Managers, adjust your expectations (without lowering the bar)

MOST of the country has been sheltering in place and working from home for some time now due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This change came with obvious challenges to getting work done for those who live with others—be they roommates, partners, spouses or children. Then, there are those employees who do not have others at home and now have no commute. One might intuitively think these individuals would be just as productive working from home than in the office, or even more so, given that research shows remote workers get more done.

This might be the case for some people. However, my conversations with dozens of clients and colleagues in the last two months tell me otherwise. Regardless of each person’s situation, the resounding theme that I’ve heard from working professionals, spanning multiple sectors, is that they are not only getting less done, but they are emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted.

Much as our hospital system has limited capacity, so do we. In addition to the numerous, tangible issues many employees now face in getting work done, there are several intangible challenges that greatly reduce our capacity to do work. These include:

Emotional and cognitive fatigue

THE pandemic has created an emotional and cognitive “tax” that takes up mental capacity that we were previously free to devote to work. The result is that many people—even those with minimal distractions at home—have experienced significantly more emotional and cognitive fatigue than usual.

While many people, on the surface, report that they’re “doing fine,” they are worried to some degree for their own well-being and the health of their loved ones; they are struggling with feelings of guilt in falling short at work or in helping their child with school; or they are dealing with the direct impact of the virus, as in the case of one client of mine who had to consider how to share with her children the news that an elderly neighbor had passed away from Covid-19. And now that states have started to gradually open up and organizations think about what going back to the office might look like, there are additional worries and concerns employees may have about their safety going forward.

Whether the feelings of worry, anxiety, grief or guilt are conscious or not, they are like a subroutine, running in the background of our operating systems, taking up the limited space in our hard drives. Research by Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist, also shows that suppressing or faking our emotions—which one might do with the aim of getting work done—does not come without a cost. The action depletes our limited willpower and wears us down.

Compassion fatigue:

ANOTHER phenomenon that is leaving people feeling wiped out is compassion fatigue. In providing empathy to others and making an effort to understand their personal circumstances in order to better support them, we inadvertently further deplete our energy and mental resources. Trisha, a client of mine in management consulting, shared that the impact of tending to the emotional well-being of her team has left her feeling exhausted, which she had not anticipated. personally, as an executive coach and someone in a “helping” profession, having reached out to support a number of leaders, I have felt completely drained many days by 3 p.m., despite getting sufficient sleep. A number of my coaching colleagues are feeling the same effect.

Physical fatigue

THE fact that our emotional state directly affects our physical wellbeing is well-documented. Studies show that 80 percent of doctor visits for physical symptoms involved a social-emotional problem. In particular, the upheaval many people have experienced since the pandemic began has led to increased depression and anxiety. For many people, these conditions can lead to feeling physically tired or even chronic fatigue, in addition to causing reduced focus, memory and sleep, making us even more tired and less productive.

Any good manager knows that we need to adjust to the current situation. This means that, at least for the short term, managers must recalibrate their expectations. Below are some guidelines for managers as to what this looks like in practice:

Do:

▮ Re-prioritize projects and deadlines—identify what can be put on the back burner (or even canceled altogether) and what deadlines can be extended.

▮ Reassess the level of detail or quality needed for your projects and your metrics for success. What is good enough or realistically achievable?

▮ Rebalance work among team members, taking time to understand their personal situations and individual differences in capacity.

Don’t:

▮ Expect the same level of responsiveness or availability as before.

▮ Assume that others will handle this type of situation in the same way as you, or in the same that they’ve handled other types of stressful situations in the past. This is a whole new ballgame.

▮ Assume that others will tell you when they feel overwhelmed or need help—you will need to give them explicit permission to do so and show that it’s OK for them to ask for support.

To be clear, adjusting expectations is not to suggest that managers should shirk responsibilities or be lax, or that they shouldn’t strive for results or hold people accountable. This pandemic is a marathon that we are all running together. And as with sheltering-in-place measures, adjusting our expectations of others’ productivity is meant to be temporary. By recalibrating expectations now, managers will get much more out of their people in the long run.