If you’ve got a pulse right now, then you probably understand that we’re in an unprecedented time in human history. Never before have we had a pandemic that resulted in a practically global shutdown of public-facing businesses and isolation of almost all people inside their homes. That’s a lot to handle, for anyone. It’s especially challenging if you are a business leader right now—at a large or small company.

              On top of being worried about how you will stay in business, how you will balance your books this quarter, and how to keep your employees paid and happy, you are probably also dealing with how to keep your team motivated during this time. Let’s face it, everyone is stressed, scared, and many are probably trying to juggle kids, spouses also working from home, pets, finances and other things in the mix. I’ve noticed myself that the last thing I want to do is sit down and do thinking work.

              So how do you keep your team motivated during this time of uncertainty? Here are some steps to get you started.

1. Acknowledge the fear and uncertainty that people are feeling and remind them of the purpose

Leaders set the tone of the environment and folks will take their cues from you. So, don’t try to pretend like everything is business as usual and you know what you are doing—when it’s obvious that nobody knows what’s going to happen. Acknowledge that your people are scared, and that that is okay. It can be hard to make plans for the future when nobody can predict what the future looks like—and that is an important conversation to have with your team.

2. Mine the unrelated expertise of team members

Most employees that have been fortunate enough to switch to remote work probably find themselves with some extra time on their hands, due to a slow down in business. This is a great time to crowd-source learning opportunities within your team. Someone on your team has a hidden expertise that you aren’t aware of, guaranteed. It doesn’t even have to be business-related. Maybe someone can give a one-hour tango tutorial that everyone can do in their own living rooms. Maybe someone knows how to brew beer, knit or teach writing. That guy on your team who is great with managing calendars and emails could put together a talk, or that gal who’s a genius on excel could share some of her ‘secrets’. One of your team members might already volunteer with a great organization that she can share with the team, offering everyone an opportunity to get involved and feel more purpose. Allowing people to showcase their expertise is an ingenious way to motivate them and can result in some great team-building opportunities as well.

3. Allow folks to pitch ‘crazy’ ideas and actually consider them

This is a wonderful time to have brainstorming sessions where folks pitch their most far-fetched ideas for actual consideration by the team. Organizational psychologists have discovered that when teams get ideas flying, even ‘bad’ ones, that more ideas are actually developed into fruition than otherwise. Non-feasible ideas eventually produce more feasible ideas, essentially.

4. Give Team Members “Permission to Pause”

There has been quite a bit of writing on this during government shutdowns, but now is a great time to allow your team members a ‘time to pause’. In the Army, we called it, ‘if you don’t have anything to do, don’t do it here’. Don’t expect your team members to sit at their computers for eight hours a day right now. Acknowledge that, as long as mission-critical tasks are being accomplished, it can be more beneficial to your employees to take the time with their family, cook meals together, read the books they’ve been meaning to get to, and try other ways to loosen the pressure valve that they are under.

5. Share stories of your own family, isolation experience & struggles

Right now is not the time to be an island, as the trending hashtag #alonetogether makes clear. You’re a person as well as a leader and sharing stories of the human (and likely struggling) side of your life right now will only help bring others into this shared experience and allow them to feel like they can share their experiences as well. We’re all doing conference calls with kids on laptops watching YouTube videos next to us, so lean into it, laugh about it and normalize it.

And finally, it’s important to remember that crisis is when human beings are tested. This is how we grow.

DANIELLA YOUNG IS A TEDX SPEAKER, AN AUTHOR, COMBAT VETERAN, BOARD MEMBER OF OPERATION CODE, & THE CO-FOUNDER OF CAVNESSHR—AN HR-TECH COMPANY WHO’S MISSION IS TO MAKE BIG-BUSINESS HR AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES, THROUGH INNOVATIVE SAAS AND VIRTUAL CONSULTING. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE CULTURE ROADMAPS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLANS & EFFECT TEAM TRANSFORMATION. WANT TO LEARN MORE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT cavnesshr.com.

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