4 dimensions of thinking to lead your team through crisis

Dealing with crises is a responsibility of a leader

How a leader chooses to handle challenging times and crises can make or break the future of a company.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 41% of businesses in Australia experienced crises in 2022.?

Challenging times are inevitable. Yet, many leaders are not equipped with the essential knowledge and skills to lead their teams in times of crisis.

How to lead through a crisis

So how can you be the guidepost for confidence, calmness, and clarity in tough times?

One of the thinking models that has helped many leaders handle testing times is the Critical Alignment Model.

It’s a four-dimensional thinking tool developed by Remi Pearson.?

It'll help you gain clarity about what's missing or what's being done poorly.

It gives you a blueprint of the best practices for your company and the best thinking patterns for growth and high performance.?

It's about seeing and thinking about every situation through for special dimensions:

• Environment - to create value and understand the WHY, the purpose of the work that you and your team do
• Structure - to set up systems/structure for your team's work in order to support great outcomes
• Implementation - to act and work on specific tasks/action
• People - to acknowledge that every member of your team is important and understand how they contribute to the outcomes

Through the lenses of these four dimensions, you'll understand what you need to consider when making decisions, planning, taking action, and achieving results.

The application of the Critical Alignment Model in leadership?

In many places, employees are trained to solely focus on the Implementation dimension, meaning they know what they need to do and they work on their specific tasks.

The downside of this is employees do things as they are told without questioning the meanings behind their work.?

And when team members don’t understand the importance of what they do, it cannot result in high performance and sustainability. In fact, it can quickly lead to burnout and turnover.?

True leaders, therefore, need to think about three other dimensions in addition to “implementation” to create the best outcomes.?

Start with the Environment dimension.

It means to create an ideal environment where everyone understands why they do what they do.

You can build this environment by having conversations to let everyone know about the values of their work and how those can take your organisation to a next level of success.?

Next, think about the Structure dimension. Here, you pay attention to set up your team in ways that can support the ideal environment.?

You can encourage people from different departments to work together more often so that they understand one another’s roles and how your organisation functions as a whole.?

And lastly, the People dimension.

You should understand the parts that your people play.?

Without them, there is no team. And without your team, there is no success.

It is important that you spend time getting to know your team on a deeper level and constantly show them that you respect and appreciate their hard work.?