As executive director of Content and Implementation at education technology company Curriculum Associates, I’m familiar with distance learning challenges, hybrid schedules, and the juggling act teachers, students, and families perform every day.

In addition to coaching educators on ways to engage students in distance learning this school year, I’m also supporting education very close to my own home – at my dining room table, in fact – where my two daughters are attending class.

Given this unique lens as both a parent and someone who supports educators, I’d like to share my top tips for others trying to work and support at-home learning through these challenging times. 

●     Embrace the crazy. Every day will be different and present its own set of challenges and opportunities for you and your family. That’s life: it’s messy and continually changing. Lean into the chaos and make peace with the fact that things may not always go as planned.

●     Failure happens. From personal experience, I can tell you that sometimes you will fail at balancing working from home while simultaneously helping your children learn virtually. These mistakes will provide an extreme dose of humility. Take them in your stride, learn from them, and move on.

●     Mornings are your friend. I know it can be tough to get up early, especially on cold winter mornings, but it’s essential to have time just to yourself each day. As my girls have gotten older, they tend to sleep later, so I get up before them, my wife, and even my dog to exercise, meditate, and prepare for the day ahead. Taking this small amount of “me” time does wonders in starting each day with a positive attitude.

●     Schedules are helpful—sort of. Manage your children’s school weeks to the best of your ability, realizing that there will be days when your schedule will fall apart at 8 a.m. It’s helpful to have a copy of their schedules on hand to anticipate lunch breaks and other free periods and try to be available if possible when they aren’t learning so you can have their food ready and be there to help with any school (or life) questions.

●     Carve out your own space. Set aside your work area, whether it is a corner of a room or your own office, to help you focus and get work done. Enforce a “no action figures allowed” policy with signage if needed. Making an effort to have your own dedicated space, no matter how small, will help you stay on track and be more productive.

●     It’s all about teamwork. Look for your helpers, both those in your home and on your team. I am fortunate to have an incredible wife who I lean on heavily to help me navigate trying to work and lead conference calls while also helping my daughters with their studies. I also have team members who understand when I need to turn my camera off to prepare pb&j sandwiches for lunch. Speak up if you’re feeling overwhelmed, and reach out to family, friends, colleagues, and partners to help out and for advice.

●     Stay thankful. While this situation isn’t what anyone was expecting, make time for gratitude for things large and small. You’re likely spending more time with your children than you ever were before, so take advantage of this rare opportunity to get to know the fascinating little humans in your life even better. Reframing this time as precious has helped my perspective immensely.

●     Find reasons to laugh. Some days may make you want to tear your hair out, but at the end of the day, remember that this situation isn’t going to last forever. Try to find humor in the frustrating and ridiculous moments. Did your dog jump on your lap during a meeting and bark loudly to be let out of the room? Did your child decide a Zoom call was the best time to show off her new dance routine? Did someone in your house yell, “I have to use the bathroom” at the top of their lungs, just as you hit the unmute button on Zoom? These will be the “can you believe…” stories your family shares for years to come.

●     We are all improvising. Finally, while it can be helpful to consider advice from others, know that there’s no fully-baked expertise on how to parent and work through times like this. Every week – heck, every day – is a learning process, and flexibility and grace will serve you well. Forge the unique path that works best for you and your family, trusting in your ability to do what’s best for your personal and professional wellness.

Wondering how to become a better leader and encourage more emotional engagement in your workplace? The secret is in convincing your brain to let your heart take the lead.

You’ve had to take care of yourself and your family throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but your responsibilities go far beyond your four walls at home. As a business leader, you must also help your team and business navigate this shifting, uncertain landscape. It’s a huge challenge — especially when you can’t connect with employees in person.

If you’ve experienced the roller coaster of emotions, the fear, and the insecurity that have resulted from this, you’re not alone. It’s hard not to slide into negativity or mental paralysis. But at this moment, you only have to answer one question: A year from now, how will you evaluate your leadership response? It’s a serious question.

For me, I’ll know that love was my guiding compass. I’ve chosen to love my team, support my clients and friends, and give my family 100% commitment. It can be tough to stay optimistic, but it’s the best way to make it through these uncertain and unsteady times.

Thankfully, that hard work translates directly to business success. Recent McKinsey & Company research findings revealed four times the job engagement among workers whose organizations have shown supportive, pragmatic coronavirus responses. That’s tangible evidence that leaders who lead with love are onto something that can make a world of difference.

Bumps in the Road to Leading With Love in the Workplace

Although leading with love in the workplace is fundamental at our company, it can be a foreign practice at other businesses. Why? For some leaders, the learning curve is relatively steep. They’re adapting and changing so much already that adding another task to the mix seems daunting.

And vulnerability? It can be challenging to show. Plenty of people adopt a “strong” persona during tough times, perpetuating the illusion that they’re invincible. Ironically, employees want to see more than strength; they want to know that leadership shares their fears and insecurities.

On top of everything, executives and managers actively searching for ways to be a better leader find it challenging to figure out how to make deep connections over Zoom or on the phone. If you’re worried that distance is the ultimate barrier to connection, fear not — I’ve cried with team members and clients on UberConference lines, sharing the hardest times in their lives while building trust. These experiences have only strengthened our bonds and increased our trust.

The Advantages of Emotional Engagement in the Workplace

Making compassion and commitment part of everything you do creates a ripple effect: Team members become motivated to go the extra mile. Regardless of what happens, they know that you’ll get through any challenges together — and that no one will be left behind.

