Corona fears of employees: How to respond?

The life worlds of company employees are different, as are their biographically determined experiences and value systems. This is why they react very differently emotionally to the same events. This is particularly evident in exceptional situations such as the current Corona crisis. While some people feared the end of their lives in the past few weeks, partly because of the images from Italian hospitals, others enjoyed the lockdown-related time off and the nice weather and thought: This catastrophe, too, will pass.

The mood of the employees is very different

Managers at many companies were mostly confronted with these extremes of emotion only to a limited extent in the period following the shutdown, as their employees were often on reduced working hours or working from home offices. But now many employees are returning to their "normal" workplaces at the company - usually in a very different frame of mind. While some are happy about this, others have very mixed feelings - for example,

• because they are afraid of infection in the workplace or
• because at home are their children, whose schools are still closed, or
• because they simply ask themselves: What will happen next in our company? What changes are coming for me/us?

And not infrequently, this different perception and feeling will also lead to tensions within the workforce. For example, HR managers are already reporting that employees at their companies are debating quite controversially about the extent to which working from home should still be possible in the post-Corona period.

Employees often do not show their fears

Managers must be prepared for such debates; they must also be prepared for the fact that their employees will react more sensitively emotionally after the lockdown than they did in the pre-Corona era, even if they do not show their feelings directly, because employees usually know from experience that if a person in a company shows feelings such as fears and is also emotionally committed to a cause, this is often interpreted as weakness by their interlocutors. And not infrequently, they are even muzzled with statements such as

• "Now keep it businesslike." Or:
• "Now don't go painting the devil on the wall."

So the fact that an employee shows feelings is used as a legitimization for not addressing his or her concerns seriously. And does a person regularly show feelings? Then they are quickly pigeonholed:

• "Oh, that Müller woman, she's quick to react hysterically." Or:
• "Oh that Huber, he makes a mountain out of every molehill."

That's why employees usually try to show little emotional involvement in the workplace. Instead, they hide their feelings behind seemingly rational arguments. As a result, companies often endlessly discuss trivial matters. And do the people in question not achieve their goals with their seemingly rational argumentation? Then they often try to do so in a roundabout way - for example, by deliberately forgetting or misinterpreting resolutions and tasks.

This danger is even greater in the current situation, because not only is there a great deal of uncertainty in society as to what will happen next, but the decision-makers in the companies do not know either. They can only operate on sight, so to speak; accordingly, they frequently have to change their decisions and plans. This in turn fuels the fears and often also the resentment of employees, which is why they react more "emotionally" than usual.

Sense for situations and constellations

The fears or, more generally, emotions of their employees - which conceal individual desires and values, interests and experiences - are something managers must try to address as far as possible,

• to recognize,
• evaluate correctly and
• respond to them in a way that makes the people concerned feel taken seriously.

In addition to antennae for the feelings of other people, this requires a keen sense of situations and constellations - in order to avoid misjudgements. This is not easy, because emotions and personal interests are often articulated in a veiled way in the corporate context, and an employee's statement "That won't do," for example, can mean two things:

• "This does not work for technical reasons" and
• "I personally do not want this".

Managers often first have to determine what is true. Because this is not always easy, managers should actually be grateful to all employees who openly show their emotions, because: This makes it easier for them to design workable solutions.

Reflect on one's own value system and behavior

In the coming weeks and months, it will be important for managers - precisely because they themselves are under enormous pressure to make decisions and take action - to reflect regularly:

• What is my value system and what characterizes my life and work situation? And:
• How do they differ from my respective counterpart?

Otherwise, there is a great risk that they themselves will react irrationally to their counterpart's behavior or emotional expressions that irritate them, or, for example, with killer phrases such as "Now don't get so upset" or "Now leave the church in the village. Such statements hurt the other person. Ultimately, they destroy what managers want from their employees:

• Identification with their task as well as the company and
• the willingness to commit to this.

Exploring the roots of emotions

In such a situation, it makes more sense to first signal to the employee that you have noticed his or her emotionality - for example, with a statement such as "I can see that this topic is on your mind." Or, "I'm glad you're so committed to ...."

Then, as a manager, you should try to get a picture of why the employee reacts the way he does in order to avoid jumping to conclusions. For example, suppose an employee is reluctant to take on a certain task involving customer contact. This could also be because he is afraid of contracting Corona - also because a person with pre-damaged lungs lives in his household. In this case, you as a manager should react differently than if an employee simply doesn't want to do a necessary task.

Demonstrate emotional intelligence as a leader

In the coming weeks and months, it is clear that executives will face many new challenges, some of which will require them to take on completely new or unfamiliar roles. However, they can also prove in them the extent to which they also have the emotional intelligence that characterizes a mature leader.

To the author:
Joachim Simon, Braunschweig, is an executive trainer and coach. With the online program "Egoleading," which he designed, (future) managers can train the skills they need to lead people and corporate units in the digital age (www.joachimsimon.info).