Creating an Effective Work Environment in the time of COVID

The business climate remains nebulous. Lockdowns are ending and re-starting. COVID cases are rising, falling, steady, and everywhere in between. People remain confused, fearful, and unsure about what the future will bring for their families, their homes, and their loved ones. It’s never been more critical for leadership to step up as businesses begin to ramp up. How comfortable is your organization in the current climate? Are the goals and objectives for your team clear and understood? Especially during this time of uncertainty. Can the team count on their leaders to provide understanding and clarity to this very confusing and murky situation? 

For a leader, and for the sake of the organization, it is imperative that these questions can be answered confidently. Even more so as we begin to ramp back up. Here are some key elements that every leader needs to consider to ensure their organization is set up for success. 

Clarity of Vision

This is perhaps the most critical aspect of leadership that impacts the entire organization: how clearly are you seeing the future that your organization is moving towards? Are you able to see this in the midst of the current chaos? There is no better time than now to make sure you are clear on the goals and objectives for your organization.

Passionate Belief 

How confident are you in your team’s ability to reach/achieve these goals? How difficult is it going to be to get there? Would your team agree? In some circumstance an organization will rely on the belief and confidence of the leader until they themselves can clearly see the path to achieving the goal. Not to be missed, ensuring the organization has the skills and knowledge needed to deliver is foundational. 

Laser Focus

This is one of the most difficult things to do in leadership under normal circumstances and will become even more challenging as we ramp back up. Mainly due to the fact that the leader is also a support to the team for removing barriers to achieve results. Moving forward is going to bring unfamiliar and new barriers that may not have been faced before. Seeing these through and finding creative solutions to keep the team engaged is going to be essential.  

Everyone Comes With Us

Making sure that all levels of the organization are connected to the vision and desired goal is the best way to realize the goal in the shortest amount of time possible. If everyone in the organization knows what the goal is, then everyone in the organization can work with that end in sight and filter out distractions with the same scrutiny of priorities. This step often gets overlooked at lower levels in the organization based on the mindset that ‘worker bees’ need to remain focused on their tasks at hand. This damaging mindset wastes the talents and abilities and shuts out the creativity and ingenuity of a large percentage of the organization. One of the best ways to tap into the discretionary effort of the team is to make sure the whole team knows what the goal is so that everyone can move the needle towards that goal regardless of role or title or function. 

The More You Care, The More You Inspire

Inspiring and motivating your team or organization to work towards the goal is vital for realizing them. This is how the leader demonstrates to the team that the objective is worthwhile and warrants their time and energy. That it is meaningful and will bring about a better future than the current state. Demonstrating to your team that you care helps to create the inspiration needed to strive for that future state. It shows the team that they are important to you as people and that they matter. In return, the team provides for the leader the skills, energy, and work needed to move the organization ahead. Rarely do people give their all to a person that they feel doesn’t care about them or doesn’t appreciate the work they do. 

Ensuring that each of these elements are in place within the team as it ramps back up into the ‘new normal’ will help solidify the achievement and delivery of the needed goals and objective of the organization. 

If you have not taken the time to make sure your team has clear objectives and goals, there is no better time than now to make sure this is in place. Without this foresight and vision, the team is left floating and the results are left up to chance. No team or organization accomplishes all it aspires to be by chance or luck. It takes intention, discipline, and leadership to make it happen.