Success in business is normally an energizer, but everything changed in this era of pandemic fatigue, writes Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg
The pandemic has created winners and losers. For obvious reasons, we tend to give attention to the wellbeing of those who have suffered the hard blows and think about how we can help them to recover.
But speaking with leaders from more than 25 global companies who have seen their businesses flourish and bloom reveals a striking pattern: leaders at winning companies report having deeply mixed emotions, feeling just as exhausted as their more unfortunate peers, and on top of that being puzzled by their reactions to their own flourishing during a period of great uncertainty.
The usual psychological laws of winning seem to have been disrupted. Why are winning leaders not feeling grateful, accomplished and fired up right now?
First, there is survivors’ guilt: many leaders have a nagging feeling that their success is not earned, but endowed on them by random luck, and has come at the expense of other, less fortunate companies. Think of the massive shift in private consumption from travel and eating out to nesting, comfort eating and homemaking. If you happen to be in the business of selling home fitness equipment, you have not become a 25% better performer overnight. You just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the winds changed – and you and you team know it.
Second, they are suffering from pandemic fatigue by association. Normally, success works like an energizer: winning triggers celebrations, creates economic surplus, stokes confidence and accelerates forward momentum for businesses and teams. But even successful leaders are subject to the now familiar scourge of pandemic fatigue, from Zoom exhaustion to more existential feelings of isolation and disconnection. It’s hard to feel that collective rush via Zoom, and it is even harder to find personal energy when your days lack variation and the gloom of the pandemic enters your life through the cracks. The “success breeds success” link seems to broken.
Third, they are seeing the shadow of the future: most companies set targets and measure and reward performance against last year. It is a behavior so entrenched in management systems and processes that it has become the framework for psychological self-evaluation even when it is obviously meaningless (2020 may be the worst baseline year in recent corporate history). Nevertheless, leaders fail to consider alternative ways of setting targets and rewarding performance. Psychologically, this creates disillusion, disenfranchisement, and distrust in leaders.
Leading a pandemic winner through the post-pandemic backlash will require a bit of counterintuitive adjustment to your mindset and stewardship.
For some, demand drove a sense of purpose and engagement; but even in that frenzy, there was a need to maintain relationships.