We hope this finds you, your family, and your colleagues well in this challenging time.

Many of the leaders and teams we coach tell us they are struggling to adapt their leadership style during the pandemic. They are trying to keep the business running effectively and to engage and support their colleagues– all while working virtually. It’s a tall order.

We’ve curated and want to share a few resources that our clients are finding really helpful right now:

• Good leadership has never been more crucial than it is today. Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey write about what good leadership looks like right now in this recent HBR article.
• If you are distracted, short-tempered and less able to concentrate lately, you’re not alone. Yale University’s short podcast on the neuroscience of how stress affects our brains is particularly relevant right now and helps us understand why we are feeling this way, and what we can do to feel better and be more effective.
• Video calls are leaving many of us feeling uneasy, untrusting, and tired, according to the research offered in a recent New York Times article that covers the science behind these reactions (and when an old-fashioned phone call will be more effective and productive!).
• The pandemic is also giving rise to a broad range of mental health challenges, from questions about how to explain the pandemic to children and aging parents, to how we can manage our stress, get enough sleep, cope with anxiety and depression, and take care of ourselves and our families. McLean Hospital, the #1 psychiatric hospital in the US according to US News & World Report, is offering a rich assortment of complimentary webinars on dealing with the mental health consequences of COVID-19. Over 10,000 viewers have attended the first few webinars.

We have also developed some new services to support leaders and teams and help them become more effective in this high stakes period of change:

• Our Coaching Approach for Leaders program is now available virtually. We are seeing tremendous interest in teaching and building coaching skills in leaders so they can lead more effectively in this new world.
• All of our workshops (Navigating Change and Transition, Leading Teams, Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback, How to Be a Great Teammate, Navigating Conflict and Challenging Conversations, Creating a Culture of Trust, etc.) are now available as interactive virtual learning sessions.
• Our new Leader Forum for Women brings together a small group of women leaders from different companies to build relationships, learn from each other, work on leadership challenges, hear best practices, and support one another — all virtually.
• In addition to our traditional executive coaching, we are now also offering smaller coaching engagements for groups of leaders, comprised of just 5-10 hours of coaching per leader. Our clients are finding this helpful when they have multiple leaders who would benefit from the reflection, development, and growth they get from coaching, and yet full scope executive coaching engagements would be time or cost prohibitive.

Please contact us if you’d like to learn more.