When emotional engagement in the workplace is consistent, it becomes part of your cultural fabric. Everyone speaks the same language. Team members know their guiding compass and can use it to guide their decisions. They’re kinder and more eager to collaborate because you were willing to establish core values built on openness, empathy, and vulnerability.

How to Be a Better Leader Through Love

The biggest challenge facing leaders today isn’t the pandemic; it’s knowing how to lead people through it. If you’re eager to try something different and see your team on a more human level, try these five techniques:

1. Make a genuine effort to understand your team.

You’ve likely worked on your listening skills a lot since COVID-19 began. Don’t stop now. Take time to hear and understand what your employees are experiencing. Then, give honest feedback to facilitate positive momentum for them and the company. Spend time talking about your employees’ concerns and problems (including those that are personal). That way, you can brainstorm creative solutions together.

2. Accept that we all have flaws.

No one is perfect — including you. Spend less time hiding who you are and more time showing your true self. At the same time, accept others for who they are with grace instead of trying to fix their flaws. No one on your team should feel like they can’t contribute because they’re worried about being wrong. Instead, leaders who lead with love empower people to act authentically.

3. Be brave enough to have tough, vulnerable conversations.

Leading with love in the workplace doesn’t mean you can’t be upfront with people or that you have to let constructive feedback fall by the wayside. You can continue to create a safe space while remaining in charge of your company, pod, squad, or department. Just remember to approach everything from a caring standpoint. Being brave enough to have tough, vulnerable conversations is about giving constructive feedback and coming from a place of understanding the situation or any challenges being faced — and working to reach solutions together.

4. Show appreciation without expecting anything in return.

According to research from the University of Pennsylvania, workers enjoy a 50% higher success rate when their leaders show gratitude. This makes perfect sense: If you reward (verbally or financially) the good things that staff members do, they’ll do it again. Additionally, other team players will emulate the practice.

5. Be a coach, not a critic.

Now is the time to be a thoughtful mentor. Coaching will produce more innovation, and innovation is what your business needs to remain competitive in a shaky economy. Mentorship has another positive side effect: The most talented superstars in your organization will embrace leading with love in the workplace as they embark on their professional journeys for years to come.

Everyone wins when you embrace a love-first leadership style. Engagement soars. Collaboration grows. Turnover plummets. It’s not too late to ride the wave of this fantastic ripple effect — you simply have to put your heart front and center.

Steve Jobs was wearing jeans and sandals under a black graduation gown as he stepped to the podium to deliver Stanford University’s commencement address in June 2005.

It was quite a scene, with some 23,000 faculty members, alumni, newly minted graduates, and their parents jamming the floor and bleachers of the school’s football stadium. After all, who better than this icon of personal technology, the legendary entrepreneur who started up Apple Computer—soon to be the world’s most valuable company—to tell them how to capitalize on their prestigious college degrees? 

What was Jobs’ message to the overflow crowd? That a top-notch education, or brilliant track record, would not be enough to save them when, inevitably, a crisis turned their best-laid plans upside down. 

It’s a crucial lesson for all of us whose businesses or careers have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Lesson #1: When Crisis Strikes, Focus on the Future 

Jobs told his audience that it would be their ability to create anew—rethink, reimagine, and reinvent the future—that would ultimately shape their long-term success. 

As was the case when Jobs was forced out of his job at Apple. 

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Jobs said. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. The heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.” 

Over the next five years, Jobs introduced a revolutionary new computer operating system called NeXTSTEP, which became a critical building block of the internet. He also purchased and reinvented Pixar, a small computer graphics company, turning it into an animation company that launched a lucrative new era in filmmaking. 

As Walter Isaacson noted in his biography of Jobs: “He was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future.” 

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick,” recalled Jobs. “Don’t lose faith.” 

Instead, start creating the future. 

Lesson #2: Creativity Is a Verb 

Prolific creators of all kinds have a vastly different understanding of creativity than many of us. 

From deep experience, they know that, contrary to what we’ve frequently been told in classrooms, books, consulting sessions, or TED talks, creativity is not a spark of genius, a personal trait to be emulated, or the unique domain of specific organizations or teams. 

Instead, it’s the result of a series of verbs, a strategy of actions, that any of us—whether we’re a business leader, manager, or career professional—can learn and apply to better surf the waves of the COVID economic crisis and position ourselves for future success. 

The experience of another iconic American creator who was faced with a triple-header crisis gives a taste of the strategy. 

Lesson #3: Pay Attention to the Evolving Market 

In the 1920s and early ‘30s, three consecutive crises barreled down on Walt Disney’s business and career track when he initially tried to get started in Hollywood. 

First, Universal Pictures finagled him out of the rights to his first major cartoon character and hit movie. Second, theater owners refused to show films he subsequently made. Finally, and you would think this would be the last straw, the Great Depression struck. 

But through it all, Disney focused on an observation that only he, among filmmakers, had made about the quickly evolving movie marketplace: audiences of all ages, especially children, loved seeing cute little animals with human characteristics and personalities.  

As Disney put it: “Unless people can identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true.” 

Making this observation while in the throes of crisis was the first step, the initial act, in Walt Disney’s creative strategy—the underpinning of a process that led to the invention of Mickey Mouse and the subsequent launch of Disney’s entertainment empire in the depths of the Great Depression. 

Wrote one chronicler of the times: “Mickey Mouse became the one thing people could smile about. His indomitable spirit, as well as the technological advances that Disney displayed in those first cartoons, struck a chord with movie-going audiences. People became invested in Mickey Mouse. In rooting for Mickey, audiences were cheering their own success, as well.” 

