Current state of leadership in Australia

Someone much wiser than me once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. Over the last 6 months e-Lab, the research arm of our business and Dr John Molineux from Deakin University have been doing just that. We have used the COVID-19 disruption to understand how it has affected leadership within organisations in Australia.

THE STRUCTURE OF OUR RESEARCH.

For the last 10 years we have been conducting something called ‘The Strive Project’. It is a research project that has focused on studying the performance and wellbeing of leaders in various industries and organisations. This research makes up the bulk of the information we shared in our new book ’Strive’, which was released in February 2020. Since the introduction of social distancing resulted in the majority of people working from home, we repeated our research with leaders from our original study in May, June, July 2020 to see how the change and disruption of COVID-19 had affected their leadership and wellbeing.

Who makes up the research population?

Participants in the study were in positions of leadership, but varied in seniority and role. They were all still employed, and even in the face of COVID-19 were likely to keep their job. So while they weren’t highly stressed about losing their job, many of them were dealing with stress at home (eg. had elderly parents they could not visit, had partners who lost their job).

The research method was made up of:

1. 360 degree feedback from direct reports, peers, managers. We use this to be get a more objective assessment of their behaviour.

2. Surveys that measure specific psychological constructs, such as resilience and adaptability.

3. Interviews with leaders and team members to gain greater understanding of their behaviour.

In a nut shell, people have done an amazing job! Overall we have seen a dramatic improvement in leadership behaviours since COVID-19 darkened our door step. Despite the fact that organisations, leaders and teams have had the way they work literally turned upside down overnight, they have coped incredibly well. The majority of teams have stayed connected and productive. They have adapted rapidly to a new way of working.

PEOPLE ARE TOUGHER THAN WE THINK.

We saw an increase in leaders Psychological Capital (a psychological construct made up of; confidence, resilience, hope and optimism) as well as a slight increase in Adaptive Performance (measures people’s ability to innovate, adapt, develop skills, stay calm and focused under pressure). This supports our previous research which shows that resilience of people is incredibly high and rather than needing to develop more resilience, leaders need to establish greater levels of self care and recovery.

THEY ARE BEING MORE PSYCHOLOGICALLY FLEXIBLE.

We measured psychological flexibility in leaders, which examines their capacity to alter their thinking styles to be effective, despite having doubts, fears and worries about their capacity to cope with change and uncertainty. We saw significant increases in this measure.

WE ARE GETTING WORK DONE.

People are being surprisingly productive. As a researcher it is quite hard to measure tangible increases in productivity. However the majority of leaders and team members felt that they were being more productive than usual (mostly due to a lack of commute time and less interruptions). In those teams where productivity can be measured quite accurately, almost universally people said the quality of work had improved.

WELLBEING STAYED STABLE.

Our initial prediction was that we would see a dramatic drop in wellbeing, however because leaders have responded so well to the change in working, it has had a protective effect on their wellbeing. The wellbeing of leaders during COVID-19 (comparing it to their results from 2019) has remained stable. It has not dropped at all. We measured a diverse range of aspects of wellbeing such as ‘How ideal is your life’, ‘Standard of living’, ‘Quality of health’, ‘Loving relationships’, ‘Connection to community’, ‘Job satisfaction’ and ‘Meaning in their work’.

MENTAL HEALTH AND CONNECTION.

In terms of mental health issues, the majority of the leaders we studied (approximately 96%) did not show any significant risk factors. Level of connection within teams scored very high. On a scale of 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree) the average connection scores were around 4.1.

Note: Since conducting this research we have continued to study the leaders. Data collected in September 2020 showed that levels of fatigue and a feeling of burnout have increased. This is due to people doing longer hours when working from home, and an inability to turn off and seperate work time from family/ personal time. Also people are missing the physical connection to co-workers and crave to have some sort of interaction that is not digital. Finally, the lack of certainty around what the future is going to look like is causing mental and physical fatigue. Our concern is that we may see a significant drop in peoples wellbeing and mental health towards the end of 2020.

360 degree feedback shows that leaders have improved their frequency of constructive leadership behaviours. We asked team members, peers and managers to rate how frequently they saw the leaders exhibit the following constructive leadership behaviours.

Here are the specific strategies leaders used to cope with the huge levels of change and disruption.

LEADERS GENUINELY CARED ABOUT WELLBEING.

By far, the biggest improvement leaders and team members said came from COVID-19 was a greater level of connection. It was a direct result of regularly checking in on the mental and physical wellbeing of their team. The discussion didn’t necessarily have to be a deep and heavy conversation, it could just be “How are you feeling?” or “How are you going?” Most leaders remarked that they never did this is the office, or that they asked people how they were going just to be polite, but weren’t really interested in the answer. Now they are having genuine and authentic conversations about what they need and how people are feeling and coping. The biggest difference is leaders are taking a genuine interest in the welfare of their people. Leaders said that they found out that members of their team were experiencing big challenges in their lives. Some had elderly parents in nursing homes that they couldn’t visit, children with special needs, and partners that lost their jobs.

