What advice are leaders finding most helpful?
I have the utmost admiration for the leaders I work with, who are to a man and woman all working so hard to lead their organisations in the best way possible. My own leadership experience has taught me that doing is much much harder than advising, and so I know from experience how useful it can be to reach out for objective, expert, and compassionate advice. Below I have summarised the advice that you have all found, and will I hope continue to find, most useful.
You - 4 key principles
Look after your own wellbeing; otherwise you can’t lead as you should. This will include recognising and managing your own emotions; sticking to good habits around health and fitness; and making time to unwind with family, friends, and things that make you laugh.
Make sure you give yourself the headspace to ensure clarity of thought. For many this is best done whilst out walking.
Remember that it’s not all down to you - use those around you. You can’t solve the challenges on your own, and this is a brilliant opportunity to involve others in your organisation and provide them with an opportunity to grow, develop, and step up to the plate.
Ensure regular and clear communication to your people and stakeholders. Language is key; keep it clear, simple, open, and honest, but calm. Catastrophising does not help, people are quick to panic. Think about what you want them to Think, Feel and Do as a result of your messaging.
Top 4 pieces of insight
Values. This is a great opportunity to test the strength of your organisation’s Values, and entrench them even further. By way of example, one organisation’s Values contain, as their first one, Do the Right Thing. This led to a short and simple discussion, a few weeks ago, about guaranteeing employees’ salaries, even before the government support packages were announced. Your organisation’s Values are the principles that govern everything; they should drive every decision, every action and every behaviour. This is a great opportunity to embed them further into the fabric of your organisation.
Planning. It’s vital to be very clear on what you are trying to achieve. What is the overriding objective in your planning process? This should be compelling and concrete, enabling everything to flow from this. The strategy and tactics to achieve this will need to be more flexible, as you will be constantly learning and adapting. McKinseys, in the briefing paper they have just released*, talk about the pause-assess-anticipate cycle. Waiting for a full set of facts to emerge before determining what to do can be dangerous. Because a crisis involves many unknowns and surprises, facts may not become clear within the necessary decision-making time frame. But leaders should not resort to using their intuition alone. Leaders can better cope with uncertainty and the feeling of jamais vu (déjà vu’s opposite) by continually collecting information as the crisis unfolds and observing how well their responses work.
In practice, this means frequently pausing from crisis management, assessing the situation from multiple vantage points, anticipating what may happen next, and then acting. The pause-assess-anticipate-act cycle should be ongoing, for it helps leaders maintain a state of deliberate calm and avoid overreacting to new information as it comes in. While some moments during the crisis will call for immediate action, with no time to assess or anticipate, leaders will eventually find occasions to stop, reflect, and think ahead before making further moves.
Collaboration. You may find yourself collaborating with new partners. Remember these five rules of disciplined collaboration: establish a compelling '“why do it” case for the proposed collaboration; craft a unifying goal that excites people; reward people for collaboration results, not activities; devote the right resources to it; and if you lack confidence in your partners, tailor trust boosters to solve specific trust problems, quickly.**
Behaviours. Empathy is key. More than anything the current situation is a human challenge. As leaders, demonstrating deliberate calm, together with what McKinseys refer to as ‘bounded optimism’ (confidence combined with realism) can help steer you and your people through these troubled waters.
For any direct help or support, please do get in touch - catherine@sportandbeyond.co.uk
**Great at Work by Morten T Hansen