Covid truly is unprecedented. It has had a sudden, disruptive and universal impact on pretty much everything: how we live, what we do, and how we work. Many businesses have been forced to close, others had to adapt. People lost their jobs, others had to figure out how to continue doing work under much increased pressure.

Much has been written about covid and the impact it has had on businesses, our work, and us as people. I wanted to focus on what it has meant to the work that leaders do, including the very concept of leadership.

The pandemic has been unique in that it has been an arbitrary shock to businesses. Some companies went out of business, others are hunkering down awaiting the end of the “winter.” Others still have had to adapt to much higher demand. Many tech companies are very fortunate in that the demand for their services still exists, and their workforce can pretty much work from home. While it’s important to acknowledge their good fortune, leaders have been placed in the brave new world of their teams suddenly becoming not just all remote (many for the first time in their professional lives), but also dealing with additional pressures that did not use to be present in their lives.

For a bit of silver lining (and we can all do some silver lining thinking these days), imagine trying to lead a team if covid hit 20 years ago! It’s important to count our blessings.

Observations

At the outset of the pandemic, many teams saw some positives: engineers were able to get more work done with fewer in-office distractions and no commute. Initially companies reduced the number of meetings and gave teams more space to figure out their personal situations. Some team members (for example, young engineers who are single) found themselves with much less to do and decided to throw themselves into work, or get that project done that they’ve always wanted to get done.

It became very clear that just like it affects different businesses very differently, covid affects different team members differently. The last seven months have been very hard for parents of young children, especially where both parents are working. The statement “During covid, you can have a job or a child but not both” sadly seemed to have a seed of truth in it. But that wasn’t the only group affected. Extroverts as well as introverts found it hard to find their bearings - the former missing a large source of social interactions in their life (and having to cut back on others), the latter missing their “college library,” a place where they could go and their their best work.

After the first-order effects became clear to everyone and people adjusted (or tried to adjust, to the best of their abilities), teams began to notice subtle but pernicious second-order effects. I call these the hidden losses due to covid. It’s the lost serendipity of running into a coworker in the hallway, or having lunch together and coming up with an idea for a project. It’s the inability for new hires to peek over their monitor and ask their neighbor a quick question. It’s the frictions involved in ad hoc pairing on code. It’s harder to see what everyone is thinking; 1:1s feel more formal and group meetings more distant. Brainstorming has suffered tremendously – with no whiteboard for everyone to stare at, it’s been harder to come up with solutions to hard problems. Various technology solutions the team has tried have fallen short of expectations.

Synthesis

It became clear that a shift to work from home has changed the fidelity of interactions. Even though we have impressive videoconferencing over high bandwidth connections, I would argue that this offers false hope, and may actually hold us back as we try to convince ourselves that we should be able to go about our normal business, replacing in-person interactions with Zoom IDs.

That fidelity is lower is probably going to be very clear to many leaders whose job is primarily to make sense of what’s between the lines. Frequent interruptions to the flow of conversation caused by audio duplexing and occasional “unstable connections” don’t make matters any better. Videoconferencing makes it harder to detect nonverbal cues. Finally, the very idea of a conversation is heavily constrained. We are teleported into a space, instead of building a connection from the second we walk into a room together. We are boxed by the screen, insead of having the entire three-dimensional space of a room available to us (can you imagine having 1:1s in a room barely wide enough to fit your chair?).

Another reason why interactions aren’t as effective is that, working from home, in front of a computer that’s been designed for multitasking, we are all distracted a little. We don’t talk about it nearly as much as we should, and I personally don’t think we should treat it as the taboo that it is. It’s better to design around human nature than fight it.

But there is another reason why conversations over Zoom are not as effective. I noticed that I feel the need to see myself on Zoom, which surprised me. After all, in “real life”, I don’t talk to others with a mirror next to them where I can see myself. I realized that the setting of the conversation is different in a subtle, but significant way.

On Zoom, we are all performing a little.

This makes it harder to have a heart-to-heart, or a tough or really honest conversation. Just like the bandwidth and the space are constrained, so is our behavior.

The role of leadership

The good news is that it’s times like now when good leadership gets to shine. After all, the job of a leader is to use a combination of high IQ and EQ, deep problem understanding and diagnosis combined with creative solutioning to address issues facing the team, even if these issues literally have no precedent.

That doesn’t mean that leaders don’t need help.

