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How to Support the People You Lead in Times of Uncertainty
Coping in uncertainty
Whether you are a manager, teacher, or physician, you are a leader in your organization or community. In times of distress, it can be difficult to know how to help others best and motivate them to continue performing and growing.
The pandemic is making it even more difficult, changing how you work, learn, or communicate.
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Coping in uncertainty
Whether you are a manager, teacher, or physician, you are a leader in your organization or community. In times of distress, it can be difficult to know how to help others best and motivate them to continue performing and growing.
The pandemic is making it even more difficult, changing how you work, learn, or communicate.
Coaching with compassion
In the face of uncertainty, it is natural to hold on to the status quo and stick to as-normal-as-possible routines and tasks. This can work when the context is predictable, and the goal is clearly defined.
However, during periods of volatility and stress, a taskmaster mode could be a mistake. The individual can feel pressured or obligated, which will make them negative. It is more important to prioritize your team's needs and create an environment of trust and support. It will unleash positive emotions, and the person is likely to feel more confident, hopeful, and willing to consider new ideas.
How to coach with compassion
We can follow six steps to help others, using the acronym “REACH”:
- Resonance. Check in with each person without discussing a list of tasks. The goal is to create a supportive and positive relationship.
- Empathy. Shift your concern from wanting to be understood to understanding others.
- Awareness. Be aware of your mindset and emotions. Emotions are contagious.
- Compassion. Try to focus on the needs of others and encourage caring and warmth to help another person in their development.
- Hope. Spreading positive emotions will uplift others when you help them to picture a brighter and better future.
- Humor. Stress shuts us down to new ideas and experiences. By keeping things light, you remind others to keep smiling. In turn, it will reduce stress and increase satisfaction, productivity, and performance.
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Communication during stressful times
Uncertainty has a way to reveal everyone's strengths and weaknesses. During drastic uncertainty, employees will seek more information in order to achieve a sense of certainty. During this unsta...
Managing the passive communicators
- Talk to them one-on-one. They will feel more comfortable opening up.
- Offer multiple modes of communication. Instead of calling on them during a meeting, send them an email afterward.
- Help them feel psychologically safe at work. Let your team know they won't face negative consequences for voicing their opinion respectfully.
Passive communicators battle to express their needs and stand by their convictions. This is because they want to avoid conflict. They may be silent during crucial meetings. If they do make a suggestion and it is challenged, they may say, "never mind then."
Managing the aggressive communicators
- Outline and enforce boundaries. If they interrupt someone, step in and say, "Please let [Name} finish, and afterward, we'll give you time to speak too."
- Give them a safe and healthy way to vent their anger. People under pressure are more likely to act out. Pull them aside for a one-on-one time to address their concerns.
Aggressive Communicators voice their opinions in a straightforward, often blunt way. They often interrupt others, take up significantly more time than others during meetings and don't take into account others' feelings or opinions.
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Manage uncertainty and its related risk
- Control the “controllable.” Certainty is vital in business, but also elusive.
- How people cope starts with their attitude. Where there is change, there is opportunity.&nbs...
Unhealthy Ways to Deal with Uncertainty
- Throw up your hands and give up. Then risking it all on the next big move for the company. Learn to fail faster - take lots of smaller risks instead of one big one and get feedback quickly.
- Not wanting to make a decision at all because of fear of failure. Learning from failure is a valuable part of your education. If you make a couple of mistakes but outweigh those blunders with successes, you are okay.
Changing How We Evaluate Success with Decisions
... is critical in uncertainty. We too often judge people by the outcomes of the decisions instead of on the process that was used to reach them.
However, isn’t it better if people had an unfortunate result and a great process than someone who had a successful outcome but flipped a coin to get there?
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Meta-Skills
A meta-skill is a high order skill that allows you to engage with functional expertise more effectively.
It magnifies and activates other skills and is a catalyst for learning an...
Skills And Meta-Skills
Skills are temporary; meta-skills are permanent.
Learning a second language gives you a skill, a learned ability. A meta-skill, on the other hand, is your ability to learn new languages. Developing that meta-skill, makes it easier to learn a third or a fourth tongue.
Alvin Toffler
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
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Feedback
Feedback provides an opportunity to gain insights about a person's personal and professional actions.
Without feedback, we will move in the same direction without realizing our shortcomings. ...
Types of feedback
- Positive vs. negative. Positive feedback confirms that someone is taking good action, while negative feedback shows what actions need to be corrected.
