Capacity Building Will Guide You and Your Team Through A Crisis - Here Are The Four Elements

This article is part of my LinkedIn Newsletter series. Subscribe above and also join 200,000+ other leaders who receive my weekly leadership note.

We learn the most about leadership by observing leaders in times of crisis. Recently we’ve seen many examples of this as business and civic leaders respond to the unprecedented threat of COVID-19.

We all know what great leadership looks like during adversity, and we can see many shared qualities in the leaders who are excelling now. They are constantly taking accountability for the crisis and focusing on helping others, rather than assigning blame. They are resilient in the face of sleepless nights and long hours. They have a clear sense of purpose and communicate complex information with clarity and precision.

Many leaders are thriving and rising to the occasion while others are struggling and operating from fear. Our most effective leaders have prepared themselves for this moment by building their capacity, and are now inspiring their teams to follow their example.

Capacity building is the method by which we seek, acquire and develop the skills and abilities to consistently perform at a higher level in pursuit of our innate potential. It is an incremental process of intentional improvement in four areas: spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional capacity.

Capacity building isn't just about improving ourselves. When leaders build their capacity, they inspire the people they lead to do the same. When these leaders take charge in a crisis, they compel others to come together and support each other, even if it means sacrificing for the greater good.

Capacity building is crucial to crisis leadership—each of the four elements plays a crucial role in thriving under adversity. Here’s how:

Spiritual Capacity – Clarify what matters most.

There are two types of leaders in a crisis. One constantly flails to address a different challenge every day, and tends to blame others when things go wrong. The other has a clear purpose and strategy, communicates it well to others, and keeps the team focused and unified.

Spiritual capacity is about understanding who you are, what you want most and the standards you want to live by each day—it’s best defined as your purpose and core values. While these standards often apply to a long-term orientation, developing your spiritual capacity will allow you to clarify a short-term purpose that will keep you and your team focused during a challenging time.

For example, as our company navigates the public-health and economic challenges of COVID-19, I’ve clarified my short-term purpose: to help keep as many people employed as possible through our work at Acceleration Partners. It’s what literally gets me out of bed each day and it’s a purpose our team has rallied around. I’ve been inspired to see them brainstorm a year’s worth of innovations in just a few weeks to help our clients and each other to keep working.

When you’re laser-focused in a crisis, the people you lead will emulate that commitment. Everybody will raise their game as a result.

Intellectual Capacity – Lead by learning

Intellectual capacity is about how you improve your ability to think, learn, plan and execute with discipline. It’s obvious why this helps in a crisis—if you’ve spent years improving your knowledge and discipline, you’ll be able to get more done and make faster decisions in situations where quick action makes all the difference.

However, intellectual capacity isn’t just about what you know—it’s about recognizing what you don’t know and leaning on experts to supplement your knowledge. Leaders who think they know everything will inevitably lead people in the wrong direction, especially in a complicated crisis such as COVID-19.

What I’ve seen personally is many CEOs turning to peer mentoring groups and mastermind organizations to share what is working in responding to COVID-19, and what is not. Many members of this generation of business leaders benefitted by seeking the wisdom of people who survived the 2008 recession and applying those lessons quickly. Leaders who cannot learn quickly now or think they know it all will fall dangerously far behind.

Leaders need to reach out to experts to educate themselves on what they need to know. If you run a restaurant, you need to learn how to run an effective delivery service, quickly. If you’re in retail, you need to learn how to build up your online services. Committing to increasing your intellectual capacity will guide you and your team through complicated, high-pressure situations.

Physical Capacity – Withstand the grind

Physical capacity is your health, well-being and physical performance. Building physical capacity isn’t as simple as diet and exercise—it’s also about prioritizing sleep and handling stress with resilience.

I’m not an advocate for working extraordinarily long hours as a regular practice. But these are wartime rules, and leaders have to go above and beyond, including working long hours. At the same time, you have to ensure your body and mind hold up during that marathon in order to get the results you need. That includes knowing how to make time to reset and rest, including getting outside, taking planned breaks, napping when you are exhausted and detaching from your technology when you get ready to sleep.

I’ve been impressed seeing leaders like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo deliver clear, steady briefings day after day, knowing he probably has lost a ton of sleep working on his response to the COVID-19 crisis. When people are frightened during adversity, it’s crucial for them to see their leaders as strong and unflappable. If your physical and mental stamina isn’t high enough for the moment, the people you lead will notice—and lose confidence.

Emotional Capacity – Manage your reactions

Emotional capacity is how you react to challenging situations, your emotional mindset and the quality of your relationships. This is perhaps most crucial to crisis leadership—you need to be able to stay emotionally resilient in the face of some of the most challenging situations you’ll face in your life.

The leaders who are excelling now are the ones who are determined to control what they can control and focus on those who are depending on them, rather than acting from a place of fear. Building emotional capacity is essential to staying composed in a crisis and making clear-headed decisions under pressure.

Embracing relationships is also crucial in times of crisis. These are the times where you can show the people who matter most to you that you value them, and where you’ll learn which relationships in your life are most valuable and reciprocal.

Times of crisis are when we need and deserve the most from our leaders. In turn, leaders need to be prepared to rise to the occasion by building their capacity and refining their abilities in real-time. 

Capacity building isn't about doing more--it's about doing more of the right things. By building these four areas of capacity, you'll raise your game as a leader, help navigate a crisis, and put yourself and the people around you in a position to be stronger as a result.

To learn more about capacity building, I invite you to check out my book, Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others

I have made the eBook available for free until tomorrow, April 10th. (Amazon, Google, Apple)

If you enjoyed this article, join Friday Forward, my weekly leadership note read by 200,000+ leaders in over sixty countries. Sign Up Today

Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, an award-winning partner marketing agency ranked #4 on Glassdoor’s best places to work.