After 15 years working in research and a lifetime of people-watching under my belt, I naturally see patterns in what I’m reading and observing in conversations (more online conversations as of late, it’s been hard to eavesdrop in public).

So, what have I been noticing?

Ever-so-subtle shifts in how people are talking about the nature of work. Specifically, I’ve noticed changes in what employees are expecting from leaders and managers.

Here are four examples of what I’ve observed that you might have noticed, too:

A supervisor was in the news for telling an employee that “fine” wasn’t a good enough response to how she’s doing.
Independent online communities of practice are flourishing during the pandemic.
A professor’s email goes viral for telling a student “its ok to not be ok right now.”
Local businesses, stores, and restaurants continue to collect donations for their employees.

There is a lot to unpack here.

Let’s focus on what these pieces of information tell us about leadership.

First, we need to clarify leadership expectations found in the normal work environment. (The Resilience Thinking Method considers this step ‘mapping the issue landscape.’)

In the normal work environment, leadership is largely focused on empowering employees to do the work through setting goals and then helping teams reach those goals. Yes, I’m simplifying a lot here. The point is that in normal times we expected leaders—on the most fundamental level—to get people to work.

This is our starting point.

An exception occurred when traumatic events happened at work or home, like organizational or family change. In response to these traumatic events, we expected leaders and organizations to be relational and honest. This means that pre-2020, relational leadership was only expected intermittently. Compassion was called upon in times of trauma or crisis. We did not expect our supervisors, teachers, or managers to be overly relational or particularly compassionate on a daily basis.

Photo by nappy from Pexels — Photo by **nappy** from **Pexels**

Fast forward to today.

We are in the midst of an ongoing pandemic and we live in a reality of political turmoil, social injustice and inequality, widespread unemployment, and half a million lives lost to COVID-19 in the U.S. alone. Every single day for the last year has carried trauma and will continue to carry trauma for the foreseeable future.

And, guess what? Our expectations for leaders in times of trauma and crisis are the same.

However, what is different is the rate of employee expectation. What was once expected of leaders intermittently is now expected regularly. This means that employees are expecting leaders to engage in relational leadership Every. Single. Day. And, those expectations are not going away anytime soon.

This means that employees are expecting humanity and compassion in every conversation and interaction.

So, leader, how is it going? Are you fulfilling your employees’ expectations?

How are you showing up as a leader right now?

On March 9, at 12pm MST, let’s talk about employee expectations and dive head-first into the reality of leadership in trying times. We will discuss how the Resilience Thinking Method can help you make sense of, and successfully navigate, the leadership landscape during ‘normal’ times and global crisis. We’ll also break down what employees really mean when they say they want leaders to lead with humanity and compassion.

Hope you can join us! Click below to learn more about the event.

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