Life after lockdown: redesigning professional life for you and your teams
What have you learnt in your professional life over the past 18months of Covid-19 lockdowns and how can you take it forward to unlock your potential?
As a leader, how can you reflect on this period and take this opportunity to reinvent the ways of working that enable your teams and organisation to flourish?
These are timely questions to consider, especially here in the UK where on June 21st lockdown restrictions are scheduled to be lifted. People will be encouraged back into physical offices or at least into a hybrid working model.
In my leadership and career coaching across sectors I hear a mixture of emotions being felt at the prospect of returning. Excitement at regaining some of the perks of office life. Anxiety and nervousness at different perspectives on the pandemic. Early overwhelm at slipping back into unsupportive behaviours. Fear and nervousness of how to motivate teams and allow for flexibility in their choices.
What helps the leaders and managers I work with is taking a structured approach to proactively redesign the professional life of themselves, their teams and the organisation. We look at things thoughtfully but pragmatically, helping them to take the positives from lockdown and leave behind the things that are not working for them and their teams.
If you want to redesign the professional life of yourself and those around you, try asking yourself the following five questions:
How has lockdown been for you? Reflect on what has worked and what you are happy to leave behind.
How are you feeling now as restrictions lift? Name the emotions that are coming up for you.
What do you want? For yourself, as a leader of a team, and for your organisation. Visualise your professional life post lockdown and design how it will be different from now.
How can you achieve it? As a manager, generate programme and systems ideas that match the goals for your team and organisation. Think about ways-of-working and be granular about it... right down to specific meetings.
What needs to happen now? Think about your willpower and commitment to achieving what you want. What are the blockers and what/who can support you? What are the awkward conversations you have avoided having and how can you make them fair and transparent?
Following this tailored process will help you to start feeling professionally excited and limit the overwhelm. You’ll develop a mindset around what’s important, what you want more of and what you want to leave behind. Most importantly you’ll start to behave differently by creating new ways-of-working, boundaries and support networks that make the changes sustainable.
Good luck with your own journey as you sail back into professional life post Covid in a way that is unique to you. How are you feeling? What actions are you taking to support yourself? I’d love to hear from you – email me here or please comment below.