Post-Pandemic Leadership: Writing The New Playbook | Career Angles

Post-Pandemic Leadership: Writing The New Playbook

Originally Published on Forbes.com

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

Soon, we may be completing this chapter of The 2020-21 Pandemic and beginning the next phase of reconnecting and moving ahead. Your leadership will be measured by your empathy and understanding for your people and their experience, as well as by what your team members are able to accomplish going forward. The first will be the measurement by which you will be able to accomplish leadership with your people; the second will be the measurement by which those above you will determine your effectiveness. This is no small feat. Let me remind you of something.

If you think for a moment of how you got to where you are today, you’ll come to realize that you are the legacy of countless generations’ hopes and dreams for you. If you think back for a moment to remember your parents, stepparents, perhaps aunts and uncles, teachers and/or mentors, they were people who saw something in you and believed in you.

Some may have sacrificed money or food and certainly time to help you become the woman or man you are today. They encouraged you to do the work to bring you to where you are — on the edge, afraid of taking the next step. You’ve been there before in different forms at different times and worked your way through them. This feels different.

My first attempt was as a county coordinator for a political campaign in New York. I was in my teens and tried not just to win the county for my candidate (we lost decisively) but for the people who trusted me — the person who appointed me, as well as the volunteers and staff. I was out of my depth with little support other than occasional cheerleading phone calls. I was set up to fail, not to win.

leadershipWhat can you actually do to lead and not drift through this, to inspire and not just simply demand?

1. There is no playbook for this. No one has written the book entitled “How to Emerge from a Global Pandemic and Start Up Your (Department/Division/Company/Country).” You are the one developing a playbook for yourself, the people who report to you, the people who you report to, and the people that you serve.

2. Document what you do and the decisions that you make. Acknowledge what worked and didn’t work. You are writing the playbook for the next crisis that you have to face. It’s easier if you have a reference tool to work from rather than having to create one from scratch the next time.

3. You will probably make some mistakes. Some decisions you will make will probably not get the results that you want. Learn from them. Share what you learn with others so that they can learn, too. Transparency and involvement with your people is the best way possible to get everyone going in the same direction. Remember, no one knows what to do. No one living has ever been through this before.

4. There are people who will disagree with your decisions. Involve them, too; don’t ignore them. They are not “problem people.” Often, they are people who care a lot or don’t understand why you made the decision. They’re neither cancer nor an infection. They are people who you didn’t explain things to clear enough for them to understand.

5. Celebrate success. I don’t care how you do it. It’s just important that you do it. No one wants to work for a slave master, for a manager who just cares about output and not people. Send that message and they will interpret it badly.

6. Now, more than ever, it is critical to manage up and not just simply down. Get buy-in from your leadership. They are experiencing pressure, too. Talk to your senior leadership even more, and don’t go it alone. Explain decisions in ways they can understand. They may disagree, but remind them that there is no playbook for this. Everyone is figuring out the new environment on the fly.

7. Start to crank it up. There will come a time where you need to push and encourage and cajole and demand and love your people sufficiently to get them back to where they were and beyond. Winning has a price, and some people won’t be prepared to move forward. Some will disappoint you and give up. There will come a point where accepting low standards from your people will not be acceptable. It will take courage for you to challenge them. After all, many people will want to languish in their sadness, and they will find it hard to recover. Expect their best from them and don’t settle for less.

8. Normalcy returns. I don’t know what it will look like for your business or for your team, but I do know that it can return to an even higher level of success than before the pandemic. You’ll need to use your wits and your heart together to get there.

Leading people at this time may require that you use your total life experience and not just simply what you’ve learned at work, in school, in books, and elsewhere. YouTube videos won’t do it, either. After all, the advice that you get from them has never been tested in this climate.

Take a deep breath and step into the deep end and start swimming. You may start with a dog paddle before going all out again. We are all looking for leaders to follow. Lead us.

 

Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2020, 2021

 

ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter | Job CoachJeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 2200 episodes and “The No BS Coaching Advice Podcast” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council. “No BS JobSearch Advice Radio” was named a Top 10 podcast for job search. JobSearchTV.com is also a Top 10 YouTube channel for job search.

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

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