This finding supports previous research we have completed where we had leaders with decentralised teams facilitate their team through a program that focused on improving their wellbeing. It requires the leader to lead discussions about wellbeing, help people map out action plans and check in with their progress. Leaders that did this with their teams saw a 160% increase in how much they were trusted by their team members.

THE MICRO MANAGER IS DYING.

We all too well know a micro-manager. The one who cannot let go of control and trust their teams ability to complete tasks. The leaders we studied said that they are being forced to trust their teams more because they can’t be in the same room watching them work. They have to trust that they are doing the work. All the leaders we interviewed said that their teams were repaying this trust by really stepping up and taking more responsibility.

Another factor we discovered was that the remoteness is requiring leaders to adapt their style of leadership. “We used to measure peoples productivity by how long they sat at their desk. Now we are having to measure their productivity by the actual output they create.” This frees people up to work the way they want to work. It also allows for more flexibility in the way people work, in particular with the hours that they did. Team members reported that they loved the increased autonomy to achieve the prescribed result their way.

LEADERS ARE DELEGATING THE WORK.

Due to the stress and pressure of the situation, leaders had to focus on coaching and supporting their people, you know, actually leading! As a result they have not had as much time to do the work themselves. The’ve had to delegate the work to team members because they didn’t have any other choice. This has not only provided an opportunity for their team members to build their capability, it has also improved the way they delegate. Specifically they were more deliberate in communicating why they were asking them to do a task, as well as checking that their team members had capacity to take on that task. The delegation became more of a two way conversation. Rather than ‘you need to get this done by x date’, it was, ‘I want you to take this on, this is why I am asking you to do this, what is your current work load like? Can you fit it in? Do you need extra support to make it happen?’

One leader said the most common conversation they had with their team was. “Am I pushing you too hard on this? How are you feeling? Do you need more support? Are these time lines reasonable? Do we need to push back on them?”

COMMUNICATION HAS IMPROVED.

Communication has improved on two levels.

Firstly, because the interactions were more deliberate and less casual (bumping into people around the office), leaders are more mindful around who they have involved in the communication and who else needs to hear that message. As a result more people are getting the right information that allows them to get their work done.

Secondly, the communication has been more focused on the strategic priorities, the values of the organisation, the customer priorities and operational excellence. A trap many organisations fell into was that all of their communications focused only on the crisis itself and as a result, people got completely lost in the detail of reactive tasks. The successful organisations gave the detail on what was happening with COVID-19, but also continually reminded people of the larger strategy and what the organisation was trying to achieve.

THEY GOT CLEAR ON WHAT WAS IMPORTANT.

The great thing about a crisis is it gives us clarity of focus. The feedback from teams and leaders was that during COVID-19 they got very clear about what was important and all the non essential projects and tasks got put to the side. This greater level of simplicity and reduced level of distraction helped calm and focus people on what is essential.

PEOPLE FELT SAFE TO TRY NEW THINGS.

People often behave the same way, because that is how they have always done it. When an organisation has strong cultural inertia, people don’t feel safe to break out of it. However when we have a crisis, that inertia is broken and the rules go out the window. Something that came out of our interviews was that a lot of progress and innovation has been achieved because people felt safe to try something new or express new ideas. All too often we are paralysed by the fear of making a mistake or getting it wrong. With things being so disrupted people are taking on the attitude of ‘what’s the worse that can happen? Let’s have a crack!’ and we are reaping the benefits of it.

What this project taught us is that while we do get stuck in our own inertia of behaviour, when we need to evolve and change humans are incredibly agile and resilient. We truely are extraordinary creatures.

People were amazed at how quickly things can get done when push comes to shove. Many said their organisation had talked about introducing flexible working options for years, yet when it became crucial they were able to make it happen in a matter of days. One leader had suggested only months before COVID-19 that the teams quarterly meeting should be done over Zoom to cut down on travel costs. He said he was literally laughed out of the room. Many people in the study expressed frustration around why it takes a crisis to get people to change.

We have one big fear moving forward and it is around sustainability of performance and wellbeing. While the people we studied showed that their mental health and wellbeing currently is stable how long will that be sustained for is our big concern? In 2020 we have had to deal with bushfires, then floods and now a global pandemic. Because of this our anxiety has heightened and our workload has increased and our reserves are more depleted than normal. For the rest of this hellish year, make looking after your wellbeing the most important priority.

The only thing we can guarantee is that moving forward we will be faced with more challenge and struggle, however take comfort in the fact that you are resilient, adaptable and resourceful. Be kind to yourself!