Leading in a Crisis

There is a saying in yoga "how you show up on your mat is how you show up in your life". Right now, amidst the chaos being caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this yogi observation can be adapted to "how you show up to lead in a crisis is how your organisation will show up in the coming months."

Despite the fears and anxiety people are experiencing and the uncertainty businesses are facing, right now leaders need to lead.    

Leaders cast a long shadow. At no other time in our lifetime has this concept meant more.

Leaders impact much more than just revenue and profitability. Leaders impact behaviours, emotions, even lives.

Leaders form the shape of their company, its culture and ability to cope.

These are unprecedented times.

As the world attempts to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the impact to businesses across every industry has been more profound than any event we have witnessed in our generation.

Company travel has come to a halt.

Countries are locking their borders.

The share market and oil prices are tumbling.

Businesses are closing stores.

Conferences and large-scale events have been cancelled.

Sporting competitions have been shut down or are going ahead without live crowds.

Entire organisations are sending employees home to work.

Schools are sending students home.

Universities have stopped lectures and opted for digital classes.

Supermarkets are running out of supplies.

Our health system is already stretched to capacity.

There is widespread panic and uncertainty.

Why leaders are losing sleep

As leaders try to adapt to a rapidly changing, extraordinary situation that affects the bottom line as much as staff morale and health, there are multiple concerns:

• Confusion about what to do next without being reactive
• Worry about the health of themselves, their staff and their families
• Overwhelm from information and conflicting advice
• Worry about shifting entire workforces to working from home
• Inability to focus on their day-to-day job
• Fearful of the economic downturn and what it means for their business
• Fearful about what would happen if their workforce is impacted by the virus
• Having to make difficult decisions about closing down branches, stores and/or reducing head count

What leaders can do right now

• Focus on what you can control.
• Remain in control of your response. 
• Right now it is more important than ever for organisations and their leaders to step up.
• Right now is the time to stay calm and lead with clarity and conviction.
• Right now is the time to focus on both your response and the messages you send to your employees.

Large businesses must keep operating and they need to pivot quickly to support employees to stay calm, healthy and focused. In the coming weeks and months entire organisations, government departments, universities and schools are going to be sent home to work and study remotely. With this shift comes an immediate decrease in productivity as people transition and learn to work efficiently from home.

So, you, the person with 'leader' or 'executive’ or ‘employer’ in your title – how are you going to respond to this? How are you going to step up in a time of crisis?

Leadership boils down to 2 things

There are dozens of theories and models and acronyms and metaphors and mnemonics, all pertaining to 'know' what leadership is.

For more than two decades, I have studied the art and science of leadership. From the leading sporting teams and companies I have worked with; the hundreds of leadership books I have read; the conferences I have presented at around the world; through to the high performing executives, CEO’s, athletes and performing artists I have had the opportunity to coach - I have gained a unique understanding of leadership and performance under pressure.

I think leadership boils down to two things:

1. How you manage yourself
2. How you influence others

And right now is the time to do both with aplomb.

Chaos is contagious, so is calm

One of the athletes I was blessed to work with is former Australian cricket captain, Steve Waugh. Steve had a great saying 'attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?'

Is your leadership style worth catching? Strongly-lead teams have a sense of camaraderie, team spirit and shared ownership. They act like a large, dysfunctional, but loving and caring family unit; ultimately they have each-others’ best interests at heart and their vision is aligned.

Poorly-lead teams display selfish, borderline narcissistic behaviours. Because their leaders have not fostered a sense of unity, trust or shared vision, they can become a toxic waste dump filled with backstabbing, finger pointing and lack of accountability.

Every crisis or traumatic event brings with it a blend of conflict, tension and growth. My experience with leaders in sport, business, military and the performing arts shows me in times of crisis:

Some panic. Others prosper.

Some get insular. Others get inspired.

Some get f*cking angry. Others get f*cking active.

Some engender chaos. Others engender calm.

 Leadership Lessons in Calm

Drawing lessons from three domains including military, hospitals and critical care, here are some specific examples of how to be calm in chaos, and several examples of what not to do.

