The Coast Guard is entering a new phase of pandemic operations. At the outset of covid-19 last spring we took drastic action to protect our workforce. Anyone that could work remotely was sent home and front line units limited operations to critical missions. The workplace climate felt like it does during a major incident or response: people were outside their comfort zone but powered through on adrenaline. Our people can handle a lot when we’re operating in that mode.
Now we’re entering a new phase. Operations are back to normal. Missions and training are at or even above normal levels. Most people are working in their normal places. Things appear to be almost normal. We’ve come down from the adrenaline rush of the initial covid-19 response.
Although it appears that things are better now than last spring, our team climates are at even greater risk. As we settle into the new normal, we could be settling in to divided unit climates that sap operational performance. Leaders need to care for individuals and inspire their teams.
Focus on every individual
As the new school year starts, anyone that cares for a child is entering uncharted waters. They had a little practice with facilitating home learning last spring, but now children are in higher grades or entirely new schools. Many kids are in a classroom only a few days a week, and some worry schools will retreat to all-remote learning before the fall is over. The uncertainty, the difficulty of co-educating kids at home, and the challenge of finding care for the days kids are at home are all ramping up the stress on working parents or families.
At the same time, ongoing Coast Guard operations mean we’re working harder than we did last spring. Working parents are in danger of work-life balance fatigue so great that it impacts their performance. The leadership response must be to support them. It will be more difficult now than it was last spring, as we cannot fall back to a mostly-remote work model again. Operations and operations support both need to happen and the entire crew needs to contribute. But the need to operate is exactly the reason why leaders must find ways to help working parents achieve balance. The Coast Guard cannot succeed if the with dependents part of the workforce is so worried about their families they cannot focus on their work. At the same time, those without dependents cannot be left to do all the work.
Leaders need to get to know each person’s life challenges and think creatively to help them. Leaders should avoid the mindset that work-life balance and devotion to duty are mutually exclusive. Generally, people want to do their jobs and care for themselves and their families. The best leadership strategy may be to ask them how they think they can make it work, and implement those ideas as best you can. Find smart accommodations that maximize both care for families and Coast Guard work.
Be mindful of the group
As difficult as managing individual work-life challenges will be, managing the overall team climate will be even harder.
People will watch how leaders accommodate others and judge those arrangements for fairness. Everyone will have their fairness radar rotating and radiating at full power. Any perceived inequity will anger individuals and divide people into groups: the perceived beneficiaries of leadership accommodations and the perceived victims of them. Unit climate is always harmed by division and operations will be harmed by the poor climate.
The challenge runs even deeper. Any time the balance between work and family becomes a charged issue, there is great risk gender stereotypes will bubble to the surface. Historic notions of gender roles will influence how one person may judge another’s choices. If a woman has a work accommodation to care for her family, she is more likely than a man to be judged as lacking devotion to duty. A man who receives a family accommodation might be given a pass or even celebrated for being a caring parent. A woman who chooses to keep working, leaving children in the care of others, may be judged as a poor parent because her action is in conflict with the stereotyped expectation for women to be family-oriented. No one will think twice about a man who leaves kids with a spouse or a babysitter every day.
At a time when the Coast Guard is working to improve women’s experience in the service, the pandemic puts them at risk of having a worse experience. We cannot afford to leave women behind. And we cannot allow division in our workforce. Operations and operations support demand one cohesive team effort.
The group dynamics are going to be a tremendous challenge. Many people may be feeling stress, anger, or disengagement. Parents will be upset they are forced to change their childcare situation to account for closed schools and can’t maintain a normal work schedule. Those without children may be upset because they’ll perceive they are shouldering more of the workload. And unseeable currents of gender stereotypes mean workplaces might be downright inhospitable for women. All of these conditions will hurt a unit’s ability to operate in the short term. In the long term, they will hurt the Coast Guard’s ability to retain our workforce.
Leaders need to be out front speaking up
The best way to guard your unit's climate is to get out in front of your people and talk about it. Don’t allow negative feelings to fester out of sight. Shine a light by having the courage to discuss things openly.
I think the first message is to acknowledge that things are not normal. Tell people you know that even as we conduct normal missions, life at home is still much different than it was a year ago. Leaders should share how their own lives are different to make it safe for others to speak up with their own work-life balance struggles.
The next message should be that the team’s success demands that everyone find their own best balance. Be honest that some people will have different accommodations, but talk about how those accommodations benefit the team by allowing everyone to make their best contribution. Your goal should be to inspire people to be accepting of their shipmates’ work-life balance accommodations. Point out that the purpose of accommodation is to allow people to focus on their duty in the best way, rather than do poor or unsafe work while distracted.
When it comes to gender stereotypes, leaders need to adopt the hit it hard, hit it fast mindset. Don’t wait for the women at your unit to tell you they’re having a bad experience. Right from the start, make it clear to the crew that you support every person’s best work-life plan, women or men, with or without children, and celebrate the work-life choices everyone makes. Defuse stereotype-driven anger by showing that stereotypes are hollow. If you become aware of anyone actually voicing negative comments about women, it’s time for them to have a chat with leadership.
Another responsibility for leaders is to make sure people working from home, or on alternate schedules, are included in the unit’s normal day to day activity to the greatest degree possible. It’s relatively easy to include remote workers on scheduled events like meetings or briefs. The real leadership work is filling in what remote workers miss most: the informal chats around the hallways or the conversation over lunch. There is no easy way to allow people to participate in those climate-enhancing, informal moments. I encourage you to touch base with remote workers frequently, formally and informally. But even more importantly, encourage remote workers’ peers to reach out as well. Everyone expects their boss to check in on them. It is far more meaningful if a coworker calls just to talk.
Devotion to family enables devotion to duty
There is no doubt that juggling mission accomplishment, individual care for families, and overall team climate is very difficult. But I hope this challenging time inspires us to change the way we think about work-life balance. Leaders should think and act creatively to find ways for their people to both care for their families and accomplish their missions. Great climates are born from the enjoyment people take from serving in the Coast Guard. They are first formed in the salt air and sunshine of an underway patrol, or the heat of the engine room, or a marine inspector’s walk up the brow. They are reinforced when people go home at the end of the day and share their positive experiences with friends or family. The combination of rewarding work and peace at home is the best driver of good climate. Leaders should not be satisfied to deliver their people only one or the other. Aim for both because that is what our people deserve.