If you are a manager/leader in an organisation you may well have reflected already on your approach to both management and leadership over the period of the pandemic so far. If you haven’t, it may be a good time to do so. Over 18 months into the Covid era and customers and clients of organisations, as well as their employees, have started to ask themselves how human these organisations are. What might that mean for you?
When Covid first started to affect our working lives, leaders were put under the spot-light whether they were the CEO or a first line level of leader – their employees were looking to them to steer a way through the uncertainty. In my October 2020 blog I shared how creating ‘dynamic stability’ is a useful approach to consider. What perhaps was not as clear at the time was that how they did this was to prove important. Last month I shared how the ‘7Cs of humanity’ can help you lead – and in pandemic times, Care, Compassion, Connection and Contemplation are particularly important.
I recently read an article written by Manfred Kets de Vries (clinical professor of leadership development and organisational change at INSEAD) in which he said ‘leadership is an opportunity to serve, not a demonstration of self-importance’. How can we serve our employees in a way that gets the job done but brings our humanity to the fore?
How do I lead with humanity?
My encouragement to any leader considering this question is to ask yourself:
- What do I think leading with humanity means? And
- What am I assuming that is stopping me from leading with humanity?
If you find yourself thinking that to lead with humanity means slowing things down and spending more time with employees, or at least making decisions where the human dimension is factored in, you may then find you have assumptions such as ‘I don’t have time to lead in that way – we won’t have a business if we don’t move quickly’.
I’d like to suggest that the opposite could in fact be true. It can help to ‘slow down to go fast’ – This idea has been around for some time -the founder of the Roman Empire, Augustus, would use the Latin phrase “Festina Lente.” This translates to: “Make haste, slowly.”
If we don’t take time to connect with our employees about their experience of working in our organisation during Covid times, to show that we care about that experience, and to demonstrate compassion when times are tough, we are at risk of losing their trust, respect and loyalty over time. Being heard is important. When managers appropriately use empathy, their employees feel validated and understood – this will be remembered and builds connection resulting in higher engagement and productivity. As Maya Angelou said: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’
For the front line leader, this means taking time in one-to-one meetings to ask questions of team members, listening without judgment, and having a mindset of curiosity about what is the reality for them of working at the moment. It can be as simple as asking ‘what’s going well for you?’, ‘where, if anywhere, are you struggling?’ ‘What one thing could I do differently that would support you in your work?’
For a senior leader, it could mean setting up a series of focus groups across your organisation to take the pulse of your employees as they potentially face into hybrid working, or are taking on increasing amounts of work. It would be helpful to be visible in the process without potentially impacting how open people might be through attending a full session.
Finally, leading with humanity needs to become a habit. Change isn’t going away. Nudge yourself into the right mindset and approach each morning by starting your day asking yourself ‘how can I show my humanity today?’
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