What does equitable and inclusive leadership look like at this time?
Here in NYC, we're about a week and a half into the initial response to COVID-19 making it's known arrival in our city. We knew it was coming and yet to actually experience the city as it heads towards what will likely be a total "shelter-in-place" shut down is something else completely.
We've been having frank and open conversations with leaders and HR folks at our client organizations about what equitable and inclusive leadership looks like at this time. Our clients are mostly small to mid-sized companies or non-profit organizations who are not involved in direct emergency response and have spent the past week and a half at various stages of moving to 100% work from home.
Based on these and various other conversations across multiple sectors and communities, here are some of our takeaways:
Expect a loss of productivity for the next few weeks and don't try to mitigate it yet. This is a huge time of transition. Your staff are scared, trying to stock up on supplies and adjust to the "new normal", and many are also facing down 6 weeks or more of homeschooling their kids on top of their workload as well as financial and economic uncertainty. This is not a time to try and get staff to clock in, prove that they are working, or meet non-critical deadlines. Give everyone, yourselves included, a chance to transition.
Show that you care about your staff. Think about who might be most vulnerable and most impacted and reach out to them just to see how they're doing and what their needs are. Some companies are providing their staff with stipends to cover their immediate needs. If possible, don't make people use PTO or unpaid time off right now. We know it's a financially uncertain time but we believe that taking care of your staff right now is not just the right thing to do but will create the trust and psychological safety that will benefit your organization going forward through this crisis and in the long run. If you put profit or revenue over the immediate well-being of your staff right now, your staff will know and this will adversely impact your organization in the long run.
Create an online space for staff to check in with each other and process, if they want. Consider hosting an optional virtual all-staff meeting on Friday and maybe every Friday (or whatever day of the week works best) via video conference so people can see each other's faces and hear from each other. Keep the agenda light - you can include a few minutes of announcements, but otherwise, make this about asking staff how they are and giving people a chance to check in.
Acknowledge that this is a stressful and frightening time. We believe that the leadership we need right now calls for a willingness to confront and name the truth - not to panic, but not to bury our heads in the sand either or to diminish the scale of what is happening and how people are feeling about it.
Understand that not everyone is experiencing this how you are. We all have different ways of responding to crisis situations and stress. Identity and privilege as well as personality type and context play a huge part in this. You may not be worried about your health, but plenty of your staff likely are, either for themselves or loved ones. You may not know of invisible health conditions, including mental health, or other circumstances that might be at play.
Don't assume that you know what's best for your staff. Ask them what they need, listen, and take what they say at face value right now. It's easy to default to paternalism, top down leadership, and a desire to control. Try to do the opposite. Consider forming an emergency advisory group of staff from across your organization that represents a variety of voices, including admin and support staff, hourly workers, interns, and those who are part-time or were already working remotely. Get their input on the decisions that impact everyone.
Thank people. Thank your staff, your colleagues, your clients, your customers, your vendors, your partners, your donors, your funders, your community. There are all kinds of people that contribute, often invisibly, to us being able to do our jobs and live our lives. Think about who is most invisible and thank them.
Our concern is always with equity and inclusion, and now more than ever it can be easy to default to old and harmful patterns of leadership and decision making in ways that can exacerbate the harm that is already being disproportionately experienced by those who are most systemically marginalized and made vulnerable.
Or, with everything already shifting so drastically and rapidly, we have an opportunity and we believe a responsibility to see if we can make some of those shifts take us in the direction of a more equitable and inclusive future that benefits all of us.
Our survival depends on it.
If your leadership and HR team would like some support on what being equitable and inclusive looks like during this time, please reach out, we'd be happy to chat.
Banner photo by Jong Marshes on Unsplash. Originally published on LinkedIn.