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Webinar Recap: Motivating Your Teams Through Crisis

September 30 (Replay at end of page)

In our conversations with arts organizations across the past 6 months, arts leaders have continually brought up the challenge of motivating their teams in such a difficult environment and managing their own personal fatigue. To help arts leaders strengthen their teams’ resilience and create sustainable energy to lead during this chaotic time, we invited  Perri Strawn, a renowned expert in mindfulness training, and Brodie Riordan, industrial organizational psychologist, coach and author to share how they have guided leaders and organizations through times of crisis.

 

Motivating Your Teams

Our research has shown that there are five keys to keeping teams motivated during the pandemic: 

  1. Personal growth and self-care: Senior staff lead by example, promoting a healthy workplace culture in which stakeholders have the means – and the time – to take care of their physical, mental, and emotional needs. Team members have ready access to support within the organization or through external resources when they feel their personal growth has stalled. 

  2. Trust and autonomy: Executives trust in the reliability and integrity of employees working remotely and vice-versa, including (and especially) during asynchronous work periods. Employees benefit from a sense of self-determination as they work from home, while still feeling able to communicate their needs and receive appropriate direction from supervisors. 

  3. Compassionate coaching: Leaders at every level of the organization have the training, support, and bandwidth to work one-on-one or in small group settings to help employees set goals, ask the right questions, build and develop essential skills, and progress in their careers. Attentive coaching helps to sustain a network of trust and a culture of compassion during difficult times. 

  4. Flexible work culture: Leaders partition big goals into sizable modules, understanding that progress within the workplace –especially emotional and psychological progress during a crisis – is often nonlinear. Transparent lines of communication enable stakeholders to adapt in order to accomplish a desired outcome. 

  5. Connecting to purpose: Executives orient employee focus toward individual and group purpose. How is the organization making positive changes in the lives of others? In addressing collective experiences, leaders provide consistent, empathetic messaging to bring employees back to the greater purpose of the work. 

 

During the webinar, Perri and Brodie expanded upon this framework with specific recommendations and techniques to help leaders communicate, coach, and support their staff more effectively in the current environment

 

Use “real” listening and open-ended question when communicating with staff

Brodie shared that there are two types of listening: level 1 listening and level 2 listening. In level 1 listening, the person listening is still focused on themselves. For example, if you asked an employee about a vacation and they said they rented a house on the beach, your response might be, “Oh great, I did the same thing a few months ago”. You are essentially listening to respond. Level 1 listening is usually present in casual conversation.  In level 2 listening, you are listening to understand. If your employee told you that they rented a beach house for vacation, a level 2 listening response would be something like, “what was your favorite part of the trip?”. Level 2 is a more generous way of listening. Leaders can help their team members feel heard by engaging in this type of listening.

Brodie also suggested that leaders use open ended questions when communicating with their teams. These types of questions help peel back layers and make it more likely that leaders will be able to get underneath the surfaces of challenges their team members 

 

Take your employees lead on how they want to engage with you

Brodie suggested that leaders and managers should solicit their team members’ feedback on how they prefer to communicate. Zoom fatigue is real. If someone is tired of being on Zoom all day, propose that you both go for a walk and speak over the phone. While Zoom is great in that it allows people to read facial expressions and body language, the ideal way to communicate right now is the way that works best for the person with whom you are connecting. 

 

Give people space to feel their emotions

Brodie acknowledged that many of the conversations leaders are having with their teams right now are emotional and difficult. She emphasized the importance of giving people time to feel their emotions and let them pass. With time, both leaders and their teams will be able to think differently about the situations. 

 

Use feedback as a tool to help people adapt to change

Brodie suggested thinking about feedback as a powerful tool to help people see where they are and where they are going. Using this framework helps people see what they need to do to close the gap and makes the concept of feedback less daunting. With so much change going on in organizations during this time, feedback can be used to help people adapt to the changes and see a clear way forward. Brodie offered four ways to make feedback more effective and increase its likelihood to be well-received: 

  • Be specific as possible and always make feedback evidence based – things you can see with your eyes, rather than a feeling. 

