How to be a manager, not a therapist

The writer is a leadership consultant and author of ‘All That We Are: Uncovering the Hidden Truths behind our Behaviour at Work’

The past two years have led many of us to re-evaluate our lives and work. The implicit expectations and beliefs we have about the workplace — our psychological contract — has changed. Managers need to be aware of exactly what staff now expect in terms of personal and professional support, as well as how to fulfil those needs (where it’s reasonable or feasible to do so) without burning out or becoming “therapists” for their teams.

It’s important to note that this is a cross-generational change. “Talking about personal needs, values and priorities was seen as the preserve of the millennial generation before, but is now firmly on all employees’ agendas,” says Danielle Lodge, head of commercial legal at ISS, a facilities management company. She notes that managers at ISS are now spending more time listening to staff’s personal wants and needs.

The return to workplaces and something like a “new normal” means leaders now have to balance staff’s needs with the nature of the organisation’s work and the productivity expected from its employees. If the increased emotional awareness of the past two years is built on, re-entry will be an opportunity to improve workplaces and working practices.

Taking account of psychological needs and easing the return to in-person work first requires an understanding of the people on the team, and how they behave and live, both in and out of work. “Lockdown knocked down the barriers between professional and private selves,” says Charlie King, managing director of the Little, Brown Book Group in the UK. As a result, he says, employees saw company leaders as more accessible and human.

At Little, Brown and its parent company the publisher Hachette UK — as happened in many workplaces that had been entirely office-based — hierarchical boundaries loosened during the pandemic and interactions between staff at different levels became more personal. King says that this led to improved trust, collaboration, and a culture of collective learning, and he hopes this will help individuals and the company adapt to future change.

I have been supporting senior leaders with managing the return to the office as part of my consultancy work. One approach is first to reflect on our own feelings about the pandemic. The experience of the past two years and the ongoing uncertainty affects us all. While individual circumstances differed considerably, none of us were immune from rising anxiety due to fear of death, illness, isolation and loss: of people, of the illusion of invulnerability and of our way of life.

The pandemic may also have evoked unconscious anxieties from our previous experiences caused, for example, from serious illness, or the death of a parent or sibling. Anxiety and a sense of helplessness may also have recurred if our parents could not give us the attention we needed to feel psychologically safe — perhaps because they worked long hours, struggled to make ends meet, had mental or physical health issues, or their relationship was breaking down.

This combination of present and past anxieties in our own lives will be the same for our teams. The wide variety of individual responses to the pandemic means that you may find some people’s attitudes to re-entry surprising, worrying or even infuriating.

Managers should prepare themselves for more extreme displays of emotion than was common in most workplaces before 2020. Many people will be volatile, easily irritated, bad tempered or upset. Under pressure, people unwittingly revert to the ways we learnt to deal with anxiety and insecurity as children. This could cause previously independent and confident individuals and teams to become dependent and needy. Others may avoid their bosses and colleagues.

To ease the transition back to the office, managers need to recognise and contain the anxiety behind these behaviours. That means tolerating a few outbursts of temper and distress, offering additional time and reassurance for those teams and individuals who have lost confidence, and encouraging reluctant employees to gradually increase in-person contact.

Rather than feeling you have to act, or give false reassurance, managers just need to listen

As a leader, you must also judge when it is time to be firm. Managers are not therapists, and there will come a point when you must protect the work of the organisation. You might, for instance, tell a staff member that they need to draw a line under temper outbursts or insist on their attendance in-person. Back this up with support and kindness.

For many people, working from home evoked anxiety about belonging and heightened feelings of inclusion or exclusion. Managers should look out for possible fractures resulting from how groups formed over the past two years. You will need to ensure that the mix of staff coming into the office on different days and the membership of project teams helps to repair any divisions. And it’s important to be on your guard to shield the team from implosions because of polarising debates (those wanting to be in or out of the office; those in favour or against masks and vaccines). 

For all these challenges, managers need to be aware that talking and expressing feelings is a vital way of containing anxiety. Your organisation may need to prioritise managers’ time to hear employees — individually and in teams — express their experience of re-entry. On top of that, staff may now be feeling anxious, angry or powerless in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rather than feeling you have to act, or give false reassurance, managers just need to listen.

This moment of re-entry, as King at Little, Brown says, is “a complicated time but also a time of opportunity”. If managers continue to increase care and compassion towards staff, pay closer attention to psychology and the changing psychological contract, the return to the office could be a time of improved management and bring about much needed change to our workplaces and working lives.