1.    Military

The US Navy SEALs must, by necessity, be as agile as they are vigilant as resting on their laurels or moving too slowly does not simply result in failure, it can result in death. Combining the non-reactive quality of vigilance with the need for fast action requires resilience and adaptability; two qualities leaders must cultivate and refine in the current situation we find ourselves in.

Brent Gleeson is the CEO of Taking Point Leadership and a former Navy SEAL. Gleeson understands that successful transition through chaos ultimately comes down to culture - strong culture creates resilience and, when it is aligned with strategy, can be relied upon in times of change and creates the unity needed to act quickly.

"Companies that keep culture at the top of the priority list - especially when leading change - typically outperform their competitors in areas such as consistent growth, improved speed and efficiency, employee engagement and retention, customer satisfaction and profitability."

Gleeson acknowledges the reality that “organisational change can suck”.SEAL Teams however, simply “embrace the suck”. Embracing the suck, he explains, looks like this:

"We lean into the misery and push our comfort zones on a daily basis. Fear and what I refer to in the book as 'change battle fatigue' can stall any change effort. But there are some tools to mitigate that fear and keep the team fired up."

"First, we go back to having a powerful and aligned vision for a brighter future. Something the team can be excited about. Second, we have to include the majority (if not all) of the team at all levels in the planning process - grooming that buy-in. Third, identifying and celebrating quick wins is imperative for showing visible progress and keeping the team energised. Fourth, the story-telling process must last from beginning to end so everyone can continue to connect with the vision - even when things get tough."

Harry Wendt, the Digital Director at StriveStronger is the former general manager for digital at Westpac and also trained in the military in aviation. Working in financial services at a time when he was required to navigate the uncharted territory of cyber-crime, Wendt drew on lessons he learned from the military.

"One of the things I clearly remember being taught in multi-engine aircraft was that in an emergency, your first reaction should be to 'sit on your hands,'" he says. "This approach doesn't mean you don't need to react quickly. Still, many people have died shutting down the wrong engine in an emergency because they act too swiftly without correctly identifying which engine has failed in the heat of the moment."

What it means is finding the balance between the urgency to act and the need to gather enough information to act intelligently.

 "Put simply, knee-jerk reactions usually kill people but taking too long to make a decision can also end up in the same place," says Wendt, who likens the approach to the famous Einstein quote: "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions."

"Einstein believed the quality of the solution you generate is in direct proportion to your ability to identify the problem you hope to solve."

2.    Hospitals and critical care

It is not until we are pushed to extremes that we really get to learn about performance. Dr Tom Buckley, Strive Stronger Research Director, has worked in the medical system for 25 years and has unique insights about maintaining health, wellbeing and productivity during a crisis.

"Many high functioning medical and nursing teams prepare for the unexpected using the principles of Crisis Resource Management (CRM)," Buckley explains. "CRM is a set of non-technical skills that help a team be effective in a crisis. CRM originated with Crew (or ‘Cockpit’) Resource Management training developed by the aviation industry in the 1970s and was initially adopted into anaesthesiology training in anticipation for unexpected events in the surgical room. Since then it is used in many medical and nursing curricular in anticipation of clinical or situational emergencies."

The main principles of CRM are to:

• Clearly define leadership 
• Have situational awareness
• Anticipate the next step
• Have clear, closed-loop communication
• Distribute workload and allocate attention to tasks of importance. 

CRM during a crisis is essential because:

• In times of stress human performance usually degrades
• Analysis of poor performances reveals that lack of leadership, poor team coordination, cognitive fixation and poor communication are to blame in many cases.
• Barriers to good communication and coordination are largely due to structural and organisational issues than anything specifically related to individual knowledge or judgement.

"Prevention of poor performance requires these barriers to be surmounted by good communication technique, clear leadership, situational awareness and a shared mental model," Buckley says. "In addition, during a crisis, techniques of cross monitoring (i.e. being aware of each other’s performance strengths and weakness and being willing to assist in the accomplishment of a task) become paramount."

The principles of CRM are applicable to any business crisis, where it is easy to get derailed and lose situational awareness, where there is uncertainty about what is the next correct step, and where communication breakdowns focus attention on the problem, rather than the solution.

