Earlier this year, we held our semi-quarterly all-hands meeting. As I often do, I incorporated a live poll into my company overview, so I could gather and reflect back to the company employees’ thoughts on a key issue. For this meeting, the question was personal: what word would you use to describe how you are feeling right now?
When I opened the live poll and the team anonymously texted their answers, the word cloud showed a mix of emotions: “exhausted,” “excited,” “anxious,” and “hopeful.” But one word eventually overpowered the others: “overwhelmed.”
I knew our team had been under significant strain, personally and professionally. The COVID-19 pandemic had no end in sight, tensions around the election were escalating, our country was grappling with systemic racial injustices, and there were raging, uncontrollable wildfires affecting the communities where our employees worked and lived (Portland and Silicon Valley).
As the word cloud was forming, and our employees were openly sharing their experiences, I wanted to ask each person why they chose the word they had texted.
But I didn’t. Instead, I did something I wished I hadn’t. Once the word cloud was formed, I advanced the slide to our KPIs: revenue, retention, net promoter score, etc. And in doing so I forgot a key lesson I’ve learned as CEO: for a company looking to build a great business and culture, there’s no more important “key performance indicator” than the well-being of its team.
The next week, I wrote an open letter to our employees committing to meet with any employee who was willing to answer the question I had failed to ask. I wanted to better understand from our employees how they were experiencing the challenges 2020 had delivered—and what we as a company and their business leaders could do to help.
From both these conversations and prior experience, I’ve learned that managers and business leaders have a role to play in helping their employees navigate times of crisis. Often this role is assumed to be tactical—for instance, keeping employees focused on the task at hand or more closely monitoring their performance. But 2020 has taught me that we best engage and empower our employees in times of crisis when we establish and continuously reinforce connections between employees and themselves, each other, their work, and their communities:
Connection to self
Help employees understand and process their fears, hopes, and concerns. During times of crisis, we experience a wide range of emotions. Often business leaders try to keep their teams focused and engaged by compartmentalizing work, and keeping emotions related to a broader crisis out of the workplace. But that can do more harm than good. The “wall” that may have once existed between one’s personal life and professional life is now at most a chain link fence.
Employers and business…
Read More: 5 points of connection critical to leading through crisis