  • Focus feedback on a behavior not the person. This goes for both positive and negative feedback. Highlighting a good behavior, rather than simply praising the person, makes it more likely the person will repeat the good behavior.

  • Give feedback quickly and privately. 

  • Make feedback forward looking. There is nothing the person can do about the past, so if you want to see change, you should frame feedback as a suggestion for next time. 

 

Make goals flexible and fluid

In today’s environment, the goal posts are always moving. Because of this, Brodie encouraged a very dynamic approach to goal setting and providing frequent communication if things change that might impact your employees’ goals. Perri agreed with this point and suggested thinking of goals as experiments. You put it out there, test if it’s working, and make a shift if not. Goals should be fluid. 

 

Taking Care of Yourself as a Leader

During our webinar we took a poll of how the current environment is impacting arts leaders personal energy levels. Sixty percent responded that they have good and bad days but are generally able to manage their energy and find ways to renew. However, nearly 20% said they physically feel good, but their emotional energy is completely drained, and the remaining 18% said they are completely depleted – mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Both of our panelists referenced the airplane safety mask rules – you have to help yourself so that you are able to help others. 

Brodie shared a framework from McKinsey & Company for how leaders can create a personal operating model to help them function at their best. There are four key elements to the model: your priorities, your roles, your time, and your energy.  Your energy is impacted by the alignment (or lack thereof) between your priorities, the roles you take on, and when, where, and how you spend your time. Getting these three elements in alignment will help boost or have more capacity for mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy. If you’re feeling mentally strained, step back and see where these elements are in conflict. 

 
 

Perri emphasized that it is completely natural to feel exhausted during this time. We are operating in a “VUCA” environment – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Our bodies are hardwired to constantly scan for threat and opportunity. Since the pandemic many of us have been in a constant perception of threat – worry over whether our organizations will survive, stress of managing work and home life, concern about the safety of ourselves and our loves ones in the pandemic. All of this takes places without conscious awareness, but it provides a real drain on our mental capacity. To combat all of this, it’s critical for leaders to maintain their energy levels. 

To help with this challenge, Perry shared a concept of the resilience bank account. The idea is that we can all do practices that are inputs into the bank of resilience, so that when we need to go draw on the well, there is something there. Perri offered what she referred to as “micro practices” to help start building these habits and creating a source of sustainable energy: 

  • At some point in your day, go outside and look at the sky and take a few breaths. This simple practice opens your heart and causes an energetic shift – you are able to connect to something bigger than yourself. 

  • At a moment when you feel a strong emotion coming on, stop yourself and breath in counting to 4 and breath out counting to 8. This simple practice should provide a shift in energy –  a way to interrupt your emotional reactivity. 

  • Set daily intentions. This is not a to do list, but a bigger intention for the day. For example, I am going to speak more clearly today. Or, I am going to approach my day with courage. 

  • Create defined opportunities to check in with yourself. This could be in form of a calendar reminder, or a rubber bracelet that serves as a reminder, but take a moment to ask yourself how am I doing? Am I connecting to my purpose today? 

In crisis, many people are tempted to go on auto pilot and shut down. However, Brodie and Perri both emphasized that is easier to navigate a crisis if you focus on being present and notice what is happening with you. Finding point in the day to take a pause, take a breath, and feel yourself in your body will settle your nervous system and also give you access to intelligence to step back from the emotions you are feeling and hit refresh. When the pandemic started, it felt like it was going to be a sprint – it’s now clear it’s more of a marathon. Brodie suggested that leaders must adjust their approach to reflect this – you can’t spring a marathon. It is important to stop and give yourself space to think about what leadership looks like in this environment

“Take a moment to be kind to yourself”
— Perri Strawn

Perri closed our conversation with a motivating piece of advice for arts leaders: 

“I want to make a plea for all arts leaders to practice a bit of self-compassion – give yourselves a moment of grace. You are all working extremely hard on a big challenge and a worthy one. Think about what you would you say to your best friend in this situation and say it to yourself. Take a moment to be kind to yourself.”

Additional Resources and Reading

ABA Arts Management Resource Center – Central hub for ABA resources on the topic, including benchmarks (ideal for a board presentation), reading list on key topics, Q&A with arts leaders, and resources for motivating teams

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