The worse the economy became, the more Mickey was in demand. And by 1938, when there was light at the end of the tunnel, Mickey was credited not only with spreading joy, but with concretely assisting America’s recovery, as the production of hundreds of Mickey Mouse branded products—from wristwatches to playing cards, pencils, marmalade, breakfast cereal, table covers, and bracelets—helped to reopen factories, and provide thousands of new jobs. 

In a time of deep national crisis, like today’s COVID-19 pandemic, Walt Disney observed the evolving marketplace, and with this as his starting point, built a global business like nothing the world had seen. When he was asked, as he often was over the years, how he first began creating his entertainment conglomerate, he was known to respond: “I hope we never lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse.”   

Keep this front of mind as your business begins turning the page on the coronavirus crisis: a savvy observation, perhaps one that only you or your team will make, could change the shape of your future. 

The son of Martin Luther King Jr. shares his insights on how your family can grow and sustain a mission-aligned leadership culture that transcends the next generation and beyond.

Martin Luther King III describes what family leadership looks like against a landscape of global problems:

Where to focus family leadership efforts. There are monumental world issues that we should focus on as a society. Climate change is among the most important because if our water and air are polluted, then everything else is for naught. If we don’t find ways to address it, we’re going to all be in trouble.

Second is the eradication of poverty in the world and certainly, within our own nation. Our nation has an inordinate amount of poverty based on the amount of resources that exist here. My parents used to talk about the eradication of poverty, racism, and I’d say violence – although my dad used to call it militarism. Those triple evils are where leadership-oriented families must focus. 

The King family’s leadership focus. Society has embraced a culture of violence. It’s in our cinemas and in the gaming industry targeting our children. It’s in our homes as domestic violence. Leaders have to think about how to create a culture of non-violence because non-violence is sustainable. Our culture cannot sustain itself if we continue to operate this way.

If we can live a day in peace, why can’t we live a week in peace? If we can live a week in peace, why can’t we live a month? If we can live a month, why not a year? And if we can achieve a year, why not a lifetime?

So many people look to the United States for leadership, but we are the most divided we’ve ever been. We can’t focus on one political interest — we have to look at what serves humanity. Leaders need to help communities get above the noise and think at a different level. 

As a family, we are focusing on peace, justice, and equity. While that’s furthering the legacy of my parents, it’s also the legacy of our family in general, and our 11-year-old daughter is working with us on it, too.

Role of individual leadership in moving the needle on world problems. Start by deciding what kind of society you seek for yourself and your family, and then identify where you can make a contribution. Some of us are concerned about the climate, so they should focus there. Some are concerned with police brutality, so they should focus there. Some are concerned with reproductive rights, so they need to engage and get involved there. All of us have a contribution we can make.

Importance of listening to young people. The truth is that young people are leading the rest of us. The Parkland students are a perfect example. They worked very hard to mobilize people around the country so that the needle can move on responsible gun legislation. These young people are totally engaged and leading us. I haven’t seen a movement like that since 1963 when 3,000 kids were arrested
in Birmingham attempting to desegregate the city.

Then we’ve got young people like Greta Thunberg leading us around climate issues. And even younger children like Little Miss Flint leading us around the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

I go to schools and ask kids what they are worried about. Too often, they say they’re concerned someone will come into their school and shoot them. Think about that: Our children have to practice what to do if someone comes into the classroom shooting at them. Our society has accepted a culture of violence. Instead of focusing on eradicating violence, we are focused on teaching our children how to cope with it.

I’m inspired by children and how easily and naturally they take action. Unfortunately, adults don’t tend to get involved until they are affected by it directly. When there’s a catastrophe, we get engaged. But the kids are showing us that we can get engaged at any time. Adults just have to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.

On encouraging a culture of leadership within families. I’m always telling my daughter, Yolanda, that she has to be authentic. She’s been around leaders in her family for generations — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles — we’re all involved. But I tell her she has to find her own authenticity. You don’t have to be like us. Be your best self. You’ve got to find your way.

She got a chance to speak at the March for Our Lives, and she went way beyond what I would have said because I am regimented by the laws of our land. At the event, she said she had a vision, her own dream (see sidebar, “Yolanda Renee King: I Have a Dream, Too.”) We did not help her with this speech or give her any guidance. She said, “I know what I want to say.” 

Lessons learned from my daughter. From day one, she’s had an interest in homelessness and poverty. I never pushed her, but I’m thankful she has this interest. Families that lead let their child be who they want to be. And what if your kid is not focused on being their best self? Exposure is everything. Every kid has a gift, and when they find their gift, they are motivated to work on it because it’s what inspires them. 

Yolanda knows what’s happening and why there’s a need to focus on U.S. poverty. If a kid comes to school hungry, they won’t have the energy to do anything. Principals tell me they have many transient students. There are apartments out there where you get your first month’s rent free, so after that, they move. They are constantly moving because they can’t afford to stay, and the kids never get a chance to adjust. Many in our society are completely unaware that these kinds of things are going on. How do we inspire kids to be leaders until we fix these problems?

Some time ago, I visited a school in Sudan. The school was in a tent — in fact, the whole place was a tent village. Our sponsor provided us with a shiny black Mercedes to drive out there. We got out of the car, and the kids started running out and pointing at the car and then running back in and bringing out more children and pointing at the car. And I thought, “Wow, materialism has even made it out here to these kids in Sudan.” But then I realized that the car was so shiny they could see themselves reflected on it. They had never seen a mirror before and were seeing images of themselves for the first time.

