Alexis Senge JohnsonI’ve been fairly quiet here since the pandemic shut things down in mid-March last year and, to be honest, that was mostly for self preservation. Everywhere I looked there was family, friends, colleagues, and organizations in need of my help and not enough hours in the day to help them all. As the type of person and leader that constantly strives to help all of those reaching out to me, I was left drained and needing to take some time to help myself in an effort to be able to continue helping others.
I think we’ve all learned a lot about a variety of subjects during the pandemic. For starters, we’ve been living as germ spreading carriers and I personally I hope the increased focus in cleanliness sticks around. As far as business goes, we learned that many of us can work from home and the company won’t fall into shambles. We learned how to do everything we used to do each day, week, and month in new ways and were forced to be more innovative than ever.
Some really great learnings have come out of that but, more importantly, the workforce realized what they value in life and jobs that don’t spark joy are suddenly not on that list. The need for empathetic leaders is at an all time high and companies that don’t have enough of them are seeing a great exodus of employees in recent months as they begin requiring people to return to the office. Staff around the country are asking why they need to return and often times they are being met with an answer along the lines of, “because that’s our policy.” Unfortunately for the companies using that tactic, the workforce doesn’t consider that an acceptable answer any more.
For those of you out there that are empathetic leaders, and probably always have been before it was the cool thing to do, I have a couple of question for you. How are you holding up? Are you finding it harder to help staff through the return to office process because there are so many of them voicing concerns that you have no power to alleviate? Do you find that the number of people reaching out for your assistance is more than you saw pre-pandemic? If so, I’m right there in the thick of it with you.
I’ve always had a true open door invitation and pre-pandemic there were a handful that took advantage of it, so moving to remote work actually gained me time in the day where I wasn’t interrupted. However, I’m now seeing the downside to that is that as we are slowly increasing our days in the office there are now more people reaching out to me for help then before we headed home to fend for ourselves. A part of me realizes this is directly related to all the change we’ve each experienced in the last 15 months, but a large part of me is seeing that it is directly correlated to our workforce having a large number of millennials.
While I’m included in that generational bucket, I’m pretty much an elder millennial by our office’s standards so my additional years of experience and approachability tends to allow staffers to feel comfortable coming my way even though they don’t report to me. In my almost 4 years with my current organization, I’ve never had more than one staffer report to me due to the uniqueness of my position within the organizational chart. That fact alone has never stopped others from feeling as if they can bring their concerns my way in hopes to hear a leader’s outlook on how they should approach them and for that I’m grateful. I’m honored to be their sounding board and share suggestions or tactics with them the same way mentors did for me in my younger years.
The question becomes, what do you do when you don’t have answers any more? I find my recommendations narrowing as their problems or concerns are growing more and more in areas neither of us have power to make changes in. Sadly, I’m reduced to reminding them that there are always at least two choices: change the situation somehow or change your mindset about it. Outside of out that, I’ve found myself running out of answers while we look around and see how much the world has changed while we were all at home. I can see the writing on the wall and it’s already started affecting us as people reevaluate their priorities and decide working in this environment is no longer one they value.
I worry how many will be next to leave and what it would take to keep them happy enough to stay, but alas that isn’t my responsibility nor place to handle. For now, it feels crushing to my empathetic heart but I know all these up and coming rockstars will thrive wherever they land next because in the end the loss is truly ours. While I hope we keep them a little bit longer, I’ll be the first one singing their praise as they take flight towards their next opportunities because I know it’s all a part of their career journey and they deserve a job experience that lights their fire every day.
