The NEW Normal: Work Places and Management Attitudes of the Future

Those of us lucky enough to be able to work from home during the COVID-19 crisis are getting a crash course in how we can come together to do our jobs while remaining physically distant. The experience is giving us a glimpse of the work life of the future, which may be one of the more positive developments to emerge from today’s trauma.

On a videoconference while sheltering in place, we can no longer pretend that there are sharp boundaries between home and work.  Kids, pets, impossibly messy or neat rooms, and other clues emerge in the margins of our computer screens.

Managers are now seeing their employees with a fullness not necessary completeness, they’ve never before imagined or now experienced.  Employees are seeing their bosses in casual attire, sometimes too casual, in makeshift office environs such as the dinning room table and living rooms.

This new visibility will change the way we manage, lead and accept management from our superiors.  This is not the occasional work-at-home snow day or working sick day.  The dynamics between roles… employer, manager and employee are changing and the impact is likely to last.

A check-in on how people are doing at the beginning of a staff meeting reveals just how the dynamics are changing.  Some people continue to struggle with children interrupting, others are caring for aging parents in distant places, others are feeling isolated, insecure, missing the discipline and structured routines of the office collective.

Its hard not to care more about the people when you know these things are happening.  Welcome to the unvarnished merging of the private life with the work life, as revealed in all its candid glory or lack thereof, in the work-at-home setting.

Understanding one another, accepting that we all have private lives with sometimes messy trappings, will help us find the compassion for one another that will help us all get through this crisis.  

The benefits of compassion are born of intimacy, awareness of one another and fellow-feeling, and such enlightenment usually endures.  It’s a new attitude and spirit that becomes part of our driving forces, how we see things and how we work together with less bite to our words and actions.

But caring and compassion is not all we need to discover for one another, we also need truth.  As the economy falters, teams that are honest with one another about what they can and can’t do, what the priorities and limits must be, are more likely to endure this crisis and prevail. COVID-19 will end. Teams will be better as a result of experiencing the unsettling and fear inspiring crisis.

The early learned takeaway of COVID-19… Successful management will focus more on compassion and candor, and less on command and control.  

By the time we emerge from our homes, we will also have learned which technologies are best for different purposes.  Many tasks can be done most efficiently using asynchronous communication tools.  For example… if you want to inform the team about something via an informational video, email the link to the team.  Simple enough.  But if fostering deeper social connection with the team is the primary goal, then stream the video to the team with online chat capabilities so feedback is possible and immediately available.

What we are learning about remote work will open up new opportunities for work-life balance.  Most parents are discovering that their work productivity has dropped, but they’re getting a dramatic boost in family intimacy.  When the virus is conquered, many will want to keep working remotely, enjoying the time saved in commuting.  

Those who continue to commute will enjoy less traffic on the roads and congestion on public transportation.

No one will forget the lessons of compassion.  Everyone will remember how their boss responded during this time.  Did they check in frequently, say every half-hour, to see if you were grinding away at your assigned tasks?  Did they focus on you as a human with needs, concerns and fears?  Did they communicate with you directly and honestly, giving the team time to raise concerns?  Did they share information openly and honestly, or try to hide it or gloss over truth in favor of control?  Time and experience will tell the story of how your boss acts during this crisis.

Ultimately it may be our ability to upend hierarchical responsibility that gets everyone through this crisis with the fewest emotional bruises.  Its not only leaders who need to step up with compassion and candor, but employees also.  If the boss is letting stress get the best of them, take a moment to see them as a human being, stressed just like you are.

Don’t wait for the boss to check-in with you, make it a two-way street… initiate the check-in with them too.  Show them you care and then push yourself to take a risk… explain why their behavior is counterproductive.

We all need to take responsibility as leaders.  If we conduct every interaction during this crisis will all the compassion and honesty we can muster, our work lives can emerge from it changed for the better.

New habits of kindness, compassion and caring will endure forever.  Sometimes it takes a crisis, maybe even a disaster, to remind us that we are interdependent. Ask yourself… is this opportunity a chance to change our thinking about how work can be accomplished?

This crisis offers a chance to rebuild a new normal for the work cultural in America.  We can find greater strength for our journey of economic recovery through the power of compassion, bonded together for a collective and common purpose.