Thoughts on post-pandemic fatigue, resilience and talent management
Recently, I have been reflecting on how my staff are feeling currently as we slowly move out of the pandemic in the UK. Considering that a pandemic is typically a once in a century event, I want to pay huge credit to the adaptability and flexibility shown by staff during this time. Services were literally shifted from physical to virtual overnight, and work from home trials became a long-term reality within days. The strength of character and resilience shown was exemplary. So why is it that most staff are still feeling tired, unloved, not cared for, and frustrated.
The pandemic moment
During the pandemic, everyone had a clear purpose - keep running our critical services for the benefit of our students, staff and society. Even though we were not prepared for a pandemic, we were aligned and purposeful. This led to focussed work, agility in decision making, and fast implementation. There was simply no other choice! Traditional hierarchies, structures, and mechanisms had to be thrown out of the window to make decision making faster and outcomes achievable.
The speed of implementation meant staff were putting in long hours to realise common goals. For some of us, there was a significant cognitive overhead of keeping on top of a large number of new initiatives. There was also the joy of being able to achieve things at pace, all for the good of our users. At senior levels, the leadership mode changed from efficiency towards empathy. At a global level, empathetic leadership and its effectiveness came to the forefront of discussions and debates, with Jacinda Ardern picked up as may be the most effective leader in the world due to her focus on empathy.
Let us not forget the emotional toll of the pandemic and the associated lockdowns. Not being able to see your family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, had a significant negative impact on people’s well being. Some of my colleagues lost their loved ones and not be there for them, many couldn’t see their loved ones in care homes, many lost hope for the future. The fears started emerging, would we ever be able to combat this virus, would I survive if I get Covid, would NHS survive this, would our economy survive this, would I still have a job? The emotional disruption to the basic and psychological needs in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was significant and has had a long-term impact on many people.
Leadership in a crisis
During the pandemic, I noticed a change in my own leadership style. My primary leadership stance changed from servant leadership towards directive (although still collaborative) leadership. My staff were looking at me for answers, I didn’t have many, but what I did have was the conviction and trust that together, we can overcome any obstacle in our path. In an all staff briefing after the first lockdown, I told staff my honest views — I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you this. None of this scares me because I know that we can tackle any challenge together. A staff member later told me that she found the strength she needed after hearing that. I am still impacted by her statement.
Leadership during pandemic also reminds me of a quote from Kevin Roberts book, 64 shots, leadership in a crazy world. Kevin highlights — Leading people in a crazy world requires a wide range of skills and emotional capabilities than ever. A leader’s skillset has to be meta, macro, and micro; soft and hard; strategic and creative; directional and executional.
Before the pandemic, I was always a bit skeptical of this statement. I used to think this is asking for too much from leaders. Not many leaders have all these qualities. I am firmly in the agreement camp now. A good leader does need to have all these skills, not necessarily strengths in all these areas but definitely capability in all these areas.
Resilience
The pandemic impact was not equitable. We know it impacted parts of society differently (e.g. ethnic minorities, carers, young people). Service provision at organisations was also not equitable. Staff who kept the services running, particularly the front line staff in libraries, gyms, cleaners, catering staff, estates maintenance, and many others felt they contributed the most but didn’t receive an equivalent level of acknowledgement or reward. There was also a level of resentment emerging during this time, sometimes across professional services staff, and at other times between professional services and academic staff. I remember hearing several comments along the lines of is my life less important than someone who can work from home?
It is important to acknowledge that the concern and resentment all came from a good place. People cared for each other generally, and particularly during the pandemic. A lot of people also exhibited or developed resilience through this process. We do throw the resilience word around quite a bit, but what does it actually mean? I was recently in an international call with colleagues from US, UK, Canada, Europe, and Australia and heard several comments around staff feeling fed up of being asked to be resilient to everything. One of the institutions no longer uses the word resilience in their communications.
So what is resilience really? I particularly like Dr. David Westly’s definition which states that: Resilience is our ability to recover quickly from difficulties or tough situations. Resilience is not a single thing, it is a set of qualities that people can learn, but it is not the same thing as being invincible or bullet proof.
Resilience doesn’t mean you don’t get impacted by circumstances, it is a matter of how quickly you recover from those situations. The recovery is often dependent on the strength of the biopsychosocial model that the person has. If we delve a bit deeper and look at resilience with this model, we can identify the underpinning factors (and the related intersection) that identifies an individuals resilience. These factors are:
Biological: how well can we calm ourselves down in times of distress? How well can we control our emotional response?
Psychological: how we think about situations we are in? Are we optimistic about situations in times of difficulty?
Social: how much social support is available to us? How are we connected with our communities, friends, families, through the organisations that we work for and places we live in.
It goes without saying that the more supported we feel, the more resilient we feel. The more we give support to others, the more resilient we feel. Giving support is just as good as receiving support for the mental wellbeing.
The post-pandemic transition
During the pandemic, we were mostly deprived of the social and psychological factors of support. The social factors have had a bit of recovery since then, but not to the same level as in a pre-pandemic world. The social factors were also on a polarisation trajectory even before the pandemic. The algorithmic world and prevalence of social media has further pushed society towards extremes. The concept of informed debate and compromise has slowly evaporated, causing further anxiety and weakening of the social infrastructures that provide resilience.
