The hidden leadership costs of COVID-19
by Steve Kelner
“Does it not appear as if one who lived habitually on one side of the pain threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lives on the other?”
--William James
Where we are now
We all know that life has changed in the time of coronavirus. Work has become more difficult (or disappears), and people must put themselves at risk to provide services that in the past were taken for granted or disdained. Even finding toilet paper is hard.
Everyone I interact with professionally has shown delays – and I mean everyone. Colleagues, clients, providers of all sorts – all show signs of distraction, confusion, lack of focus. “So sorry…” is showing up in a lot of emails and calls. We know why. The question is whether there is anything we can do about it, as colleagues and especially as leaders.
Effective leaders take their employees’ emotions into account when leading, hence the importance of emotional intelligence. Numerous books and articles talk about inspirational leadership, energizing leadership, and motivating people - all forms of arousing positive emotions.[1]
But what about managing and reducing negative emotions? Too often negative emotions are ignored or treated as the absence of the positive; if you get people happy, therefore they are not sad. This conveniently easy perspective neglects the reality in which many people live normally, let alone during a global pandemic.
According to the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH), under normal circumstances almost one in four US adults live with some form of mental illness – “a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder.”[2] The impact can vary widely from no visible impairment to serious interference with one’s life. In daily life, you encounter multiple people – maybe dozens a day – leading their own lonely struggles to manage personal challenges.
But this situation is not normal. If nearly one-fifth of people experience anxiety issues every ordinary year, how many more must have this experience now, when we see a dangerous, infectious disease, insufficiently tested and tracked, spreading secretly every day? When most people are staying home? When they venture out wearing masks and gloves, and the streets are eerily empty? When they feel guilty for putting themselves or others at risk, or even just being safe and employed when others are not? This situation triggers stress, anxiety, and depression.
You don’t need to be a psychologist to know that anxiety is far more common today.
Why leaders matter and what they face now
Leaders are not therapists, nor should they be.[3] But they should be aware of the impact they can have on their employees’ experience of life in general, let alone in times of crisis.
A British colleague of mine was six years old when Winston Churchill gave his legendary speech after the retreat at Dunkirk, saying, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” He remembered his classmates imitating Churchill in the schoolyard. Many have pointed out how this speech helped re-energize all Britain, but few pointed out that it was so powerful that it penetrated all the way down to schoolchildren who would not even fully understand his message.[4]
On a more practical level, research I did in the mid-1990s with an international group of 3,871 managers and their employees found that 78% of employees’ organizational climate could be attributed directly to the leadership styles of their direct manager. That is, more than three-quarters of people’s satisfaction from, frustration with, and experience of their work environment comes from one person – the manager – and how that person chooses to behave.[5] It’s a stunning thought.
How much more important, then, for leaders to create better working environments in times of unusual stress? I myself knew a leader living in a horrific work environment himself – rated in single digits on a scale of 1-100 – who kept his people positive, energized, and excited to be there. He shielded them from his negative experiences with astonishing success, explaining: “Just because I have a crappy life doesn’t mean they should.”
But how?
In 1908, two researchers published what became known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law. In brief: the relationship between “arousal” – stimulation or emotional level - and performance on complex tasks is a bell curve: meaning that when one is moderately aroused or pumped up, you perform better, but as one’s emotional energy rises higher still, performance falls off again.
The effects of overstimulation and being overemotional are obvious and clear: forgetfulness, distraction, overreactions, bad decision-making, “tunnel vision,” impatience, “analysis paralysis,” and many others. In fact, research shows that a high-stress environment – for example, one run by fear – can literally inhibit the brain’s ability to learn, because the cortisol released to respond to stress inhibits the brain’s ability to proliferate dendrites and create new circuits. Thus, it’s hard or even impossible to learn under high-stress circumstances.[6]
Furthermore, when in this state or when under-stimulated, people tend to fall back on fundamental personality traits rather than relying on conscious, thoughtful decision-making. If you are the kind of person who prefers to make daring decisions, in a crisis you will double down on daring even when the risk increases (“I’ll go get the groceries right now!”); if you naturally focus on details, you will focus even more on details despite needing to let go (“I’ll analyze our food needs for the next month”). In other words, you are managing your own anxiety by going to a comfortable personal place and preference.