You may think you know what’s going on, but it’s all a matter of perspective. American kids often don’t realize how bad other kids have it. Exposure helps them realize, and then from that comes the desire to help others. Parents want to protect their children’s innocence, and that is preeminent. But we still need to let them grow up. Leadership-oriented families expose their kids to things so the kids can embrace the problems and become part of the solution.

Hardest thing about living a consistent life of  leadership. Most challenging is staying authentic in a nation where everything is quickly changing. You have to maintain your values and not let society change who you are and who your family is. But you do have to compromise to stay relevant.

We are focused on creating partnerships to align people and families who can help us with what we want to achieve. That’s what it’s going to take. No one person, no one organization can do all this work. It’s going to take a collective.

That’s what leadership is about — building this collective of collaborators. My dad would have called it creating the beloved community. And that’s what my wife and I, and even Yolanda, are focused on right now: creating these collaborations to continue the legacy and unfinished work of my parents.

Knowledge workers need to prepare for the coming reality: the rise of thinking AI. As AI evolves to handle much of the thinking required in manufacturing to retail to healthcare, humans will need to recalibrate and capitalize on strengths beyond pure intelligence—like intuition, empathy, creativity, emotion, and people skills.    

The first wave of artificial intelligence (AI) has already replaced humans for repetitive physical tasks like inspecting equipment, manufacturing goods, repairing things, and crunching numbers. That shift started way back with the Industrial Revolution. This gave rise to our current Thinking Economy, where employment and wages are more tied to workers’ abilities to process, analyze and interpret information to make decisions and solve problems … Just like the industrial revolution automated physical tasks by decreasing the value of human strength and increasing the value of human cognition, AI is now reshaping the landscape and ushering in a Feeling Economy.

What characterizes this emerging economy? Consider, for example, the role of a financial analyst, which seems pretty quantitative and thinking-oriented. But our recent research shows this field as increasingly feeling-oriented over the last ten years. As AI-powered tools increasingly do the analytical work, it’s more critical for financial analysts to interact skillfully with clients – to reassure them about things like stock market dips. The “people” person becomes much more valuable than the anti-social numbers or tech geek. 

This trend illustrates a convergence of artificial and human intelligence and why it’s crucial for companies and workers alike to embrace such to be viable. The stakes don’t only apply to specialized analytical work. Managerial jobs need to be more people-oriented and feeling-conscious as well.

Knowledge workers, especially in leadership roles, can swiftly act to safeguard their careers and better position their organizations to prosper in this AI revolution.

Shift the Recruiting Mindset: Since AI can do more of the thinking tasks, firms need to recruit people who can perform well in feeling tasks and jobs. People management, working with others, emotional intelligence, and negotiation skills are already in strong demand and will be even more critical in the future.

Update Existing Jobs: Collaborating with thinking AI inevitably changes the nature of human jobs. And, business leaders can keep pace. This starts with upgrading existing jobs to emphasize people skills. This means placing increasing emphasis on feeling, empathy, and emotional intelligence in positions such as immigration officer, bank teller, physician, and especially the aforementioned financial analyst.

Protect your job now: Individuals can safeguard their jobs by enhancing their feeling and empathetic skills and gravitating toward jobs that emphasize those tasks. The most successful workers will be those who can manage relationships in an understanding and emotionally intelligent way.

Intuitive and creative professionals will hang on longer than the purely analytical workers in terms of AI disrupting their careers. Humans cannot compete head-head with machines, as they are powerhouses of analytical thinking. Computer scientists have tried, and are still trying, to design machines that can think in a human way – significantly for responding to unknown and new environments. Nonetheless, knowledge workers should focus on the long game. And career seekers should not focus and plan on being analytical workers — even though the analytics field is very hot. As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky has said: “Skate to where the puck is going, not to where the puck is.”

To broadly reiterate, the emerging Feeling Economy is changing the nature of all jobs, so companies and individuals should prepare. Organizations need to manage differently, with more emphasis on feeling, empathy, and emotional intelligence. The companies that take advantage of this trend will be the most successful. There will be new opportunities for feeling-oriented companies and products. This also creates opportunities to pull ahead in the global market.

Like many that have come before, this crisis can bring out the best and worst in leadership. I witnessed some of the best actions as a crisis responder after 9/11 and the California fires and realized that crises do indeed provide opportunities to change the way we do things.

This pandemic is illuminating inequalities, lack of vision, and support at every level. As a leader, it’s time to ask yourself what qualities in your organization will make everyone want to contribute their best ideas, help set records for achievement, and support each other in ways that lift the team, your products or services, and the greater economy. 

One way to do that is by exercising empathy. Before you discard it as just another “soft skill,” think about how empathy requires you to walk in someone else’s shoes to understand what they are facing, especially amid all this uncertainty. No one knows what the future may hold as people continue to get sick, millions are out of work, and others struggle to work in creative new ways. While we’re all walking through this time together, we need to understand our team’s needs, the challenges they may be facing, and look for ways to make their work easier. That means adopting empathy as the core of your management style and listening to your employees, so you can truly understand their perspectives and help them excel at their jobs. 

