PART 1
With the world in the state it is, this is an easy time for businesses to put off the things that aren’t mission-critical, and while we’re all adjusting to a new way of working, development has taken a back seat. Some may say that was inevitable, but we call B.S. on that. Making sure that your workforce—and especially your highest potential employees—continue to learn, grow, and get better at their jobs remains centrally important.
One way to think about this is with a 2x2 matrix made famous by Steven Covey. Plotting things that people have to manage by their importance and urgency. It’s easy to respond to things that are urgent, and right now there are a lot of those, but great leaders are good at making sure the important things that aren’t urgent also get done.
Keeping your eye on what’s important, as soon as you can, may be one of the ways that you differentiate your company, your culture, and your leadership. Granted, there is a lot to be absorbed in these days, and there is indeed much that is both important and urgent. But the importance of professional development does not diminish because of COVID-19. If you can’t get to it today, then take a minute now and see when it fits in your schedule.
We’re all learning new habits right now, or as one of our coaches called it recently, adjusting to the “new abnormal,” but writing off a year of development because we need to readjust to working from home may feel like the right plan for the right now, but does not say a lot for your company’s future and won’t be a stance that impresses your most important people.
There are a lot of ways leaders have been trying to signal—implicitly and explicitly—to their employees that they support them. Continuing their professional development is one way to show that you have their future in mind. And guess what? There’s not much about being at home (versus the office) that gets in the way of a tightened up development plan.
A focus on development is an act of optimism in the face of uncertainty and a way to generate momentum that may be hard to come by these days. The organization that invests in its future, despite being unsure of what that future holds, is an organization that shows it can focus, that the company is a good place for great employees, that it cares about its people, and that it has the ability to think about the future and its ongoing performance. Being able to not dwell in a reactive mindset is an important signal for the health of an organization.
This may not be what everyone is ready to hear right now, but the current situation may be an almost perfectly developed laboratory to assess and develop the most important aspects of being a leader.
Right now, leaders are faced with a novel situation that will test their ability to plan and decide, engage and manage, and mobilize others. Leaders have to do all of this with a distracted and anxious workforce. If you were asked to create a leadership obstacle course, wouldn’t it look a bit like this? Your customers are afraid to spend; other clients are folding; the financial status of your own company is in question; and you have a workforce that probably isn’t at their best: anxious, less productive, and needy. These conditions mean that each day is one in which you can help people be productive. Every day the impact of quality leadership shows through.
True leaders are making bets on what their future will look like and how their company and their people can survive and thrive. Perhaps most important, great leaders are showing both resilience and endurance. It is easy to get exhausted and just fall back to being reactive, but your team and your customers are looking for leadership.
Leaders who differentiate today by helping their teams continue their development through the current abnormal are making a strong case for their future potential.