The psychological factors have also unfortunately kept getting worse. With the global and local crises of wars, high rates of inflation, climate crisis, governments acting in self-interest, pensions and pay disputes, and other issues, the levels of optimism have generally fallen across our staff and communities. Having said that, the pandemic also provided an opportunity for some staff to thrive. Not bounded by the hierarchical shackles, they were able to demonstrate leadership, action biased outcomes, and creativity that led to a remarkable service during the pandemic.
As most institutions come out of the pandemic, they are recognising that at one level, substantial outcomes have been achieved in the past two years, but at another level, they have been delayed in progressing strategically. As a consequence, most institutions are introducing major change programmes to move things forward, hoping to benefit from the agility shown during the pandemic. The difficulty with most change programmes is that they usually underestimate the transitions people need to go through for that change to be successful. As William Bridges highlights in his book, Managing Transitions — Change is situational, transitions are psychological. We pay a lot more attention to the outcome of the change, and not to the problem or the people.
A key thing about a successful transition is that it requires three processes to complete: the ending of an existing situation, progressing through the neutral zone, and forming a new beginning. One of the dilemmas that a post-pandemic transition is bringing to the forefront is the fatigue/frustration conundrum. Some staff are fatigued due to the lack of social and psychological infrastructures to support their resilience and unless social and psychological safety aspects are reestablished, they will either be resistant to, or will have no capacity for, change. At the same time, some staff are feeling frustrated by being stuck in the neutral zone of the transition. They recognise that the pandemic has marked an end to a previous way of working and they are keen to exhibit the leadership and agility further, and establish a new beginning for themselves and the organisation. Unfortunately, with large change programmes, organisations are reverting back to the comfortable hierarchical structures they have been used to in the past, leading to frustration and anxiety for these people. This anxiety often leads to an escape mentality, leading to high turnover of staff for an organisation. The lack of effective transition management has played a critical role in the Great Resignation Era.
Managing talent to reshape our future
So is there a way out of this difficult situation? This is the time where I have to be honest and say I don’t have all the answers. What I do know is that this is the time to manage talent effectively and enable talented people to achieve the very best they can. Now is the time to break obstacles rather than recreate barriers. Now is the time to readjust ways of working to create supportive infrastructures. I have some ideas on this note and I would love to hear more from you.
Clarity in closure
The first thing we, as leaders, need to do is to give clarity in what has ended from a pre-pandemic world and acknowledge the loss and transition that is associated with that ending. While some of us are keen to move to a new world, most of our staff are still unclear on what is ending for a new beginning to emerge. Providing this clarity would be essential to move people forward with the change that is needed.
Providing purpose with short bursts of intensity
What worked immensely well during the pandemic was having a common purpose. A forward looking, optimistic yet realistic purpose needs to be provided to energise people and to enable psychological optimism. At Leeds, we have an ambitious strategy called Universal Values, Global Change which is establishing this purpose. I have tried to do this locally with the libraries vision for 2030 called Knowledge for all. Providing purpose, however, does not solve the fatigue problem. We need to recognise the fatigue, and break change into manageable smaller chunks. The job of a leader here is to not reinstate the traditional change structures and hierarchies, but take a coordination role, enabling smaller changes to happen independently and to facilitate action in short bursts of intensity. There is no bigger trust enabler than seeing outcomes achieved.
Celebrating with short bursts of stability
When we are on a roll, we don’t take time to pause, celebrate and reflect. On going intensity of effort leads to burnout. We need to augment short bursts of intensity with short bursts of stability. A stable period where we take a pause, reflect on our achievements, and proactively celebrate our staff. This is also the time to reward people appropriately by understanding their intrinsic and extrinsic needs, and to reinforce the notion that taking a pause to reflect is an essential part of work and achievement. This is also the time to bring people back together, to reestablish the social infrastructures that have been lost or reduced over the pandemic time period.
Inviting creativity for a long cultural shift
In between the ending of a phase and the new beginning is the chance to do something really creative. This creativity shapes what the new beginning looks like, but fundamentally it also puts the ownership of the new beginning in your staff hands. Staff feel less anxious once they are defining the blueprint of the organisational future themselves. For this very reason, one of the key things I am doing with my team is to define a forward plan that is based on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). The operational detail, the how, and in many cases the what, is all left for teams to define and shape. For some, this will create anxiety but I firmly believe that for others, this will empower them to shape a collective future, with a flair of creativity that would otherwise not happen. Not all staff will go through the transitions at the same pace and that is ok!
This in between transition space is also hugely important for leadership. I often highlight a quote from Viktor Frankl’s book — Man’s search for meaning, which states: Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Good leaders know how to use this space effectively and invite the most creative outcomes to define the response.
This turned out to be a longer blog post than I thought. Do you agree with what I have said? Do you have any other views or ideas? Please do share as I am keen to learn and move our teams forward in an empathetic, supportive fashion.