Right now, we certainly don’t have to worry about being under-stimulated. We feel a constant background noise of stress that has raised everyone’s emotional level, pushing a lot of people over the top of that bell curve and down the other side, where they become less effective due to being overstressed.
An effective leader constantly keeps people balanced at the top of that bell curve: energizing them when arousal is too low, calming or reassuring them when arousal is too high. In other words, “our job is to comfort the afflicted – and afflict the comfortable.”
Too many leaders only worry about pushing people up the curve (“afflicting the comfortable”) and ignore the one-in-five people already suffering. I find even many effective leaders have no idea how many of the people working for them may already have challenges with anxiety or depression – unless they share them.
My point is not that leaders must only look out for the percentage of people who have existing issues. Ironically, years of experience and therapy can help develop approaches to self-management that can help them, though of course they, too, are at higher risk. Churchill knew he had chronic depression, and maintained awareness of it.
My point is that people who never expected to deal with anxiety or depression are doing so now, without resources to manage it. And that includes leaders, who must manage their own stresses in the course of helping manage those of others.
Others have written about how to take care of oneself – “self-care” shows up a lot in articles, social media, and memes these days – but what if you have to take care of others as well?
What leaders can do
First, I apologize if reading the previous section pushed you over the top of the Yerkes-Dodson bell curve yourself! Fortunately, we do have some comfort for the afflicted.
1. You have the power to help others. Remember, leaders control 78% of organizational climate. Even at a distance, you can help shape what people experience of their workplace. See our recent post, “Leadership at a Distance, for some recommendations.
2. You have the power to help yourself. Depending on your own emotional drives, you can find ways to manage your emotional energy. See our post on human sustainability for more on this.
3. Work matters. People spend huge amounts of time at work. They don’t just do it for money; they do it for the emotional satisfaction they get, especially at senior levels. Work satisfaction frees up more mental resources to grapple with other problems, and even provides extra energy.
4. Teamwork matters even more. Surviving and thriving in a time of crisis generates esprit de corps – a strong bonding within a team. This makes crises excellent times to focus on teamwork, so all members can find support and resources from each other. Our post, “Teamwork at a Distance” has some practical advice.
5. You don’t have to fix everything. My research on attributional styles[7] – or how people attribute success and failure – found that successful leaders don’t take blame inappropriately (a negative style), but do take ownership to fix a problem. But no one can fix all problems, especially during a global crisis. What you can do is reduce problems and support people’s own ability to engage. Even just listening matters. In fact, admitting that things are uncertain increases people’s sense of what is going on!
You can do more than you may realize. These five themes include hosts of specific actions you can take.
You can make a difference even in a time of gigantic crisis. In Churchill’s speech above he did not promise miracles, only “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
Leaders do make a difference, and you are not alone. You don’t have to be Churchill. Just be a thoughtful human being who cares about what happens to those who work for you, and shows it.
Appendix: Some facts about mental illness in the US:
· Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the US, affecting 40 million adults – 19.1% of the population every year. An estimated 31.1% of US adults experience some form of anxiety disorder at some time in their lives. Only about 37% of those suffering receive treatment.[8]
· Major depressive episodes with severe impairment affected an estimated 11 million US adults in 2017 alone – 4.5% of the adult population. Almost two-thirds of adults with a major depressive episode had a severe impairment (meaning that 6% experience a major depressive episode, with or without impairment). Approximately 35% of adults with major depressive episodes did not receive treatment[9]
Endnotes
[1] In fact, I have a proposal called Motivating Leadership about managing implicit motivation in leaders and employees at my agent right now…
[2] National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) webpage: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml
[3] I say that as a psychologist myself – but a researcher, not a clinician. I coach and provide feedback, but I don’t and wouldn’t do therapy, so you definitely should not feel required to do so!
[4] Personal communication from Mervyn A. Smith.
[5] Kelner, Rivers & McConnell (1995), “Managerial Style and Organizational Climate,” quoted in Primal Leadership, Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee (2002).
[6] Discussed in some detail (with citations of peer-reviewed journal articles) in Resonant Leadership by Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee (2005).
[7] See, for example, the classic Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin Seligman (second edition 2006).
[8] NIMH: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder.shtml
[9] NIMH: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression.shtml