3 Strategies to Help Your Team Embrace a Realistic But Positive Outlook in Tough Times

When you’re in a stressful situation, there’s nothing more frustrating than hearing that you should just, “Be Positive.” And yet, it’s hard to ignore the tangible benefits of approaching a negative situation with a positive attitude, especially when you’re in a position of leadership within a company. In fact, positivity during tough times is a notable leadership trait – resilience, grit, and optimism are all characteristics of some of the most successful leaders of our time. And there’s no doubt that that will prove true of our current situation as we weather the COVID-19 pandemic. But just because positive thinking is a good idea doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, and we don’t want you to have to fake it. So today we want to share three effective and practical strategies you can deploy to help your team embrace a realistic but positive outlook during this stressful time: 1. Quarantine the news It’s ironic that COVID-19 has us practicing social isolation. Because one of the most productive things you can do to lower your stress and gain access to a positive mindset is control how you’re talking about the pandemic in the workplace – to quarantine talk about the quarantine. To be clear, it’s essential to stay alert of the changing facts of the situation through reputable organizations like the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum and to allow employees to ask questions about what your company is doing to prioritize everyone’s safety. But many companies are finding “information burnout” to be another symptom of coronavirus, and they’re taking steps like the following to minimize it:

• Asking employees to only share information from official sources, avoiding viral articles on news, social media, or user-generated sites
• Asking employees to only share coronavirus-related content on specific channels, such as a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel developed just for this topic
• Limiting the use of company email lists to timely and formal announcements rather than covering the situation as it develops
• Building a stand alone site or webpage for corporate updates on the topic

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2. Seek reassurance from history We’ve all heard the saying, “History repeats itself,” right? Nowhere is this more true than in cycles of the economy, where we experience ups and downs every few decades. While the current economic situation is having a negative impact on many companies, teams, and individuals, it’s worth remembering that we’ve navigated tough times before – such as the 2008 economic recession in America – and come out the other side. In fact, we may come out the other side of this relatively quickly, according to Glassdoor economist Dr. Andrew Chamberlain: “Past research on pandemics suggests we’re likely to see a U.S. recession that’s shorter-lived than the Great Recession, and with a much faster recovery — a so-called ‘V-shaped’ recovery. Economies tend to snap back quickly once pandemics end.” On your next break, take a minute to research the history of your chosen field or industry. It’s highly likely this is just one of the many highs and lows of the century, which, with enough patience, you can weather the way your role models did. At the very least, assure yourself that we have new and unique tools, technologies, and resources available to us today that can help us navigate this uncertain time better than any time in the past – and that’s something to be positive about.

Keep Reading: A Coronavirus Recession? What Job Seekers and Employers Can Expect

3. Identify and embrace your team’s limitations A significant source of stress and negative thinking in the workplace right now comes from your employee’s actual working environments. Practically overnight, onsite employees have had to relocate into home offices where they may be overwhelmed by a spouse, children, or any number of distractions – all while avoiding contracting coronavirus themselves. As a result, you may be seeing your team’s output temporarily or permanently halved – or more. Instead of striving to maintain the levels of performance you achieved in the office, it’s important to your stress level and positive outlook that you adjust your expectations. This is your new reality – you and your team members are stretched thin right now, with different levels of availability, and the only thing that can be adjusted here is how you choose to approach your work. You need to go back to the basics, assess your absolute minimum priorities, and redistribute work accordingly. Then, as your team gets used to the new situation and works out more productive rhythms and home situations, you can begin to scale your performance and aim for more. But until then, high expectations and low performance is a recipe for ongoing headaches. Staying Calm Despite Coronavirus Are you having a hard time maintaining a positive attitude in today’s stressful work environment? We hope these three strategies can help you pause, reassess, and find a productive way forward despite the stress.

Learn More Glassdoor’s COVID-19 Resources