How to Lead Your Team During Unprecedented Times
By: Silvia Duran
Tags: Leadership Coaching, Empathy, Emotions, Emotional Intelligence

SILVIA M. DURAN/DECEMBER 2020

Being the boss or leader of your team is not just about reaching a goal or influencing your employees to perform their best 24/7, contrary to popular belief, but it’s about having the ability to realize that as humans, we all have struggles and are connected by feelings and emotions. To be successful, one must have the capacity of being empathetic, to lead with authenticity, passion, instilling confidence, transparency, integrity, and being accountable. While this may sound like a lot, this balance allows an understanding of the emotions and needs that drive the team to perform efficiently without compromising their morale, and mental health. A leader must understand that they are not above anyone else; the different skills that everyone can offer the organization has the ability to create a lucrative working environment, when used to its utmost potential.

So how exactly do empathy and emotions come into work? Having the ability to understand the experiences and feelings of others outside of your own perspective is crucial. How you treat your employees determines your success, as they are the backbone of your entire operation. Now this concept can be applied to business management as well, because it inspires management to become more resourceful and innovative, especially with communication.

A simple way to attain these skills is to become an active listener when communicating with others. By putting your needs and thoughts to the side just for that moment, you allow yourself to feel, hear and understand what the other person is expressing to you with more clarity. Naturally, it can be hard to quiet your own thoughts to understand someone else’s perspective, which is where meditation or mindfulness is very beneficial. It is during meditation that you are able to connect with your thoughts, emotions and reactions to external sources which influences how you communicate . Just how we can take our sweet time deciding what clothing we are going to wear on a particular day, we need to apply it to our thoughts and words that we use to communicate. Implementing this into your life doesn’t require crazy lengths of effort. You can start with this yourself by simply not placing expectations of constant perfection. Be kind with yourself and let the process flow more naturally.

For the past 30 years, I have had the privilege to work with the most talented and untalented people from various businesses and levels of management. I must say that 60% of corporate America lacks the skill to influence, communicate. and lead successfully a team with kindness and compassion. I have witnessed and experienced in times of crisis how management failed to communicate with its staff. However their. main focus remains on micromanaging, clocking employees and emphasising. on meaningless habits of others.

While everyone is solely focused on maximizing profits, we fail to truly understand that this profit is directly dependent on human responsiveness to the product or service. People like you and I, who are humans that can actually experience different types of emotions. We are the main source of capital spending and what we purchase is heavily dictated by our emotions. In the coaching business, we talk about the 80/20 rule to master the skills of our emotions and mindset. The 80% is based purely on our psychological needs as humans and the remaining 20% is purely mechanics. An uncontrollable or untrained state of mind can be incredibly damaging; something that this pandemic has proven to many. So why are so many refusing to implement such a change? Unfortunately, the stigma around emotions has created a fallacy in people’s minds that emotions are a sign of. weakness. Those who work in middle management positions such as HR, sales or an Office Manager are likely to catch onto this.

During this unprecedented time, I have personally learned to simplify my life and focus on what really is important, in both my work and private life. So many are working remotely and frankly prefer to stay that way, to avoid the micromanagement, toxic coworkers and selfish bosses. Being that a majority of the communication is on a virtual level, meetings and work are becoming more efficient: meetings are held in less than 30 minutes keeping them short and sweet. Whether communicating via zoom, text or just old fashioned phone calls, this is becoming the new norm, which is why change and adaptivity is so important. Having the. ability to convey. competence and authority while controlling your emotions. during a crisis, projects confidence and leadership among your group. As one of my favorite public speakers said: “Kindness, condor and compassion is such a brilliant mix for leadership.”-Gary Vaynerchuck. Well said.