Leadership in Crisis – 4 Focus Traits, Employees Need Now!

What psychological, emotional and social needs in Covid-19 crisis do Leaders and Managers have to cover

Study of psychological, emotional and social leadership skills. How Followers want their leaders, what crucial elements Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope are and a 15 question self-test.

Find out, what psychological, emotional and social needs leaders and Managers have to cover in crisis. Gallup studied 10,000 people in “follower” job roles between 2005 and 2008. The results of this research are now with Covid-19 crisis, a possible recession and with exploding remote work and with the pressure to enforce the digital transformation more than ever vital for C-level and Business owners.

The authors Tom Rath and Barry Conchie explored the topic of leadership. The research examined four specific needs, people have to experience with their leaders in order to feel engaged and connected to the organization and their day-to-day work.
The four key areas  – even more during a crisis – are Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope.

Serving these four fields makes employees staying on board and let them feel involved and engaged in their companies.
Key is that each Manager know their talents and be aware of their strengths in order leverage his DNA-traits to serve the following needs. Especially in Corona crisis and economic turmoul that is needed to have a significant impact on their employees.

The Impact of Trust

Trust has many layers. It consists of credibility + reliability + intimacy which leaders need to transport to be perceived to be trustworthy.  Let’s start with credibility — credibility points to a leader’s competency and believability. Reliability can be treated in a similar way. Reliable leaders do what they say they will do. Reliability is about holding true to commitments. Intimacy is about how you are. Intimacy is about building deeper connections with followers

Questions leaders need to ask themselves

  1. How I do competent decision, How can I bring good and credible information into my decisions, how can I involve other experts to inform my decisions?
  2. How can I be seen as a leader who lives up to the commitments I make?
  3. How can make sure that I commit to things that I am absolutely certain I can follow through on?
  4. How can be approachable and vulnerable as a leader?
  5. How can my strengths help me be curious about others as human beings rather than just employees?

If our people see us as believable forthright leaders who care about them and who do what is right with the broader mission in mind, then certainly trust can grow. When followers trust their leaders, one in two are engaged. When followers don’t find leaders trustworthy, only one in 12 are engaged at work.

The Impact of Compassion

The research for Strengths Based Leadership found following words in relation to their leaders’ compassion: “caring,” “friendship,” “happiness” and even “love.” Followers expect compassion and “general positive energy” from leaders. More locally, when followers were asked if their “supervisor or someone at work” cared about them, they were significantly more likely to stay with companies, have much more engaged customers, were substantially more productive and were more profitable to their employers. So, compassion, simply put, converts into to better business outcomes — including productivity, profitability, customer scores, retention, attendance to performance.

Questions managers need to ask themselves:

  1. How can I make feel people know that they matter, how can I ensure that I collaborate more than I command?
  2. How can I ask more and tell less?
  3. How can I stay curious in order to learn about employees beyond the work environment?

Compassionate leadership is to show employees that they are more than a cog in the machine. Help them see that they matter both at work and beyond. Help them see why they matter and what they contribute and send them home feeling better at night.

The Impact of Stability

Followers frequently use words like “security,” “strength,” “support” and “peace” in conjunction with stability. Employees need to feel their jobs are stable for them to do their best work. In fact, followers are nine times more likely to be engaged in their jobs if they feel the company’s financial future is secure.
The quickest way to create a sense of stability is with transparency, especially about vision and financials. Even when the news is bad, employees feel better when leaders are open about it. Think about how you feel when you only get some of the information.
Questions leaders need to ask themselves

  1. So how can I make sure that I am creating clarity for my team?
  2. How can I have more focused, frequent one-on-one conversations
  3. How can I make my team feel as my business partners?
  4. How can I make sure that my team feels a sense of stability, even in crisis or when broader changes are happening?

When it comes to day-to-day discussions about expectations, two-way conversations are key to stability. Involving your employees in the process of setting expectations and in discussions about successes and struggles is imminent.

The Impact of Hope

With complexity often comes confusion and with confusion, disengagement. Hope helps employees to see a way forward when facing uncertainty in conjunction with hope followers also used words like direction, faith, and guidance.

The most powerful question Gallup asked followers was about hope — 69% who strongly agreed that their leaders made them “feel enthusiastic about the future” were engaged. Only 1% of those who disagreed with the statement were engaged.

Questions leaders need to ask themselves.

  1. How can I spend more time communicating a future of hope for my team and organization?
  2. How can I make sure I am helping employees see how they fit into our hopeful future?
  3. How can I tie hope to our reality of today in order to help employees feel optimistic even in difficult times?

“If, as a leader, you are not creating hope and helping people see the way forward, chances are, no one else is either.”

Conclusion

Now we explored these four areas more deeply, as well as to look at how leaders can leverage their strengths to more effectively provide what their people need as it pertains to these four areas. if we can better understand what is at the heart of each of these four needs, leaders will be able to more effectively build their business, while also building their people. We in the Expert Institute of Talent & Strengths in Sales have been coaching hundreds of Leaders and quite astonishingly very few can express their individual strengths nor they are aware of the impact of the 15 questions.

B2B Vertrieb, Talent- und stärken-basierter Verkauf, agile Methoden wie Design Thinking, SCRUM, Kanban im Sales sind Karls Metier. Karl war über 20 Jahre als „Hunter“ im B2B Geschäftskunden-Verkauf und Projekt-Geschäft im produzierenden Mittelstand, in den Branchen Kosmetik Luxus und internationalem Handel aktiv. Mit ansteckender Energie berät er Unternehmer, CSO´s, Key Account Manager und Außendienstler in den Feldern Vertrieb 4.0, strategischer Verkauf, intelligenter Neukunden-Akquise, systematischer Preisdurchsetzung, moderner Nutzenargumentation, und "Elevator Pitch“. Karl trainiert und komponiert Sales-Teams als Gallup zertifizierter Strengths Coach und ist Kopf einer Unternehmensberatung und eines Experten Instituts für Talent & Stärke im Verkauf.

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