- You do not have to look good on video. You do not have to look good IRL. Who gets to say what good-looking is anyway? You are FAR more valuable than merely your looks. Give video a try. Humans evolved to communicate with much more than words. We want to offer and receive gesture, eye contact, nuance.
- Listening and asking curious, open-ended questions is a good idea.
- Calm down about productivity right now. Let people adjust. Don’t expect work to be the same as it’s always been.
- Be a leader, not a micromanager or a detention monitor. Treat your team like adults. Extend serious trust. Set clear expectations for outcomes and results, not butts-in-seats or hours-online. Manage performance problems like the individual situations they are. You should have been doing all this anyway.
- Make real decisions about what’s truly not important and ditch that stuff once and for all. How many of us had 40 goals before the COVID-19 outbreak? (I know I usually did in my sixteen corporate years). What are actually the 3 ESSENTIAL goals that matter now?
- Ask your team what they need to be safe, productive and healthy at work. Get it for them. Stand for ethics, health protocols, flexibility, civics and community. Stand up with fierce love against misguided corporate policies, poor leadership, fear, profiteering and callousness. You should have been doing all this anyway.
First published on LinkedIn, March 2020.