Summary
Leading a team during the pandemic may seem impossible given it’s likely the most stressful time of your team’s lives. Recently, I lead our team through a design sprint where we explored improving unemployment benefit access in the middle of the pandemic, which required us to shift how we work. In this talk, I’ll share how we reimagined collaboration, communication, and processes to reduce the stress load while maintaining forward momentum. Together as leaders, we’ll explore how to ethically lead our teams while keeping their resiliency in mind and bring these learnings into the post COVID work life.
Key Insights
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Resilience differs from survival by sustaining steady energy rather than riding emotional rollercoasters that lead to burnout.
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The pandemic exposed the emotional and cognitive limits of teams, normalizing overwork and erasing work-life boundaries.
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Regular check-ins that ask about headspace, heartspace, and needs help teams surface hidden emotional challenges and build trust.
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Co-creating communication norms reduces stress from redundant messages and clarifies expectations about Slack, email, and meetings.
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Allowing video-off during meetings empowers team members to conserve emotional energy without pressure to perform constant engagement.
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Different team members show stress in unique ways, from silence to tears, so leaders need personalized signals to gauge wellbeing.
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Cultivating rituals like check-outs and reflections normalizes pausing, honesty about struggles, and equitable decision-making.
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Work conversations about race and mental health, once taboo, became necessary and create belonging and resilience when handled openly.
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Leaders must nurture their own resilience first, as personal burnout impairs their ability to support teams effectively.
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Resilience is a dynamic practice, not a destination, and requires adapting strategies as team and environmental conditions evolve.
Notable Quotes
"Resilience is being able to maintain self needs and effectiveness at moments of change, tough demands, and adversity."
"Survival can feel like a roller coaster where we go up, up, and up, then down really fast, creating bigger spikes and drops in energy."
"The things that kept you resilient before the pandemic are probably different from what's keeping you resilient right now."
"We created space for people to acknowledge what they were feeling, coping with, and what they needed."
"Being in the red for one person was crying and for another it was complete silence."
"Emails, Slack messages, calendar invites, and texts all asking if we got the message felt super stressful."
"On days with many user interviews, the team wanted internal meetings to be video off so they could take a break from smiling all day."
"Mental health systems of oppression and the murders of black Americans were discussions that should have been normal at work all along."
"The whole give yourself an oxygen mask before helping others metaphor is very true here."
"Resilience is not about staying optimistic and positive all the time; it’s about holding space for hope while being grounded in reality."
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