5 Essential Management Skills That Will Get You Through COVID-19. And Life.

In 2005, I was selected to participate in one of the most challenging, intense and valuable training courses of my life.

Over the last 15 years, I’ve used the skills I learnt over those 6 months almost every day.

Both professionally and personally, that training changed my life.

Thank you, Samaritans.

 

Who are the Samaritans?

The Samaritans is a charity that provides 24/7 emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide.

They believe that every life lost to suicide is a tragedy, and their vision is that fewer people die by suicide.

With that in mind, you’d think that their services would centre around proactive support, practical advice and the treatment of mental health conditions. The reality is, the support that the Samaritans offer is much more powerful than that.

They listen.

 

 

Samaritans believe that exploring feelings alleviates distress and helps people to better understand their situation and options.

That if people feel safe they are more likely to be open and talk.

They believe in self-determination – that people have the right to make their own decisions and find their own solutions.

Finally, they champion the importance of human contact. They believe that giving people time, undivided attention and empathy meets a fundamental emotional need, and as a result, reduces distress and despair.

Powerful stuff.

 

An Important Segway

“This is all well and good, Leanne…”, I hear you say, “…but I’m a manager, not a Samaritan. I’m barely keeping myself together.”. 

Good point, well made. Let me explain.

I’m not saying that you should be there to provide this type of support to your employees.

In fact, this is a difficult time for all of us and we need to be mindful of our own limits. If you, or any member of your team, are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those related to suicidal feelings, seek professional support.

The Samaritans UK can be contacted FOR FREE by telephone (116 123) or email (jo@samaritans.org).

Similar services are also available in Australia and the USA.

 

5 Essential Management Skills: Applying Values to Management

I’d been a Listener with the Samaritans for almost 4-years when I started to manage my first team.

I realised that, more often than not, it wasn’t my MSc that I was drawing on when I had a ‘people problem’, it was my Samaritans training.

Let’s translate the Samaritan’s Values above into management speak, shall we?

 

 

1. Coaching

There are many (many!) different approaches to coaching. From humanistic and behavioural to existential and systemic, the psychology of coaching is a richly researched and debated area of study.

I’d argue, however, whatever the approach, great coaching starts with the ability to listen.

Rooted in person-centred coaching psychology, Samaritans’ approach endeavours to follow the lead of the client. It’s not concerned with ‘fixing’ the problem. Instead, training focuses on facilitating self-determination so that people can make the decisions needed to move forward.

Empathy lies at the heart of ‘talking like a Samaritan‘. If your staff are struggling with the current confines of COVID-19 or remote working, try getting in the ‘hole’ with them, before you help to pull them out.

 

Ask open-ended questions such as, how are you feeling? How do you feel about X? Do you feel like this everyday? Is there anything that would help?

 

Try not to ‘solve’ the problem, and above all, don’t put yourself in other people’s shoes. You don’t know how they feel and it’s not the same for everyone. Being dismissive is only going to isolate your team members and make it even harder for you to overcome barriers to performance.

 

2. Trust

From William Shakespeare to Lady Gaga, almost everyone has something to say about trust.

A 2016 study by Sabine Doebel and colleagues found that we can develop trust ‘issues’ as young as four years old. We’ve spent millennia evaluating the credibility of what people say. From an evolutionary perspective, contradictory logic just doesn’t float

Disingenuous communication, lack of recognition, micromanagement and dismissive behaviour are key killers of trust in the workplace.

Instead, model the behaviour you want to see – be accountable, be approachable, be open and, above all, be transparent in your decision making.

Not explaining the ‘why’ is perhaps the single most destructive thing you can do to the motivation and engagement of your team. Ultimately, teams that are on the same page are more successful.

 

3. Psychological Safety

Over 2-years, Google’s HR team conducted more than 200 interviews with their employees and analysed 250+ attributes of 180+ active Google teams.

They hypothesised that this volume of data crunching would reveal the perfect mix of individual traits and skills to assemble a high performing team.

Turns out, ‘who’ was on the team was much less important than the ‘dynamics’ of the team – and the number one driver of success? Psychological safety.

Psychological safety

Coined by Harvard Business Professor Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is defined as ‘a shared belief held by members of a team, that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’

In other words, it’s an environment where employees feel empowered to question the status quo without being judged, embarrassed or punished.

Google found that the employees that felt psychologically safe, were more likely to admit mistakes, to collaborate with others, to take on new responsibilities and bring in more revenue.

Add in the positive correlation with employee retention, creating psychologically safe environments to boost employee satisfaction, resilience and performance is a no brainer.

Or is it?

Digging around the research, I found an interesting study undertaken by Pearsall and Ellis in 2011 that found that psychological safety can also incubate unethical behaviour as there is a lower fear of being ‘judged’.

That said, as with many empirical studies, the participant group consisted of undergraduate students and the stakes were low. Generalising these results to ‘real-life’ work settings comes with a firmly raised eyebrow. But still, food for thought.

 

 

4. Accountability

Arguably the antidote to the negative behavioural risks of psychological safety.

Samaritans believe that people have the right to find their own solution and that telling people what to do takes responsibility away from them.

In essence, accountability means taking responsibility for the results and outcomes of decisions, and as a workplace construct, has been found to positively impact productivity, motivation and engagement.

 

Partnering with employees to set indivisual and collective SMART goals can be effective in building accountability.

 

Peter Bregam from Psychology Today also offers some insight into ‘The Right Way to Hold People Accountable‘. Spoiler: Dominance doesn’t work.

 

5. Work Relationships

It’ll be no great surprise to those reading this that the lack of human contact has been one of the hardest aspects of the COVID-19 social distancing rules.

The physical and psychological impacts of loneliness and isolation have been well documented and in a 2019 survey led by Dr. Martin Boult, work relationships were found to be the leading contributor to workplace wellbeing.

 

(Related Article: 3 Easy Ways to Motivate Your Team, Remotely (That You’re Probably Not Doing)

 

It is more imperative than ever that managers help to foster positive work relationships, even remotely.

 

Final Thoughts

As we enter Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK, at such an unprecedented time, it’s hard to imagine an effective people strategy that won’t have employee wellbeing at its centre.

What’s clear to me (and hopefully you) is that the techniques and skills used by the Samaritans to reduce feelings of distress and despair are not only relevant in management today, they’re essential.

 

Supporting the Samaritans

Samaritans is a volunteer-led service that is currently experiencing a significant uplift in demand. If you’d like to help them answer more calls and continue to reach those struggling to cope, you can donate on either a one-off or monthly basis.

If you don’t have the financial means right now, but you do have the time, you can find more ways to support on the Samaritans website.

If you need someone to talk to, Samaritans are there to listen. The Samaritans UK can be contacted FOR FREE by telephone (116 123) or email (jo@samaritans.org).