They should avoid having to reinvent the wheel, and can leverage the experiences of others who have experimented with different techniques. After talking to many leaders and teams, I was able to capture a few takeaways, some counterintuitive, that may be a good start for leaders who find themselves supporting teams in the middle of this pandemic.

• Don’t expect people to be okay. Trying to achieve that outcome puts a lot of pressure on them, as well as on yourself as the leader. We are all going to be a little bit “not okay” and that is fine. Do not set an expectation of “normalcy”. Most importantly, give yourself permission to not be okay. It, too, shall pass, but in the meantime, there may be struggle.
• Turn up your empathy radar. Spend 1:1s asking people to describe how they go about their lives. How does a parent of a young child make do? What does their day look like? Maybe they need to take three hours out of the middle of the workday every day to take care of their child, and every day they feel very guilty and insecure? Put yourself in their shoes as much as possible, understanding the impact that this pandemic has on them
• As a leader, in addition to the permission to be “not okay”, one of the best things you can offer people is flexibility and space. Perhaps that young parent goes online at 10pm every night and stays online until they catch up on the day. Or they figure out ways to be a part of the meeting, but because they have to make lunch for their kids, they need to keep video off. That is perfectly okay.
• We are all multitasking more, and are more distracted. If the reality is that an average meeting participant is 80% there, perhaps we should rethink meetings or create structures that allow people to be effective. Now is the time to extract as much out of a synchronous meeting into asynchronous prep and communication as possible. Set a firm expectation for people to review information ahead of time – deeply, paying attention, in an engaging way (for example, by adding substantial comments to a google doc). Design meetings so that people can multitask a little, but set norms around “bringing people back”, for example by giving them heads up that you’ll want them to contribute to a specific question.
• More generally, understand what each of the individuals on your team needs. Instead of averaging everyone’s needs, identify distinct groups, and think about what would help each group the most. Groups that you may identify on your team don’t just have to be demographic in nature. You may get insights by looking at some very narrow criteria. For example, your groups may include: ** Parents ** People with roommates, or extroverts ** People who decided to move to live with/be closer to their parents ** People with a spotty internet connection
• That said, one set of needs that will probably be universal, and that is a need to have a good, productive workspace ** Not everyone is fortunate to have a separate room where they can work. How might you help them compartmentalize their work space and their living space? ** Given the emphasis on videoconferencing, one absolute minimum I would argue everyone needs is a good camera and a microphone. And since many of us have to make do with whatever desk space they have, ergonomic keyboard and mouse/trackpad setup is key (and inexpensive to ensure). As a leader I would literally sit with everyone on my team, understand their setup and help them plan, having the company cover any equipment purchase if possible (the cost of such equipment is very small compared with all the in-office perks that many companies used to offer)
• Don’t just try to replicate how the team used to work before. Take a step back and identify a “work from home” adaptation for the activities, events, and interactions that used to be common on your team ** Happy hours may still be possible in a socially-distanced way, but for team members who are not comfortable (or moved out of the area), consider gatherings over videoconference, realizing that the usual mode of interaction (seamlessly moving from small group to small group, in and out of conversations) won’t work on Zoom. Instead, perhaps have people take turns talking with all others listening, maybe an AMA or an informal “Teach Me Something” activity. Breakout rooms are a possibility but most videoconferencing solutions still make them too clunky. ** Brainstorming doesn’t work as well with virtual whiteboards. If most of the writing can happen by one person (e.g. the tech lead), consider having that person set up a whiteboard in their room with a camera pointing at it. You can also lower the fidelity but keep the concurrency by having the group collaborate in writing (for example in Google Docs), rather than diagrams ** For spontaneous pairing, consider having more senior engineers set up evergreen Zoom sessions (maybe during designated office hours) where anyone can join without needing to coordinate. Lower the frictions of setting up a Zoom by creating short links for everyone’s personal Zoom ID ** Break the taboo of people needing to tend to their families while in meetings. Give them permission to multi-task. Have them turn on video regardless of where the phone is. Maybe it’s in the pocket or maybe the camera is staring at the ceiling. If the team member is comfortable, have the screen face the boiling pot. We’re all in it together.

The above are just a selection of ideas I’ve tried, or heard others implement successfully. As with everything, the key is not to jump to a solution but instead, think carefully about the context. Where is your company at? How is your team faring as a whole? In this context, how is each individual doing? At the very least, it is probably a good use of any leader’s time to be spending more time with the company leadership, the whole team, and each person, listening and connecting the dots. The solutions don’t have to be costly, disruptive, or even a lot of work.