How being human will improve your bottom line in times of crisis

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Being a small-business owner can be extraordinary tough at the best of times. Now overlay that with an unprecedented global pandemic called COVID-19 and its panic stations all around.

Your first instinct will be to do whatever you can to ensure both personal and business survival – after all we are hardwired that way. You’ll reduce and eliminate non-essential costs, protect revenue streams that are under threat and hope your bank manager is in the mood for some creative thinking. Things have got very real and as the days tick over there’s a reality hitting home that these decisions will impact on the livelihoods of both you and your team as well.

But wait a minute… your team. What about them? How will they be feeling right now?

They are still gainfully employed to help you get through this massive challenge. So how can you harness their talents and capabilities, effectively lead, motivate and inspire them?

Leading your employees in a more human way will protect your bottom line in the short-term, but also improve it over the medium to long term. Here’s my three tried and tested tips to bring more human into your leadership in a time of crisis to move from survive to thrive in the long-term:

1. Trust your humans more than ever

Nobody is turning up in these times of survival to destroy your business. Trust at the moment must be given. Harold McMillan once said “A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts”. These are wise words indeed in these times. Telling your people that you trust their motives (having my back), capability (doing their job well) and reliability (doing what they say they will) can build a human relationship that will help to get through the short term pain and build engaged, motivated and productive staff for the long term.

2. Connect as humans not outputs

Human beings are tribal and crave deep connection. Being human in these times means that you need to devote time to the work of human and not just the technical work that is also important right now. Ask them daily how they are feeling not what they are thinking. Listen to them and learn things about them that will deepen connection – things like names of partner, children, pets or their hobbies and passions outside of work.

3. Make every human belong

Human hardwiring has us needing to feel a strong sense of belonging so that we can understand how our individual contributions make the team, department and organisation function successfully. As a manager you can directly influence this sense of belonging by being crystal clear with your team members about why they are relevant and how they contribute to the success of the organisation. Making sense of their purpose and worth right now is a way to keep them motivated and inspired to get through a tough time.

Humans will remember how you treated them in times of crisis, and it is in times like these that you can both protect your bottom line in the short term chaos, as well as inspire and motivate your humans to dip into their discretionary effort that will improve your bottom line as you move to a post-COVID-19 world.

Just add more human.

Mark LeBusque, Founder and Director, The Human Manager