"In medical emergency situations, the general principle is to do an early assessment and then instigate early interventions. In response to the evolving COVID-19 virus, many businesses are also undertaking rapid assessments and implementing early interventions to keep business going," Dr Buckley says "what is important though is that once the initial critical steps have been taken, businesses need to undertake a more comprehensive assessment of the situation and plan for the medium and longer term, especially planning for the unknown or unexpected."

"The COVID-19 virus has become the ultimate societal disrupter of our times. It is important we learn from this situation and future-proof; It may very well be that this is the catalyst for a more productive way of working into the future, one that does not require employees to be chained to a desk for 8 hours a day in the one place".

3.    Business world

Let’s take a look at two examples of what not to do during a crisis.

In March 2018, when it was revealed that the personal information of millions of Facebook users was compromised Mark Zuckerberg was silent for four days. By the time he finally responded, claiming he wanted to get to the bottom of that breach first, the horse had bolted. Chaos and misinformation were rife, his employees and the users of the platform were angry and upset and had lost confidence in Zuckerberg as a leader.

Donald Trump. Oh, dear baby Jesus, there are just so many examples here I had to just go with the most recent.

Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis has been universally panned as he denied, deflected and contradicted himself and statements from other White House officials. As a leader, he ought to be creating comfort and stability. Instead he has caused confusion, added to the spread of misinformation and has potentially put the health of millions of Americans at risk because of his failure to act quickly. "To soothe his own ego, he quite literally is willing to make Americans sick," The Washington Post said. 

On the flipside, two recent examples of strong leadership amidst the COVID-19 global epidemic are Qantas and Telstra.

Alan Joyce responded early by cutting back flights, as well as executive wages and bonuses.

Andy Penn also moved swiftly and reduced the ambiguity by mobilising 20,000 Telstra employees to work from home.

With change, comes opportunity

John F. Kennedy said:

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word “crisis”. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger, but recognise the opportunity.”

In any time of crisis, there are two ways to look at the problem. You need to effectively deal with the immediate "danger", but also recognise that in any crisis there is also opportunity. It is a bit like a cup half empty, cup half full way of thinking.

Drop the Bullshit Buzzwords

Now is not the time to be using kitsch sporting or military terms, buzzwords or affirmations. If you troll out rubbish like “you’ve got this”, “we are in the trenches together”, “we just gotta dig deep and play harder”, “shoulder to shoulder” and “let's protect the frontline during this storm", you’re not helping anything. Apart from the likelihood, if you are a male (as I don't think I have ever heard emotionally intelligent women use the above phrases) of someone giving you a swift kick in your balls.

 Be authentic. Be real. Show vulnerability.

Now is the time to be real.

I am a big fan of Brene Brown and her work on vulnerability.

"The definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. But vulnerability is not weakness, it's our most accurate measure of courage"

 Be honest with your team.

Tell them you are anxious and concerned.

Tell them COVID-19 and seeing global borders and economies shut down has you lying in bed awake at night.

Tell them you don’t really know how this pandemic is going to play out.

 But also tell them you are going to endeavour to stay calm and lead with dignity and poise.

Tell them you are going to be asking them all to work with you.

Tell them you realise your business is going to need to pivot and pivot fast to ride this out.

Next steps?

Nobody knows how this pandemic is going to play out.

We have no idea how long or how little our lives are going to be disrupted.

But what I do know is that more than ever it is time for leaders to stay calm, to stay present.

To make sure your staff and clients are ok.

To make sure you first manage your physical, psychological and emotional state and then be in the best possible mindset influence the way your organisation pivots, adapts and grows.

30 Day Boost

The StriveStronger team and I have been working around the clock to create 30 Day Boost, an evidence-based approach supporting employees to boost immunity, physical wellbeing and resilience in the corona virus pandemic. Transition your people to working from home and support them to be properly informed, calm and healthy. Stay focussed and stay productive through this unprecedented global crisis.

30 Day Boost includes modules on:

1. Working From Home (WFH)

2. Boosting Immunity

3. Mindset and Mental Health

4. Leadership Support

The program is 100% online and is a blend of video webcasts, an online platform with videos and downloads, a podcast and a group chatroom. If you'd like more details, please go to www.strivestronger.com/30dayBoost.

Andrew May

Andrewmay.com