How to Compassionately Lead Your Team Working from Home

In this special edition Business and Life Tip, Tim shares with you a few ideas and thoughts to get you in the right mindset of compassionate leadership to support and leading your team as they make the transition to work from home during this Coronavirus outbreak.   

It will be important to manage and connect to ensure you are thinking about the stress they are facing, and what you can do to help them find right amount of support and comfort in these uncertain times.

Here is the written transcription of the video:

Hey everybody, Tim Braheem Performance Experts Coaching and Leadership 360 with another special edition of the business and life tips series during these unique times.

Today's subject matter is your Team.

That group of people that you work with right now that are really fighting the fight with you. And I know what a tough battle it is. The last couple of weeks have been fast and furious with a lot of pressure and a lot of stress and at least the next several weeks are going to be action packed for them as well.

What I want to talk to you about specifically is compassionate leadership. When I use the word compassionate, you know the word compassion means to put yourself in the shoes of another. So I'd like you to take a pause for a moment and ask yourself, what is it that they're going through right now? All of them are under the same level of stress and anxiety that you probably are as it relates to having a significant amount of volume, having deadlines that are associated with that volume, and really trying to work through that bottleneck that was created with the significant amount of originations that just recently took place.

But beyond that, they also have a lot of other things that are likely going on in their life. They're probably worried about the health of their family. They're probably worried about the fact that if their children aren't yet at home because schools have closed down, that that's going to be coming very soon and what they're going to do about that situation. So let's talk about the situation as it relates to remote work. I've had a couple of clients recently asked me when is the right time to just send all of my staff home and have them work remotely? My answer is probably now, I think if there's ever been a time to do it, I would imagine now is the time. But understand that when you do do that, there are certain things that come along with that package that again, from a compassionate eye, you wouldn't miss. But if you're not thinking compassionately, you might not see.

So as an example we can sometimes take for granted the need for connection. What work does in the way of creating a tribal impact of community and, and being with peers. So I want you to try to bridge that gap. If you're having them work from home, I would strongly recommend that on a daily basis you're having a 15 minute touch base on video conference, checking in on how the pipeline's going and, and if it needs to be longer than that, that's fine. But I'm saying minimum of 15 minutes where you guys are gathering together, you're seeing how everybody's doing, you're hearing from them as to what challenges they're having and you're helping them solve those challenges.

Number two, I would recommend doing at least once a week, a weekly lunch on video conference. Everybody, you know, makes the lunch cause they're working at home or has some food brought in and you gather from say 12 to 1245 and you sit there and you don't talk about business and you connect and you ask each other how their families are doing and have some laughs. I think that's really important. Um, another thing that I just recently did with the L360 crew, which was super fun, was last Sunday we had happy hour at four o'clock in the afternoon Pacific Time. Everybody logged into zoom, everybody brought their favorite bottle of wine or a favorite cocktail and we sat around and had a few drinks together and laughed and connected and had a good time. That's another nice thing that you could be doing with your work colleagues. So get creative.

Now let's talk about some things that I would suggest that you be doing to show your team that you care. Uber eats or Grub Hub gift cards right now if they're working from home and even if they're not and they're just working long hours from the office. The last thing that they probably want to be doing is:

A) going out and having to, you know, be in the community when we're supposed to have social distancing.

B) the last thing they want to be doing is have to go to the grocery store and make their own dinner. So that would be a really nice thing that you could be doing for them right now is buying them a few dinners that can be brought into them.

Another suggestion that I would have, and I used to do this a long time ago with my team is that maybe every other week you have a cleaning crew or housekeepers come in and take care of their house for them.

So they don't have to be worried about that, especially during these times when they're working at home and think about it. The last thing that they want to be doing is having to clean their house on a Saturday after they've worked all week at home.

Thirdly, consider whether or not you may want to be helping out with childcare. If you're going to be having your team member work from home and they've got their children at home with them, that's going to create a lot of stress for them. And believe me, if they're not already dealing with that, they're worried about it because a lot of schools are closing down. For you to be able to step up to the plate and give them some stipend on a, on a weekly basis to have maybe four hours of relief to have somebody come and take their kids to the park or to, uh, just be with their kids outside of the workspace for them that could be really showing your team that you really care and that you're really thinking out of the box.

I just want you all to know that thinking about you. I'm here to help and we'll keep the business and life tips coming. Lead from a compassionate heart gang, and we're going to get through this as a team. I hope everyone's well and thanks for watching.