What do good leaders do when the going gets tough?

“When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Leadership is the biggest determinant of success of the business as it goes through a tough cycle – sales decline, share erosion, profitability lagging the competition set, impending technology disruption, mega shift in customer trends, and many more such surprises. Many organizations look for new leaders with experiences in successful turnarounds or with a track record of delivering results under the challenging conditions. I however believe that; organizations would not require a different leader; if the leader themselves chooses to be different. Every leader needs to assess her/himself on the ability to cope with the personal stretch in keeping up own and the team’s motivation. The Leader needs to be able to deliver the results better than the competitive set in a potentially disruptive circumstance.

 So, what does it take for leaders to succeed in the challenging business environment? Here are my top 5 favorite/preferred traits, based on my experiences and watching others through many challenging phases of the business.

 1.     Resilience - Oxford dictionary describes it as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; also called as toughness”. When the times are difficult/challenging, many well qualified, and hitherto successful managers, quit. They assign reasons to external conditions and rationalize that they will be ineffective. They do not find enough motivation in pulling themselves up every day and keep going. They give up in the face of incessant failures. On the other hand, great and effective leaders recognize the challenge, acknowledge the difficulty and then step up to address it. They keep responding to the challenges and do not give up. Resilience is like the mental muscle which gets built by training the mind against the myriad challenges and pushing oneself out of the comfort zone. Confucius said, and I agree “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail” This glory… this quality can be acquired by those that have learnt to swim upstream in their past. Resilience or the ability to recover from one’s failures in the leader can be the single biggest difference between success and failure. This quality only comes through a) the will to succeed and b) the acceptance of the pain and discomfort. You lose either one and you lose resilience.

 2.     Falling forward/Agility - Challenging times will, very likely, be frustrating for the usual approaches that would work in the other times. The SOPs and the playbooks created for wins during the normal times are suddenly not worth their weight in paper. What good leaders do then, is to experiment and fail at a very fast pace. They openly celebrate success and publicly reward prudent risk taking by their teams. Thus, they build the trust in their team for managing failures. This keeps the focus of the organization on positive action versus wallowing in overthinking with bouts of analysis paralysis.

 "Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation, and consensus." – Simon Mainwaring

3.     Collaborate furiously - In a tight economic situation, a leader cannot just rely on the resources within his or her direct access. Post all the economic tightening and cost reductions, it is unlikely that the resource available are enough to deal with the task on hand. A good leader must be working with all partners, internal or external, to pool resources. Unable to build the necessary connections, teams tend to get involved in the blame game and finger pointing, amid depleting resources and no easy budgetary source. This degenerates the team culture and leaves each one fending for their own self and battling over turfs.  By reducing the friction in the flow of information and value exchange across functional, organizational or even industry boundaries, the effective leader helps everyone to focus on customers and real value creation. They know that it always takes more than one person alone to succeed in such a situation. Marketing teams when working together with internal teams, creative agencies, media partners and global partners like Google and Facebook, will be in a better position to come up with a winning campaign. Similarly, customer teams need to work closely with internal and external supply chains as well as marketing and shopper teams to make every single campaign count. These are a few examples of leaders driving such collaborations. 

 4.     Lead from the front - VUCA times require all hands to be on the deck. Firstly, because the leader can join in and augment the resources that are behind driving business. Secondly, it gives everybody the feeling that they are in it together. The leader, however, must lead by example. Agility comes by being close to the action, learning from the mistakes and improvising. The learning cycle only needs to get shortened and everyone leaning in to leverage each other’s experiences. The leader must also be at the forefront of the action so that he knows the reality of the situation first hand. He can also use these opportunities to build the team’s commitment in the tough times, which is very critical for them to stay united in the challenge.

 Not discussed enough, but necessary nevertheless, is the energy level of the leader. Good energy is important, not just for the leader to keep going, but also to inspire the team to be on top of their form. Nothing energizes the team like the captain standing in the field with all his energy and optimism in full display. I have had opportunity to work for a manager who used every opportunity to instill the value of health and wellness, by sharing personal examples and thereby leaving his team inspired to bring more holistic energy to work. It was very helpful as we were cycling (pun intended) through some of the toughest moments of our business.

 PEOPLE buy into the LEADER before they BUY into their IDEAS. – Lolly Daskal

 5.     Do what matters - Leaders adept at navigating the business through tough times, define what success looks like and prioritize ruthlessly but purposefully. They skip over nice-to- do things in favor of the must dos. They are passionately outcome focused and sharply aware of what the customer values. Effective leaders need to be scanning all the emerging trends and choosing the ones that are important for winning. They need to rationalize all waste - $ spends, team time wasted in meetings or emails, ineffective communication processes and other such time & energy drainers. They understand that time is one of the most critical resource in winning in the uncertain and chaotic period.  

 In one’s career span, every leader is likely to go through the down cycle, either within the team, within the organization, within industry or even mega disruption of the industry itself. It would serve us all to remind ourselves that we are all capable of learning and we all have it in us to be successful. Above are my 5 top traits, necessary to be and stay successful; happy to hear yours.