This crisis has blended work and home as never before. Both men and women face interruptions while working at home that cannot be ignored. COVID-19 has shone a light on how caretaking and work collide, especially when home-schooling is added to the mix. Boston Consulting Group’s recent study of working parents revealed that half of those surveyed felt their work suffered. Women estimated they spend 15 more hours a week on household chores. Both men and women estimate they are spending an extra 27 hours a week on childcare, chores, and education than they were before the pandemic. BCG authors offer several solutions while admitting that nothing is perfect during anxiety over layoffs and with children possibly not returning to classrooms full-time.

Given that 60 percent of parents have not found alternative childcare in the wake of school and daycare closures, flexible policies are needed. Some may not want to return to work full time. Men may feel social pressures to prioritize work, and women may feel the opposite pressure to quit and focus on home duties. With employee turnover costing 33 percent of an employee’s salary, BCG points out that it’s ultimately beneficial to keep the employee and “lead with empathy” to understand their situation. 

Another critical point is not to assume that employees working from home will be at their regular capacity or on their usual schedule. That means managers need to have open conversations about workloads and workflows, prioritize mission-critical tasks, and reallocate resources to create short-term flexibility. Reaching out to support others is the most rewarding act you can take in a crisis —
or anytime, for that matter.

I founded Women Connect4Good for that very reason: to help and support other women. It came about as the result of a podcast interview when I asked my guest, “Mary, how can I help you?” The silence was so long that I was afraid we had lost the connection. Finally, this small voice answered, “You mean you want to help me?” Yes. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. And I realized that the most powerful thing we can do for each other is to reach out and ask how we can help. That is empathy in action. And I made it the mission of my foundation. I have enlarged it to encompass men, too — everyone must help and support each other. My whole team knows it and works to achieve it.

My team was already working remotely, so we were lucky not to have to change the core of our working style. Recognizing that the greatest challenge in a physically distanced workforce is effective communication, each member thinks of the others and how they contribute. When something in their lives — not work-related — requires attention, the others step in to help. We keep each other in the loop, keep no secrets, and empower each other to achieve our common purpose. Likewise, when something happens to derail a plan, like the pandemic, the team is flexible and able to shift direction. For example, our Lift Women Up marketing campaign was in place months before the first case of COVID-19, but just when it was launched, everyone’s attention shifted. Women still needed lifting up — so we revised and adapted it to fit the circumstance and forged ahead with it. The complete collaboration, culture of trust, and authentic, honest communication make my organization agile and able to respond immediately to changing needs.

Great leadership starts with listening and understanding what everyone needs to excel at their jobs. Engaging empathy throughout your organization may require a shift in focus away from the bottom line to the talent that makes achieving that bottom line possible. By developing relationships that foster collaboration and performance beyond expectation, we can create an entirely new business environment that sustains everyone. Imagine a workplace that everyone wants to serve, and give their best effort and innovative ideas — at every level. When we choose to open our minds and hearts to engage empathy, we acquire more tools for strategies that transform our current business models and succeed in unforeseen ways.

The title of this story is a line we use at my house when a product or service is unusually challenging. It might be that bottle or package that requires a hack saw and a blow torch to open, or it might be that service that offers way too many steps to reach your desired outcome.  

Our most recent experience was the black pepper container that added an “open the whole box top” feature instead of only the shake side, scoop side or pour side. We found it challenging to seal shut this new feature. The result? The whole top of the can unexpectedly opened, dumping a box of pepper in our soup instead of the dash we desired. Reviews on the pepper company’s website revolve around harsh suggestions of what to do with the product’s designer.

We all know the value of making products and services tamper-proof, shoplifter proof, and over-the-top safe. Buy a new ladder, and you’ll have countless warning stickers to remove, each a likely response to a ladder lawsuit. Governmental regulations dictate full disclosure, transparency, and accommodations to consumers with unique needs or restrictions. We accept these boundaries as well-intentioned defensive efforts. Yet, too often an enterprise will place “delight the user-consumer-customer” far down their list of priorities.    

My business partner, the late Ron Zemke, and I pioneered the universal practice known as “customer journey mapping” in the late 1980s. The back story is the classic “let the CEO open it” saga. 

You can read about our early work in Ron’s 1989 book, The Service Edge, and our 2003 book, Service Magic.

We consulted with a large phone company and focused on what customers went through when their telephone did not work. After countless interviews, focus groups, ride-alongs in telephone repair trucks, and sit-alongs at call centers, listening to customers, we decided to graph what we had learned as if customers were telling us their stories.

We took our diagrams to senior leadership. Their classic answers were, “No wonder the customer is angry when they finally speak to a call center rep, look at what we’ve put them through,” or “We sure make customers wait a lot,” or “I would be confused if I were the customer, too.” When we drilled down to understand better customer expectations around each encounter (the moment of truth), we saw that we were actually being instructed by customers on how to make their experiences better.  

Remember, people within organizations cannot accurately see through their customer’s eyes since they know too much and are blind to customer experience. But there are ways to come closer to “being the customer.” It demands that the CEO “open it.” Here are three ways for the C-suite to gain close inspection from the customer’s purview.

Stop Thinking Boardroom Briefings Are the Voice of the Customer

“How do you know what matters most to your customers?” is a question I have asked many C-suite leaders. I often hear reports of briefings conducted by the chief customer officer, complete with slides, graphs, and survey stats. When I reference the fact that customers’ connections with the organization is through a relationship and then rephrase the question to end with the word “spouse” instead of “customers,” I get a less confident tone. While the parallel is admittedly extreme, it dramatizes the point that customer encounters are emotional and thus far from the sterility of a data point. 

When a whole box of pepper dumps into my soup, “strongly dissatisfied” is not the phrase I would use.

Create a board of customers and rotate membership, so no member loses objectivity or the capacity to be candid. Hold “What’s stupid around here” meetings with front line employees to learn what impedes their ability to serve customers effectively. Invite customers to board meetings for direct feedback. Turn all receptionists, security guards, and drivers into valuable scouts who learn about customer experiences and priorities. Meet with them frequently to get their scout reports.  

Go Where You Can Hear the Voice of the Customer 

I once worked with a client in Miami and stayed at the Biscayne Bay Marriott. 

Checking in, I spotted a familiar face behind the check-in counter a bit further down from me. It was Bill Marriott. This was years ago, when every property sported his portrait with his father in the hotel lobby. As I got into the elevator with the bellman carrying my luggage, I confirmed my observation. “He has been here a couple of days,” the bellman told me, “spending time in various departments.” Now in his eighties, Marriott still visits over a hundred properties a year.  

Become an expert on your products and services and, if possible, get into your “customer’s shoes” to experience things exactly as they do. Marriott told a group of senior leaders, “Leaders should spend time with the frontline, not to make them feel better, but to learn.” When you speak directly with customers, ask them questions about their hopes and aspirations, not just their needs and expectations. Turn customer interviews and focus groups into a treasure hunt in which you are likely to be surprised by the answers, not a dialogue to confirm what you already know or suspect.

Take a Bold Step to Improve the Customer’s Journey

Years ago, I consulted with a major bank. Correspondence to branch managers at that time was mainly through inter-office mail and couriers. Interviews with branch managers revealed managers were severely restrained from spending valuable time with customers and branch employees because of the time required to respond to various bank departments for information or reading reports they were expected to read. When I mentioned my findings to the regional bank executive, he hit the roof. He had a branch manager box up all the requests for one week, rented a van, and had the boxes of paperwork delivered to the CEO’s office. Stacks of boxes sent a powerful message, and the process was changed to ensure someone was always aware of the whole picture.

Knowing the real world of your customer is the first step. It then takes execution — that creates a delightful experience for them — right alongside the priority list of safety, security, and accommodation. To paraphrase poet Maya Angelou, “Customers will remember how you made them feel long after they have forgotten what you did for them.”

The development of the COVID-19 vaccine is an example — probably an extreme one — of the importance of leadership and team commitment to achieving breakthrough results.

Typically, it takes about ten years for a vaccine to get to market. But Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine took less than a tenth of that time. And, the vaccines developed by Moderna and AstraZeneca have been on a similar schedule. In the face of the global pandemic, all three have been developed in far less time than anyone thought possible.

There are two critical lessons for leaders here, with implications beyond COVID-19. The first is that leaders have an essential role in redefining what is possible and encouraging people to pursue solutions beyond old, familiar ways of working, which are often not adequate to solve unprecedented problems. The second is that it’s fundamental to establish a shared sense of commitment and direction for a group of people to become a dedicated team that works together creatively and efficiently.

No doubt, Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer (pictured above), has helped redefine what is possible. Reportedly, Mr. Bourla was not satisfied when told that the vaccine for COVID-19 would be ready only by mid-2021. He told his senior management that people tend to underestimate what they can achieve and that his team was capable of much more. And as we can all see now, Mr. Bourla was right.

Simultaneously, the pandemic provided a catalyst that gave a common purpose to Pfizer’s team as they worked to develop and produce the vaccine.

But what happens in a different context, when a collective crisis is not so obvious? Can leaders still shape a common purpose? In those situations, what we might call genuine leaders are especially important. These are leaders who follow their convictions and passions and establish relationships with their teams openly and authentically. These leaders know how to create a shared purpose and the conditions that empower each of their team members to give their best.

This kind of leadership is not about having “charisma” or “executive presence.” Nor is there a universal formula to follow. It’s something that takes work and dedication but can be developed with practice and intention. Each person can develop their genuine, unique style of leading.

But beyond the specific character of each leader, we find some common traits. Recently, in preparation for my book The Expanding Circle, I interviewed more than three dozen “genuine” leaders and found some common threads:

Lead with your story. Genuine leaders tend to have a good understanding of themselves, their values, passions, and motivations. Leading from their passion gives them internal harmony, strength, and resilience. At the same time, their teams perceive them as genuine, which helps foster trust.

Many of these leaders are also good at articulating who they are and what they care about in a personal story. That articulation allows team members to make sense of who their leader is, and it helps them relate to her as a person — beyond her formal authority.

Mr. Bourla’s story was well-known to Pfizer’s employees long before the pandemic. Originally from Greece, he never imagined that he would end up running a pharmaceutical giant. In fact, his original training was as a veterinarian. But once he arrived at Pfizer, his self-knowledge told him that this was the place for him. And according to many people in his team, Mr. Bourla is friendly with colleagues at all levels and always ready to engage in open conversations.

Articulate a common purpose. Genuine leaders spend much of their time listening. Not listening passively, but actively spending time with staff, asking questions, seeking to understand their motivations and stories.

Based on this understanding of others and a clear idea of the objective to be achieved, these leaders create and share a narrative that gives meaning to the joint work, a common direction that facilitates collaboration.

In a way, COVID-19 made it easy for Mr. Bourla and his leadership team to articulate a story that facilitates a common goal and fosters commitment. The importance of the vaccine endeavor was evident for everyone. But at every opportunity, both in person and in writing, Mr. Bourla reminded his team what was at stake, why they needed to do more, and that is was needed faster.

Empower others. Genuine leaders create the conditions for others to take the initiative, be creative, and contribute their best. They do not micromanage but rather work to guide and empower others.

During the development of the vaccine, Pfizer’s team met biweekly. There were no set agendas. The goal was to allow open participation and encourage everyone to share their views. This helped underscore the shared commitment to their goal, and it demonstrated that everyone’s engagement was critical to collective success.

COVID-19 is still with us, and we continue to learn how to deal with it every day. Indeed, it will leave scars, but it will also drive some positive lessons. Among them, we can explore new horizons and redefine what is feasible when we face unique and even unprecedented challenges.

We can be sure that COVID-19 will not be the last crisis that demands new ways of thinking and working. And genuine leaders, such as Mr. Bourla, will be especially well-positioned to motivate their teams to challenge themselves and achieve breakthrough results.

While crisis thrived during 2020, CEOs, VPs and entrepreneurs should be brainstorming ways to lead with love in the year ahead — to recharge teams, rebuild trust and inspire employees by clearly defining a higher business purpose.

Based on servant leadership success principles created in the 1970s by Robert Greenleaf, 2021 is the perfect time to apply some success principles to restore your employee engagement and hope.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s happened and how leaders can switch the narrative to improve morale and results in 2021, as the world strives to get back to a “sense of normality.”

From environmental disasters to social unrest to a global pandemic to political chaos, we bounced around from problem to problem like human pinballs in 2020. With little reprieve from the constant stress caused by these challenges, our evolutionary fight or flight mechanisms and associated chemical reactions have exhausted our collective will and spirit, shortened fuses, and brought out the worst in many of us. Unfortunately, some leaders have also been the worst offenders and stressors of this past year.

Before 2020, Gallup had reported a positive shift in global employee engagement for the first time in many years, but in their latest tracker, things have gone back to pre-COVID levels. 

Naturally, there are many potential root causes for lower employee engagement in 2020, but leadership preparation and response to unprecedented challenges cannot be underestimated. When leaders panic, abdicate responsibility, or worse, double-down on toxic behavior, employees and businesses suffer. The result is the opposite of health and well-being and productive work — two essential Sustainable Development Goals.

These leaders can reverse the damage done during the pandemic by eliminating toxic leadership behaviors and unneeded stressors, embracing the principles of positive psychology detailed by Abraham Maslow in the 1950s, and by practicing servant leadership.

Positive psychology, especially in the form of the strengths-based leadership movement, has been proven to deliver dramatic results for teams and organizations that have embraced them. Servant leadership is an idea whose time has come. It deals with individualizing leadership for employees, which is key to engaging people in the most diverse workforce in U.S. history. With flattening hierarchies, matrix structures, and agile methods transforming how work is done, leaders capable of connecting with employees and bringing out the brilliance of individuals and teams are more in demand than ever before. 

When combined, positive psychology and servant leadership have the power to improve the lives of employees and increase engagement. Here are five servant leadership success keys for leading with love in 2021.

1. Re-focus Your Team on a Higher Purpose

Many organizations and leaders lost sight of their broader purpose when the pandemic began. They contracted their workforces, furloughed employees, and preserved the salaries of senior executives. These actions do not inspire employee engagement. However, suppose your company took the opposite approach — by protecting employees, serving customers with excellence, and furthering progress. In that case, it will be much easier to lean into your organization’s purpose and use it to energize your teams in the new year. Leading in 2021 will be just like the movie Avengers: Endgame. In this Marvel blockbuster, when the dust settled five years after Thanos’ snap-killed half of all life in the universe, the heroes had to regroup, remind each other of their shared purpose, and get back to work to bring everyone back.

2. Invert the Hierarchy to Serve and Connect with Employees 

Part of leaning into purpose is demonstrating to your people that you and other senior leaders genuinely exist to serve and support employees to enhance a value transfer to customers. This inverted hierarchy approach is the key to connecting with your millennial and Gen Z employees who desire purpose-driven work and expect to be coached, empowered, and supported in their career journey. When people feel supported, they bring their best selves to the task at hand, and the organization can ride this productivity boost toward achievement.

3. Build Trust with Empathy and Transparency

In these trying times, trust is a currency that no leader can succeed without. The leader’s shadow is real, and consistency between words and actions has never been more on display than now. Trust-building leaders who lead with authenticity, transparency, and empathy build concrete bridges between themselves and employees that can be counted on during good times and bad. Trust is especially essential when working virtually as you no longer have the benefit of standing over someone’s shoulder and watching them work. Avoid incessant, unnecessary meetings, exercise decisiveness, and let people positively surprise you. And when the next crisis arrives, cash-in on the reservoir of confidence you’ve already secured to move your teams forward.

4. Prioritize Health and Wellness to Improve Lives

Due to the polarization of public health messages, and misinformation, many people are unsure whether to take certain steps – such as vaccinations. This is the sort of leadership vacuum that leaders must step into — to demonstrate the value, safety, and necessity of caring for the health of every colleague. Mental health and other stress-related health issues multiplied during the lockdown and It’s necessary to invest in resources to assist employees in managing these very challenging circumstances. Employees who feel that their employers are genuinely focused on improving conditions for them from a wellness perspective will reward this support with hard work, loyalty, and enhanced problem-solving. 

