the team. During the next 6-9 months, we can not afford to loose key people who are making a major difference, operationally and strategically.

Finally, we need to understand that before COVID19 showed up many companies and their employees were working very hard to meet their goals and the needs of their customers. Folks reported to me at the beginning of this new year that they were busy, focused and feeling the pressure to serve their customers better and better.

When COVID-19 showed up, people were already feeling pushed. Now they just feel overwhelmed. What was once a future focused level of busyness has now shifted into a period of instability, reactivity, and general frustration and confusion. Everyone is on edge about what will happen next. In short, people are doing more work and wondering if any of it is actually making a difference.

While this is normal in a crisis of this magnitude, one thing is lost, namely deep work. Cal Newport in his book, Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World (Grand Central Publishing, 2016) defines deep work as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.” With so much incoming information and reactive problem solving, more and more leaders are not able to practice deep work.

When leaders choose to make the time for deep work, it gives them and their organization the ability to quickly master complex situations, make better decisions, and solve problem more effectively. Therefore, I am encouraging more leaders to turn off the news, step away from constant inputs like e-mail and various digital meetings, and instead spend a set period of time on a regular basis concentrating on what needs to happen in the short term and the long term for their business to be successful. During these periods of reflection, they need to look for the patterns within all of the information and notice how key people and teams are doing, especially in the areas of teamwork, communication and problem solving. In simple terms, leaders need uninterrupted time to sift through all the data and find the useful information. 

As we know, crisis leadership has two distinct phases. The first is the emergency phase when your task as a leader is to stabilize the situation and buy time. The second is the adaptive phase, when you tackle the underlying causes of the crisis and build the capacity to thrive in a new reality. For those of you who want to understand these two phases better and to be well prepared for the second phase, I encourage you to read the following article during your next deep work session: Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Glasgow, and Marty Linsky. “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis”, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009. In sum, deep work gives us the capacity to distinguish between what is essential in the short term and what it vital to long term success.

We are living through a time period this spring where more and more people feel a deep level of discouragement, loneliness, and frustration. All around us the world has become a messy place filled with confusion and contradictions. And we struggle to find a sense of hope and shared humanity. Trust, love and compassion seem in short supply.

Still as I sit here this morning, I know one thing. We must be the change we wish to see in the world, referencing the old Gandhi quote. I need to role model thoughtfulness, compassion and a loving heart. I need to not let fear, vulnerability, and hopelessness define my world view. I need to reach out to my family, friends, co-workers and the rest of humanity on a regular basis and let them know that I treasure their presence in my life, and that they are important to me in the midst of these challenging times. Finally, I must be kind to myself, and remember that each new day I have a choice of how I am going to act and how I will treat others. And in the end, that is all that matters.  

So, stay healthy, stay safe, keep in touch, and I look forward to seeing you on the other side of this most unique time period.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257