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Hey there, Maureen Chana here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neuro coach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership and resilient speaker and trainer. I use insights from neuroscience to help you deliver results by learning to work smarter, be in control of your brain, manage yours and others' emotions, change behaviors, flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel podcast. I'm so thrilled to be with you today. Because today we're talking about how to support your team emotionally as you come out of lockdown and try to adjust to the new normal way of working or way of life. So without wasting any more time, grab your cup of coffee or tea or water, whatever it might be, put your feet up and listen in. I'll start with a question I've heard so many times. How do you inspire others when you're struggling yourself? COVID-19 has brought a very extreme and emotionally demanding working climate. Alongside the emotional impact of being in lockdown, working remotely, and dealing with family life while still trying to ensure that you meet your goals, many staff have faced additional stress, coping with uncertainty in their personal and professional lives, as well as managing fears about the health and well-being of themselves and their loved ones. For the NHS staff, who I always will keep commending for all their hard work, many have found themselves working in an environment with colleagues that they'd never met before and work in critical care units that they were unfamiliar with. In a world where everyone is trying to make sense of new and unsettling experiences and emotions, we have witnessed leaders struggle to communicate honestly with their people, miss opportunities to make quick decisions or to even take decisive actions. The question though is, how can you lead with authority and strength when you're feeling anxious yourself? How can you inspire and motivate others when your mind and heart are racing? Anxiety, of course, has a purpose. Our emotional brain does not cope with uncertainty or change, and this creates anxiety as a mechanism to keep us safe. But how can you not be anxious when you're chased by the uncertainty of your health and the health of your loved ones when you're not even sure if you have a job next month or even next year, with the added worry and concern of whether your company will go bankrupt? It's these worries that provoke these neurological and physical responses. Organizations must now consider the full breadth of the employees' needs as people. Safety is essential, of course, but it's also important to address higher level needs such as the want for honesty, authenticity, certainty, stability, connections, autonomy, fairness, self-esteem, growth and assurance in the whole context of this crisis. It's more clear, more so now than ever before, that change is a constant and certainty is fleeting. Every organization is in a continuous cycle of change and adaptation. You need to be a mindful or what I describe as conscious leader in order to lead yourself and your team to thrive in a new normal world of constant change. And we can't get away from speaking about boosting resilience. Organizations' need for resilience is as evident as the need for oxygen. In my webinar on boosting resilience, I explained the importance for leaders to accept disruption and view the change it brings as an essential part of staying relevant, fresh, and creative. Once you have adopted this mindset, it's now time to instill the same mindset across your entire team or organization. Being a resilient leader gives you the ability to adapt to bad circumstances by focusing on hidden opportunities and becoming change ready. So now let's look at a few things to help you make this transformation. Focusing on the future. Your subconscious brain keeps a memory of the past. So it's important to break the attachment to the past and focus on what lies ahead in order to see the current situation clearly. In order to enlarge your blind spots and reduce any tunnel vision, you have to identify and let go of your previous habits, individual and cultural mindsets that are no longer relevant. After I learned how to rewire my brain and took a leadership position where I was overseeing a very large team and also managing a new strategic project, the scope of my responsibilities quadrupled overnight. I had always prided myself on being a very motivational and hands-on manager, but I now had to adapt my leadership style and change my mindset, my behavior preferences and actions when it came to leadership. This process wasn't easy. I tried many alternatives, tested and learned new actions, and I had to let go of attachments that I hadn't even been conscious of. In these very unpredictable times, you need to prepare yourself and your teams to adapt accordingly. Research tells us that resilient leaders and staff are more effective in the long run. So how are you preparing yourself and your team? One key thing is the importance of being decisive and inclusive. With the current speed of change and uncertainty, quick decision making and decisive behaviors from leaders is vital for team and organizational morale. Some employees have told me how they feel left out because their leaders and managers were making important decisions without involving them. From a leader's perspective, it might seem like a logical thing to do as you are struggling to juggle the rapid change with the survival of the organization, taking into account also your own emotions, worries about your own family, and much more. But excluding the very people that can bring a different perspective on common insights or creative thinking is a big mistake. You need to be crystal clear about what your goals are, what success looks like, and what objectives matter most. Talk with your team about what's vital, what's changing, and why. You can achieve this by seeking various points of view, by having brainstorming virtual sessions, one-to-one meetings, or even surveys. This practice will give them a sense of autonomy and belonging and a feeling of being valued, which ultimately will get their buy-in even if what's decided on is not their preferred option. For a team or organization to thrive in these times, your people need to feel free to share their knowledge. This means them feeling comfortable and confident to share their concerns, ask questions, not be afraid to make mistakes, and also the ideas being listened to. Too many times in organizations, I find employees holding back far too much, reluctant to say or ask questions that might somehow make them look bad. Being able to create an emotionally safe environment for them is very important. Because when people are emotionally safe at work, and this includes even when they are working remotely, they feel comfortable sharing their concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution. Because you want them to feel confident to speak up and not feel humiliated, ignored, or blamed when things go wrong. Make them feel comfortable to ask questions when they're unsure about something. This will ensure that mistakes are reported quickly so that prompt corrective action can be taken, especially now that some people might have to keep working from home or it's even been staggered. If not, it will take you longer to pick up mistakes. Seamless coordination across groups or departments is very important and needs to be nurtured. And this will potentially lead to game-changing ideas for innovation being shared across teams or across the organization. And my goodness, this is so needed now. This is a crucial source of value creation for organizations as you operate in this complex changing environment. Next, it's really important now to focus your team or organization's vision. To cope with the current and anticipated continued change ahead, it will be beneficial to set goals to achieve your organization or team's overarching vision. My course on growth mindset culture transformation will really help you guide your team to do this effectively. This will enable you to develop leadership behaviors