It seems that most thought leadership agrees that the pandemic altered power dynamics within the office, and successful companies reduced power differentials between individual contributors and executive leadership. This whitepaper examines the forces that changed power differentials in the workforce.
Dane’s Conversation with Susanne: An Impetus
In this week’s Future of Teamwork episode, Dane spoke with Susanne Conrad of Lightyear Leadership. During that conversation, Susanne shared a thought-provoking anecdote that made me wonder, “How else has COVID shifted power dynamics within the workforce?”
What Happened to Power Dynamics at the Office?
Research and thought leadership on the effect of COVID on power dynamics in the office seems varied and somewhat vague. We know things changed, but we aren’t quite sure what changed and what caused those changes. This makes sense as the pandemic continues to unfold, and we are still reflecting on the effects of the pandemic. Consideration of several concepts might help us better understand the workforce’s altered and diminished power dynamics.
We’re All in This Together
Noted sociologist Kai Erickson (2012) argues that social norms are disrupted when a natural disaster or a major crisis occurs. The group’s primary purpose is to respond to the catastrophe, and as a result, social norms and hierarchies are disrupted. In 2020, there was a new emphasis for executives and company leaders to realize: we are all in this together. While a company’s survival is always dependent upon the whole, this was laid bare during 2020 when most industries had widespread economic uncertainty. It was an all-hands-on-deck crisis and executive leadership had to flatten its hierarchical structure to emphasize group cohesion. We all had to be in this together.
While researching this piece, I remembered that in 2020 my company sent out a weekly photo collage of how a fellow employee was, literally and figuratively, surviving COVID in an attempt to connect us all. Interestingly, part of the copy reads:
Remember That We Are All In This Together It Is Important To Stay Connected
The economic and general uncertainty of COVID created an environment conducive to collapsing traditional power dynamics within the office.
The Dismantling of the Traditional Office Space
The relationship between office space and power is myriad because, as Walker (2020) points out, the office is an ecology reduced to a finite amount of square footage. There is only so much space available and it is allocated according to the social hierarchy – the head of the table in the boardroom or the large corner office with a view. This makes power differentials easily visible throughout the office and its many sacred spaces (Walker 2020).
For example, a friend of mine, who isn’t an executive, recently sat in on her first executive leadership meeting and the CEO of her company offered her a chair. Unsure of where to sit moving forward, she sat in that chair for every executive meeting afterward, arriving well in advance to ensure she had that chair. Her reasoning? She didn’t want to offend any executive leaders by taking “their seat,” and this seat had been offered to her.*
Zoom disrupted all of this.
According to Martinez and Frauenheim (2021), COVID led to more executives wanting employee feedback. Due to the inability to walk around the office, executives were called to cast a broader network to get feedback. As a result, more people were asked to voice their opinion via Zoom. On Zoom, all boxes are the same size, there are no signals of status, and we are all given the same seat at the table. You can’t “steal” an executive’s seat by sitting in the wrong place.
Two other factors are also at play. First, working from home and on Zoom allows individuals who are reluctant to speak up to feel more comfortable doing so. Second, working from home and on Zoom dismantles the old office culture and reduces the emphasis on longstanding and rigid behavior models (Bouyoukos 2021). Individuals can better and more confidently display their authentic selves, creating stronger bonds and allowing information to flow more freely (Bouyoukos 2021). This reduces a company culture of “power over” and increases a company culture of “power with.”
The Power of Emotion and Empathy
According to SMITHGROUP (2020), COVID emphasized the power of six “e” words. To explore power dynamics, I want to focus on two of those “e” words: emotion and empathy. Traditional workforce norms have dictated that proper workforce behavior centers around traditionally “masculine” behaviors – being unemotional and rational at all times and keeping work separate from the personal. The business world’s widespread deployment of the oft-uttered phrase, “It’s not personal, it’s just business,” exemplifies this propriety.
COVID upended all of this.
Undoubtedly, not all businesses were heavily focused on being rational and unemotional before the pandemic. And many companies were purposefully drifting away from such a traditionally masculine approach. But COVID hastened these changes.
Suddenly, the lines between our private lives and our office lives were blurred. While we were maintaining our social distances, professional distances were reduced as “supervisors and teammates of all tenures have stepped in (some asked, some on their own accord) to help colleagues address emotions, relieve stress, overcome challenges and defuse fears (SMITHGROUP 2020).” Since we were all in this together and experiencing the same fears and tragedies, we had to allow a place for emotions and provide empathy toward one another.
In learning to display emotions with one another, we also became more empathetic with one another. Not only were our professional lives upended, but our personal ones were too. For example, the HUDDL3 Strategy and Innovation department added a “Balance and Health” section to their Week-In-Sync Template where individuals could inform their supervisors how they were doing. They made sure it was the first item on the Week-In-Sync. Why? Because they wanted to make it the one thing they knew would be covered in the meeting.
We altered traditional power dynamics by allowing a place for emotions and becoming empathetic with one another. Maintaining social hierarchies and professional distance is hard when we get to know one another authentically and understand the very real and familiar challenges others face. Surviving COVID required the sharing of emotions and being empathetic with one another, which made maintaining traditional power dynamics nearly impossible.
Conclusion
We are still amid the pandemic and constructing our response to COVID. However, as stated earlier, most thought leadership agrees that the pandemic altered power dynamics within the office, and successful companies reduced power differentials between individual contributors and executive leadership. When we reflect upon why power differentials shifted during COVID, the reasons explored above, e.g., the realization that we are all indeed in this together, the changing dynamics of space, and the power of emotion and empathy, will help explain what exactly happened in our response to COVID.
If you haven’t had a chance, you can listen to Dane’s conversation with Susanne here:
*This does imply that their executive leadership emphasizes hierarchical relationships. Rather it is meant to suggest the opposite. She felt the executive leadership was incredibly welcoming in those meetings and made a point to include her in the discussion. However, she couldn’t stop asking herself, “spatially, where do I belong in this room?”
References
Bouyoukos, Jenn. “How Covid-19 Is Crushing The Corporate Hierarchy.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2021/03/11/how-covid-19-is-crushing-the-corporate-hierarchy/?sh=20347aeb2530
Erickson, Kai. 2012. Everything In Its Path. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Martinez, Lorena and Ed Frauenheim. 2021. “COVID-19 Reveals Why Flat Organizations Thrive: Steal Their Secrets.” https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/covid-19-puts-a-spotlight-on-why-flat-organizations-thrive
SMITHGROUP. 2020. “COVID-19 AND THE WORKPLACE: EXPLORING THE POWER OF “E” WITHIN OUR ORGANIZATIONS.” https://www.smithgroup.com/perspectives/2020/covid-19-and-the-workplace-exploring-the-power-of-e-within-our-organizations
Walker, Darian. 2020. “How COVID-19 Is Shaping Democracy In The Workplace” https://www.workdesign.com/2020/09/how-covid-19-is-shaping-democracy-in-the-workplace/