As Nancy stretched in her Herman Miller chair that evening, the fatigue of sitting for hours didn’t bother her any longer. Just two days ago in a casual chat with her supervisor she mentioned how her back hurt sitting continually at the home desk, and lamented if only she could afford a Herman Miller chair like the one at work. Her supervisor suggested she speak with HR about it and three hours later she was driving to office to get home her favorite Herman chair!

COVID has thrown multiple challenges at managers and supervisors to stay connected with their teams. A bigger challenge is to ensure teams continue feeling belonged to, being heard, being cared for. In particular teams that were always collocated and had got used to being together – almost like a family. The cohesion within such “forced remote” teams has come under tremendous strain in the past few months. Informal chats, water cooler discussions, that quick pat on the back, the pep talk over tea – have all vanished in a snap. Leaders ought to conjure up ways to reinforce the cohesion, hold teams together, make them feel heard.

Empathy and listening were never more important. 

 Even when pundits make loyalty in corporate world sound like a deprecated word, don’t you agree this is the time to cement bonds with teams?

Shared below are simple suggestions I believe that will help us make our teams feel heard.  May not be a bad idea after all to ask ourselves if we are on top of these.

1. Communicate one-on-one with team members regularly, particularly with those that send vibes of disengagement on team calls. Indifference is most worrying.
2. A one-on-one call should not necessarily focus on work but be an opportunity to ask and listen to work related concerns and thoughts. Challenges with Work From Home (WFH), how COVID has been impacting productivity, how their work life balance has changed, and more should be addressed jointly. Ask for suggestions on what and how to improve their WFH experience. 
3. Such calls are an opportunity to listen to the said and the unsaid word. Video calls offer non verbal cues along with prosodic ones.
4. Whenever a team member brings up a work related or personal issue be sure to first acknowledge it and share a date for closure of the issue. It is atrocious to NOT RESPOND to such requests/ emails and let them languish in the to-do folder, definitely not in these times. 
5. When new members join the team create opportunities for them to blend with the rest of them. And if they are new to your organization, the stakes get higher.
6. Collocated teams engage in a lot of informal knowledge sharing at the workplace. Encourage them and incentivize use of social collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams. You may choose to use gamification to foster sharing and some fun competition.
7. Infrastructure and related issues can be a serious cause for stress when working from home. Putting your ear to the ground will prevent these snowballing into work and still worse – morale issues.
8. Plan for informal virtual celebrations/ get togethers/ games etc. Celebrating success is a great way to get everyone together virtually and share laughs, happiness and pride.
9. Finally, remember these are exceptional times – no amount of communication is over communication.

Its ok if we cannot ship that Herman Miller chair to their homes, but teams will appreciate and respect honest endeavours to lend an ear, to connect. Couldn’t put it better than …

Listen. People start to heal the moment they feel heard – Cheryl Richardson