- Formal vs. informal. Formal feedback is given on a set schedule, and informal feedback is short and follows after an action or event.
- Annual vs. monthly
- Verbal vs. written
- Manager vs. peer
Effective feedback
- Objective. Don't let your personal feelings get in the way.
- Timely. Feedback should follow when the event is still fresh.
- Constructive. Give respect and show that you have their best interests in mind.
- Actionable. Feedback must include immediate next steps.
- Warranted. Give your employees room for mistakes and learn from them.
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Dealing with difficult times
We may wonder if it is even possible to thrive during difficult patches in our lives.
The word difficult could mean something different for every person, but the constant is our commitm...
Keep the big picture in mind
What you're going through is just a chapter of your life. The rest of the story is still unwritten. Once you emerge from a difficult period, a blank page will await you to change the record.
At the moment, everything feels confusing, but hindsight will be 20/20 vision.
Define your success
Define your success. It is critical in order to know yourself. Success could be your health, career, friendships, being a good spouse or parent.
Difficult times in life require us to redefine our objective, to modify them to fit our new situations. What does betterment look like to you? Is it better health, better grades, healthy relationships? Write down your priorities and work towards them daily.
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The Advice Trap
It happens when one rushes to provide advice, which is most likely to be discarded or ignored, even if the person was asked for it.
Even with good intentions, providing advice isn’...
Word Play When Asking For Advice
When someone mentions a problem, it most likely isn’t the core problem but only an outward symptom.
Even if by some miracle one is able to find out the real problem, it does not mean that the advice doled out will be useful or will be implemented.
Ignorance And Superficial Knowledge
Most people are ignorant of their ignorance and live in a self-created bubble of superficial knowledge, which they believe is the only true knowledge there is, due to a cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
A piece of straightforward advice doled out to be followed to the tee, is often due to lack of knowledge, rather than because of it.
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Data and how it frames your thinking
What’s more important than how much data you have is how it frames the way you think.
Some leader when they're under pressure to appear decisive, approach complex situa...
Thomas Bayes'd thought experiment
He wondered how he could predict the probability of a future event if he only knew how many times it had occurred, or not, in the past. Bayes figured out that even when it comes to uncertain outcomes, we can update our knowledge by incorporating new, relevant information as it becomes available.
His theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event.
Importance of using probabilistic thinking
Data can be imperfect, incomplete, or uncertain. Most of the time, there is more than one explanation for why things happened the way they did; by examining those alternative explanations using probability, you can gain a better understanding of causality and what is really going on.
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One on one meetings
...are held between a team leader and team member.
They are conversations that usually last no longer than 10 to 30 minutes where they discuss what is going well and what needs t...
A recommended agenda
Most effective one on one meetings typically last about 30 minutes:
- 10 minutes for the direct report from the employee;
- 10 minutes for the manager’s remarks and messages, and;
- 10 minutes for the employee and manager to draw a way forward.
Objectives of effective 1:1 meetings
- find out about the employee’s current emotional state.
- track the status of the employee’s performance and how their goals are coming along.
- learn if there are any obstacles in the way to the employee’s goals.
- discuss specific issues – either the employee’s, the manager’s, or both.
- get honest value-added feedback from the employee.
- provide an opportunity for the manager to coach the employee.
- share formal and informal information about the team and company as a whole.
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2 kinds of people
- Those who believe they can make things happen. They are convinced that the outcome of their lives and careers is more or less in their own hands
- Those who believe things...
When hard times strike
Those that feel they are in control over their lives also feel stress and anxiety, but they use this anxiety differently: their anxiety fuels passion instead of pity, drive in lieu of despair, and tenacity over trepidation.
Expect and prepare for change
Set aside some time regularly to create a list of important changes that you think could possibly happen. The purpose of this task is to open your mind to change and sharpen your ability to spot and respond to changes.
Even if the events on your lists never happen, the practice of anticipating and preparing for change will give you a greater sense of command over your future.
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Coaching
Focuses on helping another person learn in ways that let him or her keep growing afterward.
Its purpose is to increase effectiveness, broaden thinking, identify strengths an...
Keys to effective coaching
- Building the relationship. It's easier to learn from someone you trust.
- Providing assessment. Where they are now where they want to go.
- Challenging thinking and assumptions.
- Supporting and encouraging employees to make progress toward their goals.
- Driving results. Helping the employee set meaningful goals and identifying the steps for meeting them.