How do you lead when your team is exhausted?
Spring is just around the corner in the northern hemisphere and since most people around the globe are still fighting the pandemic, our work/life balance continues to be a challenge. Many of us haven't seen our colleagues, employees, and peers in person in a long time. Everyone seems to be exhausted and drained from the last 12 months of home office, homeschooling, home everything.
What does that mean for people in a leadership position? How do you lead when your team is exhausted? I encourage you to take a sheet of paper and reflect on the things you think matter. You can take my points below as an inspiration or starting point:
Acknowledge the exhaustion. The exhaustion is real and it is not something people can easily compensate for. There is no energy left in most of the people we work with. We are all trying to maintain focus, stay motivated, and move forward. Make sure your employees know that you are acknowledging that.
Be a role model in self-care. Do you struggle some days to find your positive energy? Parent duties getting in the way of an important meeting? Hey… that’s the time we live in. Share your struggles with your team, show them that you’re trying to take care of yourself by taking half a day off to get your mojo back (or something similar).
Allow everything to slow down. Slow them down yourself if you have to. This is NOT the time for the risky initiatives and 10x games! Review your team members’ calendars with them and help them find white space. Eliminate unnecessary meetings. Stepping back will leave room for creativity and more efficient approaches—and that is what we need in times of uncertainty.
Do things where the likelihood of success is high. Try to prioritize things that people can easily imagine and therefore can work on with ease. And if you reach a goal or a milestone—no matter how small—make sure you celebrate it. Not just with another Zoom party! Send the people involved a flower bouquet, some sweets, or a handwritten card.
Don't sweat the small stuff. Do you usually insist on thorough meeting agendas and protocols? Do you love a good, well-written weekly status update? What might have been great management frameworks in the past now put a lot of burden on the people in your team. Reflect on why these deliverables were helpful and see if you can find less time-consuming alternatives. Many of my clients have started to use little video updates of voice messages instead of written updates because you can record them with a toddler on your hip and don’t have to worry too much about typos and grammar.
Avoid planning and embrace improvisation. Oh, I’m such a fan of planning. In pre-COVID times I was the one planning my upcoming year—including all vacations—in October. And as a PM I always had a rock solid three-month-ahead roadmap. But in times like this, you need to be an opportunist. And haven't we introduced all these agile ways of working and continuous ways of discovery precisely because we wanted to work in more resilient companies? In companies that can react faster to any change they are facing? Then the time is now. If your PMs want to do some planning, help them to always choose the plan with the most options (more on this in a minute).
Focus on meaningful conversations. This is why I’ve included some tips on how to improve your coaching practice. Get personal. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” recipe for managing exhausted employees, so you need to check in on everyone on a regular basis. And don't make it classical “status update” 1:1s. Help them see the positive impact they still have even in times like this.
Plan for recreation. Everyone will need some time to load up their batteries once this virus is no longer a massive threat. So please plan for that. We can’t go back to normal within a blink of an eye. This hit all of us too hard!
If you want to read more on this topic: How to Lead When Your Team Is Exhausted — and You Are, Too
This article was first published in my quarterly product leadership Newsletter. If you want to read more content like this, consider to sign up here.