Can You Remain The Same Manager After The Lockdown?

The emotional impact of being on lockdown will most likely change professional interactions. Rather than feeling helpless, this is an opportunity for you to bounce back and capitalize on the lessons your teams have learned from this period.

Once the lockdown is over, I believe there will be two categories of managers:

1. Those who imagine that with the return to "normal" they will find their teams the same as before and that they will lead as they did before.
2. Those who understand that life after lockdown will never be like it was before and that a change of posture will be indispensable.

The world of labor has been shaken by a real trauma: it is not about imposed telework, changes in processes that had to be improvised or forced digitalization; it is about the experiences of employees who have been indelibly marked by this pandemic.

Acknowledging what your team has experienced during the lockdown

First of all, many were exposed to fear. Some have experienced the fear of death, because they've been infected by COVID-19 or are mourning a loved one. Others have experienced the fear of being infected; the fear of losing vulnerable parents, grandparents or other relatives; the fear of neighbors who, even without symptoms, could infect them; the fear of touching objects that could transmit infection; the fear of taking public transportation; the fear of losing their jobs; etc.

All these fears have shaken many beliefs, but since fear is experienced in a very individual way, the intensity of the trauma obviously varies from one person to another. The only certainty is that, like any trauma, fear marks both the individual and collective memory. Being more or less marked, your employees will probably not be the same as before.

There are also those who have had a bad experience under lockdown. There are those who will come out of this period exhausted because they had to juggle work and childcare for weeks on end; those who are in the process of separating from their spouse/partner because they've realized that they can no longer stand them; and single people who have suffered from loneliness. There are even those who have simply suffered from boredom.

Besides the unhappy ones, there are also the employees who have enjoyed spending more time with their families; those who have understood that they can work better from a distance without having to endure exhausting daily commutes; and those who have discovered that they're much more productive with fewer meetings. Furthermore, there are employees who have appreciated the new autonomy.

In such a special context, the post-lockdown period will not just be like returning from vacation. Everyone has been touched emotionally in one way or another. Ignoring the impact, it will have on employees' levels of engagement would be naive or blind.

Optimizing the “new normal”

What can you do to manage things in the best possible way? The obvious thing is to show empathy. Taking an interest in your employees also means taking an interest in their emotions, including those they felt during the lockdown. When they return to company premises, your employees may have a new need: feeling safe.

Knowing that employees have experienced lockdown differently, create a space for them to share their feelings and experiences, to identify the improvements implemented by those whose agility has enabled them to adapt their work to the conditions of the lockdown, to thank those who have been particularly involved, and to recognize the talents that have been revealed during this period. This can be a great opportunity for you to see the impact that trusting employees to work remotely can have on people and performance in general.

To better bounce back and capitalize on the lessons learned from this experience, invite all members of your team to answer the following questions. These questions may relate to interactions within your team, the organization or the processes, as well as to relationships with management, customers or suppliers:

• What struck or challenged you during this period?
• What will never be the same again?
• What did you like the least?
• What did you enjoy?
• What did you learn or discover?
• What worked well professionally?
• What went wrong professionally?
• What changes would you recommend for preparing for the future?

Since exemplarity is central, you as a manager should be the first to answer these questions, showing that you too may have encountered difficulties. You are not a superhero, but a human being, like them.

You can then launch a strengths-based leadership workshop using a structured approach that helps each team member become aware of his or her strengths and make the most of them. In addition to improving collective performance, it will increase each individual's self-confidence and resilience.

Then, invite your team to together define the rules of the game for the future. This can allow everyone to express their expectations. Clarifying the rules also means creating a more secure environment. A good way to achieve this is to co-construct an engaged team charter, which as its name suggests has characteristics that promote the level of team engagement.

As a manager, also ask yourself what you should change about your posture, your way of doing things and the way you treat your employees to maximize their level of engagement (which should be the objective of any manager).

As this pandemic and its consequences have shattered many codes, established rules, processes and old-style managerial approaches, it has also opened the door to new possibilities. By capitalizing on what has happened, you have an opportunity to start afresh on a new, co-constructed basis. But to do so, you have to listen to your teams, not be afraid to question everything and, above all, dare to challenge your own managerial posture. By putting people back at the center, this crisis has opened the door to a much more rewarding future for everyone.

This article was originally published on Forbes.