Leader: There are lots of useful data out there about what to do when someone in your organization- someone in your leadership care- becomes ill with COVID-19. HR policies, practices, notification channels, and precautions. All essential to the health and safety of your workforce.
And then there are the people, the human beings, who are ill and frightened. Their family members are worried and they are struggling to focus on work for even short, sporadic stints.
Zoomed In LeadershipIt may feel to you that you have to be there for every person, through every stage of their worry and fear around this. You may feel compelled to zoom in, go heads down- from person to person, situation to situation, response to response.
Zoomed Out LeadershipOr, you may feel the pull to zoom out toward what you can influence- your industry, marketshare, highest level stakeholders and changing strategic framework. The fear and uncertainty of people in your leadership care may feel overwhelming- it may even heighten your own. It can (understandably) make you want to distance yourself from the humans in your care.
Full Range LeadershipYou can be a full-range leader who does both, who zooms in close to demonstrate caring on a person to person level. And you can zoom out to the strategic landscape and plan, prepare, position for today and whatever may be ahead in the unknown and unknowable of tomorrow.
The ability to do both, to seamlessly and quickly zoom in and out, likely landed you this leadership gig in the first place. What people need most from you now is for you to keep talking about your high level values and beliefs. Your beliefs about the strength and resiliency of human beings, the essentiality of actively building community and caring for one another in every interaction, your commitment to stay focused on the short term transactions and the long term strategic thinking and actions that will keep your organization healthy and well. Share your pride in them- mention their names when you can. And not just leaders you work with everyday, the ‘names’ people recognize, talk about people whose efforts may be easily or often overlooked.
And, it’s important to know what the individual people in your leadership care are experiencing and your job is to ensure they have access to the help they need to cope. This is not a time for ‘doing the things that make people feel cared about,’ it’s the time for being a caring leader.
You can do, and be, both strategic and caring- zoomed in and out.