So, your top producer, Rob, has just informed you that his father has late-stage pancreatic cancer and he is going to need to move to Omaha (from the Bay Area) to look after his Dad in his final weeks. Rob needs to work remotely, but he really cannot say what things will look like until he gets there and assesses the situation and meets with Hospice Care, etc.

Last year, Maria, the sales manager for your largest region, returned from maternity leave with the intention of resuming her full travel schedule; however, the nanny she had hired six months in advance suddenly quit. Now Maria needs some flexibility while things get sorted on the home front.

It’s clear that flexibility and compassion are needed, and that is part of the deal as a leader, now more than ever. But how is a leader supposed to deliver results and manage their own workload while they also support members of their work community who are in need or having a personal crisis?

First off, I empathize with the inherent difficulties of leadership, which are only amplified when personal challenges arise for those you depend on. While tough, these situations are not insurmountable. With creativity, engagement, and by leveraging the influence of your role, you can navigate these complexities and still achieve desired results.

To effectively support their direct reports, leaders can consider the following tips and perspectives:

Don’t confuse caregiving with personal illness.

Sometimes internal policy-makers accidentally conflate personal illness with caregiving, but the distinction is very important.

For example: I once had a direct report who, at age 31, was diagnosed with a Brain Stem Glioblastoma. He went from having a headache to being rushed into emergency brain surgery (which failed), debilitating treatment and a major life and death crisis. The only things I could really do for him was to put him on medical leave, help him keep his health insurance info up to date, try to support his family with small kindnesses, and very unfortunately, attend his funeral only months after diagnosis. 

In the case of personal illness, work (and profit) must take a back seat, and humanity must rule your actions while the person heals or doesn’t.

Conversely, when someone on your team is caring for someone else, the idea is that work can still happen, and based on the type of work and the flexibility you can arrange with them, work can still happen quite well, although perhaps differently. For them, trying to hide their need for a slightly different way of working and carry on as if nothing is happening can put so much pressure on the person that it could kill productivity and performance.

If your culture is one of directness and honesty, they can tell you what they need, and you can tell them what you need—even if it does look different for a while. 

And let’s face it, most people need the income, and even the distraction that comes from work, so supporting them is a good idea for everyone. 

Be flexible in your flexibility.

Someone who needs to leave each day at 3:00 p.m. to relieve the nanny and agrees to work remotely after 6:00 p.m. each night needs something different than the person who needs to relocate temporarily but can work full-time remotely if you can arrange it for them to do so.

I had the great honor of being a guest caller on The Oprah Podcast, where Oprah interviewed Emma Heming Willis, the wife of Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis and my husband have a different version of the same dementia. Bruce has the Aphasia version of Frontotemporal Dementia, and my husband has the Behavioral Variant. 

Bruce can no longer speak and has physical disabilities that come with his condition. Kevin has yet to show physical symptoms, but his memory is very affected, and his condition comes with a long list of awkward behavioral changes. For example: if there were a house fire, Bruce might not be able to get out in time unassisted; Kevin, with his new symptom of being extremely safety-oriented and nosey, could get out and would probably fireman-carry the whole neighborhood to safety—whether they wanted help or not. Clearly, if Emma and I worked at the same company, a blanket policy for caregiving would not be nearly as helpful to either of us as a plan that was flexible enough to meet our changing needs and still allow us to get our work completed. 

Protect others on the team who do not have a caregiver crisis.

This sounds like a weird point, but as you navigate this situation, be sure to keep the others on the team in mind and make sure your policies do not accidentally favor those with children or other caregiving needs. 

For example: One of my clients works for a fortune 100 company. She’s in high level leadership. One of her peers admitted that the maternity benefits at that company were so generous that she was planning to take full advantage of it and “have as many kids as humanly possible while she still worked there.” She indeed had three children in five years and took a six-month maternity leave each time, returning part time for three additional months after each leave. 

First off, I applaud any company for looking out for families. A generous and flexible maternity leave program is a good thing, and there is a ton of research to support this being smart on the part of companies (here’s one piece of data): 

A 2020 study in the Journal of Management found no negative profitability effects for firms offering more generous parental leave—and some saw improved performance metrics over time.

The problem is that my client, a never-going-to-have-kids person, had to cover for her colleague each and every time. As a high-level leader, she already had much to do, and this extra work began to cause deep resentment. As it should. The fault here is with the company, I am sorry to say. The workload should have been distributed among multiple individuals, not just one. This could have involved a combination of reducing the overall workload, reassigning specific tasks, and potentially hiring temporary staff to cover the other leader’s maternity leave. Otherwise, you risk damaging your culture accidentally by creating resentment in those being asked to support others who need and deserve flexibility or accommodation. 

Think creatively and eliminate obstacles.

The COVID crisis was many things, but one really good thing that came from it is that the world figured out how to work differently. “Work” was completely turned on its head as we learned to pivot and pivot and pivot again. That same mindset can be very helpful as a leader.

One idea is to ask ChatGPT or your company AI what questions a leader should ask a person who needs flexibility at that particular stage of life. Then, schedule some time with the person and see if solutions can be tested. 

We do live in a time of more blurred lines between home and work, personal and professional. Do some people take advantage? Sure. Are there people who expect work to accommodate their every preference and personal whim? Yes. Are there times you wish everyone could just focus and stop having personal issues? Of course. But in my humble opinion, even with a few advantage-takers, people are worth the investment of a little extra flexibility when they are in a time of need. If leaders can be kind and clear and try to break down barriers so that they can accommodate, it usually pays off in productivity and loyalty. Most people are very grateful when a rule is bent for them or a compassionate decision is made in their favor. This is one of the ways we build a long-term, successful team.