Stress Busters For You & Your Colleagues | @sueingram on The #SocialRecruiting Show

Give control back to your people

We find ourselves in unprecedented times where stress and anxiety levels, understandably, are on the rise – at such a time, there is nobody better than this week’s Guest, Sue Ingram, to have on the show and share stress-busting guidance and tips for Managers and Leaders. As an Executive Coach and HR professional, Sue says she has been a

“Communicator of difficult messages all of my life and helping managers with what to say and when to say.”

With clear challenges presenting themselves to Leaders and Managers during the current COVID-19 Global pandemic, Sue offers this advice,

“When things are uncertain, the most important thing to do is stop, and remember what is still certain.”

We asked Sue about how to navigate the change from in-person to virtual leadership and what direction to offer, she says “stay close to your team and get onto video conferencing as soon as possible” and “start normalising things as quickly as possible with what is normal, known and certain.”

With this switch to a new way of working, she warns against thinking things will be the same – “ the danger when we go into virtual meetings is that we have very functional meetings about client needs – but we don’t have something that is virtual chit-chat,”. Her observation is that

“Being social is the human glue that holds the team and there is an opportunity to have a stronger team when we come out of this – even if the business changes.”

Human to human connections

Trust and engagement are going to become key factors in the team and business achieving success and we discuss the mindset shift facing all businesses and Sue says now that, “you can’t judge whether they (team members) are being productive just by witnessing them doing tasks”, Managers and Leaders will “now need to set clear expectations”. Additionally, they will need to do “anything that helps team members get into a routine as quickly as possible”.

We talk about decision making and she says, “if you’re a Business Leader trying to make it up on your own – forget it! – you need to bring people in around, you need the support of other people and you need their ideas”.

And as a final comment on life post the crisis, Sue advises, “as a Manager, paint the picture of what it’s going to look like at the other end.”

If that wasn’t enough, you’ll hear Sue talk about:

• Lead your team in the new way of working
• Trust your team to adapt to the new normal
• Meeting client expectations during challenging times
• Using downtime to train and learn as a team
• Inspiring teams to be creative
• The future of work – what will be different?