Don’t be too busy to call people during lockdown

There’s a sense with some managers at the moment that they are really too busy just dealing with the chaos of the Covid pandemic on their business to make individual calls to their team. And anyway they tell me “the team are doing fine”.

Really? I would assume nothing of the sort. I absolutely get it that sorting out supply chains, shoring up revenue, re-configuring the business model is taking a lot of time and energy. There is indeed a lot to get done.

It’s not that intellectually managers don’t know that they should be communicating regularly with their teams and the individuals. They do but something with an immediate deadline (a task) generally gets prioritised over the check in call with individuals, especially if, on the surface, all seems well.

This isn’t new because of Covid, it’s just getting amplified. Poor managers always neglected the human connection in favour of getting stuff done. And whilst you can justify that on any single day, to do it regularly is a mistake.

The “Are You OK?” campaign was predicated on the fact that people who we think are OK and who say they are OK, may not be.

So make the calls and keep making them. The deadline before something goes wrong may not be visible but it’s there none the less.