5. Leverage Love

Empathy is something humans cannot get enough of — at work or at home. When leaders demonstrate empathy for the cause of stress, anxiety, and demotivation and try and minimize these issues, they can create a virtuous circle within their organizations. Empathy, importantly, is not passive. When taken in the form of the acronym L.U.V. which stands for Listening, Understanding, and Validating, it becomes a powerful connection tool to be leveraged with employees. During and after a crisis, it’s essential to listen to the stories of those most impacted; seek to understand and identify with their struggles; and then make them feel heard and validated by working to improve conditions. The more you apply this approach, the more insight you will gain into how to best serve and support your employees and colleagues. 
 
In 2021, the more leaders practice L.U.V., the more validated employees will feel, and the faster problems will be solved. Lead with love by using these five servant leadership success principles. It will result in overall improvements in health, wellness, engagement, and quality of work.

Like most professionals, you are wary of making decisions or offering advice when uncertainty is high, when you are likely to be wrong, and when the blame for failure will be yours. So, you err on the side of caution and pause to collect additional information in the search for clarity and certainty.

But the situation is complex, dynamic, and unique, so further information is unlikely to help, and you get stuck in analysis-paralysis. That means you’ve delayed the decision, which means you’ve allowed the status quo to continue, which means you’ve probably enabled worse outcomes than if you had acted and failed. Moreover, by not acting, you missed the opportunity to learn how the system responds to interventions, which is one of the critical tenets of learning-by-doing and what you need to do to make sense of the situation. 

But you know that if you rush into a decision, you may misinterpret it because you’ve seen research showing that experts don’t do well in ambiguous and uncertain situations: experts tend to fall victim to the confirmation bias that selectively identifies observations that fit their theories and past experiences. You’ve also read that people make poor decisions about unique situations when stressed, hurried, and have limited information. In such cases, most people instead invoke stereotypes, see patterns where none exist, and ignore anomalies. So you pause, ponder, and analyze.

And, importantly, you are aware of the sunk-cost fallacy: once a decision gets made, people tend to defend and repeat the same or similar decision, regardless of whether it is working, because to stop and try something different is to suggest that the time, resources, and people who supported previous efforts were wasted. So, if you commit to an action, you worry that changing direction will be difficult. Knowing this, you are cautious about making quick decisions, trapped in analysis-paralysis, and supporting the status quo, which you know is bad and what to avoid. The cycle repeats, and you are trapped in analysis paralysis. 

If you find yourself in such situations, then sensemaking provides a way forward. Sensemaking has two aspects: mindset and practice. 

Sensemaking as a mindset requires being flexible, taking time to consult others, broadening your perspective, and searching for the next decision without getting trapped in searching for the right decision. When things are highly uncertain, better decisions emerge when ideas are proposed, tested, rejected, and replaced with new ideas to retest, again and again, and again. That means you must be courageous enough to propose and make decisions while being humble enough to abandon what does not work, following the vital sensemaking principle of strong ideas weakly held. A sensemaking mindset encourages course corrections rather than rigidly following a planned path toward a predetermined solution. It promotes tolerance for results that differ from those that were predicted. It views failure as an opportunity to learn rather than an opportunity to cast blame.

Sensemaking as a practice can be equally powerful. When confronted with ambiguity and overwhelming complexity, sensemaking provides a place to engage the problem. Here are several tools you are probably familiar with:

– sSWOT: The Sustainability Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats analysis helps organizations take action on environmental challenges by exploring collaboration with internal departments, as well as suppliers, customers, or other stakeholders on strategies to create and sustain long-term value. Most importantly, it can help identify and communicate possible decisions.

– 3SO: Every sustainability situation has four dimensions: Stakeholders, Strategies, System, and Outcomes. Stakeholders use Strategies to change Systems to produce desired Outcomes. To quickly make sense of a situation, iteratively work through each of these four dimensions. What you learn from one dimension (i.e., stakeholders) can inform and help you more effectively see relevant information in another dimension (i.e., strategies the stakeholders are using and the outcomes they seek).

– Cynefin: The framework sorts the issues facing leaders into five contexts—simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder. It helps leaders diagnose situations, so they respond in contextually appropriate ways, make better decisions, and avoid the problems that arise when they otherwise respond with their preferred/default management style.

– PEST/PESTLE/STEEPLE: Helps analyze the Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Technological challenges you face. It helps understand the “big picture” forces of change you’re exposed to and take advantage of the opportunities that they present.

– Natural Step’s 5-Level Framework: Most every situation has five levels: (1) the System in which it is embedded, 2) what counts as success, 3) the strategies that produce success, 4) the concrete actions or tactics associated with those strategies, and 5) the tools those actions use such as life cycle analysis or ISO 14001.

– VISSI.  The Vision and goals describe what success looks like. The indicators help gauge progress towards those goals. The System maps the causes, effects, and leverage points where Innovation is needed to create change, and the Strategies produce the required change. 

The scale, complexity, and uncertainty of sustainable challenges can be daunting. Where do you start? Who should you talk to? What can you do? The familiar parable about blind men encountering their first elephant illustrates how easy it is to misinterpret complex situations and how easy it is to become stuck in analysis paralysis.

Six blind men encountered an elephant. Not knowing what it was, they decided to explore it. “It’s a pillar,” said the man who touched a leg. “No! It is a rope,” said the man who touched the tail. “It is a tree,” said the man who touched the trunk. “It is a hand fan,” said the man who touched the ear. “It a wall,” said the man who touched the belly. “How can that be. What I feel is a solid pipe,” said the man who touched the tusk. 

Because the six could not make sense of the situation, they could not respond to the risks and opportunities it presented. We can only hope they are well and did not extend the analysis of the elephant much further.