Leading in a crisis is never easy. At InspireHUB, we've been operating as a 100% remote team for seven years, an experience that has allowed us to shape a company culture and set of empathy-based practices that make communicating and building trust with disparate people with diverse needs across multiple time zones easier.
Still, no amount of practice prepares you for the very human challenges of a pandemic. People are stressed and afraid. They’re suffering losses and dealing with uncertainty. When people are compromised, communicating with empathy and compassion is more important than ever. The most important part of your business continuity plan is the wellness of your people.
Whether the crisis you’re facing is COVID-19 or some other challenging situation, there are 3 powerful choices that will help you create a culture of care and provide effective leadership to clients and employees:
As IT leaders at InspireHUB, we are experienced in dealing with high-pressure stakes. Navigating outages that can place business at risk is something that comes with the job. Mature leaders quickly discover that speaking calmly and measured will help their team find the solution quicker than the alternative.
As humans, it's easy to want to generalize, but it's a dangerous game. There's a reason in the hospital they ask patients to score their pain on a rank of 1 to 10. Not everyone has the same tolerance.The same holds true in difficult times. Communicating with numbers is far more helpful than just words. For example: saying we are 60% sure this will be an issue is different from saying we are fairly certain.
It's easy to draw conclusions, but it's also the surest way to shut down a conversation. If you disagree with something, a great question to ask before offering an opinion is this: "Interesting., I don't know if I see it that way? Can you expand a bit more?" Often that is enough to gain some information that will help you clarify, and if it doesn't, the other person will feel better situated to listen to the alternative.
We've been helping InspireHUB clients not just survive during this time but THRIVE! We collected all of our advice and made it available for FREE as our great big give-back during this difficult time. Included in this FREE Guide: