As leaders during a crisis, it has never been more important to connect emotionally with our people and co-workers. If we cannot help them to understand their own reactions and needs, we cannot help them to navigate through. Although we might not be able to fix everything, we can help ourselves and others to make things a little better.

From my work with leaders over the years, many find making emotional connection difficult. They have drawn a mental (and emotional) line for themselves demarcating what is “appropriate” at work. In this work, I have noticed that understanding the science of emotion can help to sign-post us to something that feels appropriate and supportive.

Back in the 90s, I was working in a global change team, implementing a huge system change across all three regions of the corporation. During the programme, we had a travel ban. Faced with the need to collaborate across 23 countries to develop, commission and train the users of the system, we turned to technology.
I won’t lie, it was more difficult and our ideas didn’t always work, but we did deliver on time.
Here is what I learnt about designing and running virtual workshops;

Over-night you have become a leader of a virtual team! How do you do that? Well first of all;
• Don’t panic and admit to the team that you are all learning together – take the pressure off.
• Get your own home-working plan together (See my blog on working from home here).
• Learn from others who have done it before.
• Get support – set up a small group of colleagues on the same learning curve with a space to connect and share (social media or video conference).

There is a big difference between working from home on the odd day, and working from home on a semi-permanent basis. Having had a home office for over 15 years, I remember it took me some time to figure out how to make it work well. Here are some of the things I learnt about the physical space, routine, social and motivation aspects of working from home. I hope these might help you find your home-working way more smoothly;

This is my homage to the stand-out bosses I have worked with over my many years' of leadership development and coaching. These extra-ordinarily talented people have taugh me much about what it takes to be a great boss.

“Thank You Driver”

In my home city of Edinburgh, we have the friendliest, most helpful bus drivers I have experienced. This is pretty important in a city that is always full of visitors and tourists. It wasn’t always the case though. So what changed to make our drivers so great?