across your organization that creates a common language, tailors talent strategy, and establishes cultural norms. Growth mindset, we know is characterized by effort and perseverance. So whether or not organizations are conscious of it, the fact is that the culture of an organization has a massive impact on the level of progress or performance that that organization can achieve. Culture is shaped by priorities, habits, and systems. So I'm going to encourage you to identify at least three strategic priorities that you would take forward towards achieving your company's vision and share this with your team. Ensure you work with your team to decide on these goals, remembering to take into account that the mindset of your people shapes the cognitive mechanics of how they deal with things. And this is why I keep talking about really caring about the human being. So it's not just being focused on skills now, but focusing on your people's well-being. Because this is what will help bring out the best in them and will help your organization to thrive through this period, or even to enable your organization to survive through this period. You also need to develop emotional stability. In other words, care about the whole person. Managers and leaders must be willing and able to manage themselves. Individually, you must take responsibility for how you react in changing or challenging situations. In dealing with change, managers and leaders must identify your own thoughts, your own feelings and behaviors before you can address anyone else's. We know that people are living with high levels of anxiety and worry resulting from the threat of the current pandemic. This can be real or perceived, and they can also be emotional or physical. Ignoring the impact of the current level of uncertainty and ambiguity on yourself and on your people is really unsustainable. Be a good listener. Check in often with your people. Ask them how they are feeling and empathize with them. Make reasonable adjustments to support them and never use fear as a motivator. Instead, help them boost their resilience by helping them discover positive reasons to adapt to change. You also need to acknowledge the different stages of change that people go through. And there are six steps that I train leaders and teams. And it's important to really know this so that you can identify where your people are at at different stages of the process that you're going through. And with practice, you can reframe change from a threat to a challenging situation with opportunities. A positive attitude is crucial when dealing with change. Let's say that your job assignment has changed. Rather than think this change means that I have to do that activity more and I don't like it, think about the new skills you will learn or new opportunities that will arise. In fact, seeing opportunities where you used to see threats is calming and even energizing. You can lead your teams in this practice as well. Understanding that you can choose your behavior and how you respond to situations is very helpful. Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching? And that's a good question to ask yourself and also encourage your people to ask themselves. Being in control of your brain is very important to be able to navigate the impact of this COVID-19 pandemic. Remember that your company will get through this crisis and that you're always going to face change. The shifts your organization experiences today will result in more changes and new uncertainties down the road. With practice, in practice, you see those changes as opportunities. Although it's impossible to predict the future, being prepared for inevitable change is essential. Adapting to that change requires building your brain muscle that gladly grows stronger with use. Over time, you and your team can learn how to feel energized by uncertainty and leverage it to encourage innovation, creativity, and progress. I want us to just touch briefly on emotional intelligence because that is what this whole podcast is really about. It's really empowering you to develop your own emotional intelligence so that you can help your people improve their own emotional intelligence, which literally is your ability to manage emotions. Because understanding how to manage your emotions and help others manage theirs is your greatest asset at this time. If you want to look further into emotional intelligence, I'm going to put a link here to my signature course at the Mindsight Academy. It's a course that would really equip you to really navigate these times and lead at a high level and get your team and organization to really come out strong. How are leaders able now to address their workers' high-level needs during this phase? Often during a crisis, we think the masculine superhero leader is the one to get us through troubled times. Of course, we need leaders who have great analytical and problem-solving minds, but I believe that in this climate it's even more important to have leaders who can demonstrate vulnerability and empathy. Leaders who are self-aware of themselves and also aware of other people's emotions. Leaders who are able to influence people to make the change that needs to be made seamlessly. Leaders who are able to support and coach their people who are resisting the change or who are struggling emotionally to navigate the whole situation that they are in. So it's really important at this time to really equip yourself with all the tools you need so that you can get the best out of your people and achieve the best results for your organization. And finally, let's look at the particular needs that are required in this reopening phase. A key requirement for organizations in this phase will be to avoid broad policies that don't take into consideration the very different circumstances that different employees are facing. For example, organizations need to ask themselves which employees are above the age of 60 and therefore more vulnerable at reopening? What things are being put in place to support their work? Which employees do not have the necessary space and infrastructure in their home to be able to work productively and would therefore be candidates probably to get back to the office sooner rather than later. How many employees suffer from mental health issues that could possibly be aggravated by social isolation or by the stress and worries of the current situation? So, a deeper understanding of the individual needs of your people beyond just safety will make for a better reopening phase and also ensures that the mental well-being of your staff is a priority. The link between mental well-being and productivity is really important to understand. I'm putting a link at the bottom for you to listen to my podcast on Boost Resilience or some other podcast that I've done on relating to rewire your brain. You can look at those because it shows you that's important. You can't separate them. If people don't feel good emotionally, it means that they're not feeling good mentally and it's going to reduce their productivity. Thank you again for tuning in. And remember that you are in control of your brain, so you have a choice to control your thoughts and your emotions. You can help your people manage their own thoughts and emotions as well. It's always a pleasure to be here with you. And I really want to hear from you. What was your biggest takeaway from this episode today? And a few things before we finish. Have you subscribed to this podcast? If you haven't, please make sure that you click on that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast. Because once you subscribe, you will not miss an episode. And I'm so pleased to announce a challenge that I've got for you. For the next Fortnite, I'm going to pick a lucky person that has left a review and give a one-to-one session with. So that just might be you. So please don't forget to leave a review because that lucky person might just be you. Finally, next week, we're going to be looking at how you can keep your people motivated through this period. So remember to stay alert, stay safe, and keep well. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye for now.