Leadership in a Time of Crisis

Isolation, social distancing, lockdown, quarantine, fear, rumour, confusion.

We are living unprecedented times. It seems that almost every time we turn on the radio or TV at the moment we are subjected to a barrage of negativity. As leaders, perhaps sitting at home, but still working, with a team doing the same how are we to show the leadership that keeps the team positive, motivated and productive?

Here are three ideas to help you help your teams through these challenging times. They are:

• Shadow of the Leader
• Reframing
• Outcomes Focus

Shadow of the Leader

This is a concept developed by the organisation development writer Larry Senn.  Essentially it concerns how we portray ourselves to the people we manage. How do we arrive in the morning? How do we greet our customers? How do we dress? How do we treat our suppliers? How do we leave work at the end of the day? And perhaps most importantly at the moment, how do we respond to crises? How do we actually behave?

Our people are looking at us for cues and clues as to how they should behave. Sometimes this is conscious, sometimes subconscious, but quite simply our behaviour has a powerful influence on their behaviour.

Larry later developed the concept and wrote about ‘The Mood Elevator’. This is the idea that we all live on a scale of feelings on a metaphorical elevator. When on the lower floors we tend to respond to problems with feelings of stress and anger, while on the top floors we respond with creativity, wisdom and gratitude. Some people get stuck on those lower floors and inflate small problems into crises. Others seem to ride the storm and remain relentlessly positive, seeing any problem as an opportunity to learn and develop.

We may be tempted to show lower floor feelings to our teams in these trying times but remember our feelings will be infectious. However, there is no reason why we can’t personally press a mental, metaphorical elevator button to take us up a floor or two and respond more positively. None of us need to be prisoners to those feelings that come at the bottom of the elevator. We all have a choice to control the thoughts that lead us to feel and then consequently behave in a certain way. As leaders, we can choose to respond to a crisis by summoning patience or even hope and creativity as opposed to stress and depression.

Of course, this isn’t easy, but if you can’t make the change if you can’t move up the elevator why would you expect your people to do the same? Remember, your mood at any time is infectious. Use that to your advantage, not to lower the mood of the team.

Reframing

Reframing is essentially redefining a problem as a challenge. It literally means taking a dull picture out of a frame, putting it in another frame, moving it to another location, standing back and consequently finding it more attractive and vibrant. Using this metaphor, we can do the same with seemingly negative situations in our lives, deciding to reframe situations by standing back and choosing to look for positive aspects in them.

Of course, positive reframing doesn’t change the situation, but it can certainly reduce damage and put things in a healthier perspective.

Clearly reframing is closely linked to the mood elevator idea, where you can choose to reframe your feelings and resultant actions, but reframing is a wider concept; it involves reframing entire situations.

A striking example of this was a documentary I saw a couple of years ago. It was set in Aleppo, Syria during that terrible war. Here a family had decided to plant flowers on roundabouts in the middle of a grey concrete and dust backdrop. In a memorable moment, an interviewer asked the father of the family why they did it. He answered, ‘For us making roundabouts beautiful gives meaning to life. We don’t only see the destruction, we see construction’. He also compared the sound of the fighter jets above to the sound of Beethoven’s music!

 Outcomes-Focus

If your team are working from home, it may be a new challenge for them. Indeed, it may be a new challenge for you too.  It often means facing three problems: loneliness, distractions and stress.

• Loneliness can come from the absence of social contact with your colleagues your peers and the team.
• Distraction can come from things around you; those domestic jobs that you’ve put off for years suddenly become very tempting projects!
• Stress comes from a lack of ability to get things done when based at home. You may feel like you are doing plenty but achieving little.

Here are ways to respond to each of these challenges.

To overcome loneliness as well as do business most of us have turned to using technologies to connect with our teams – FaceTime, Zoom, Skype. These are great tools for getting things done, but studies now show that we often become too business-like too quickly. We forget to give the team the chance to socialise at the beginning of the meeting.  More than ever they need to feel a team bond and to feel motivated by exchanging their social reality. So, start each meeting by building in time for a simple chat.

After that socialising time online, of course, it’s time to get down to business and the key to making people feel that they are achieving something is to focus them on output. This both helps them resist distraction and reduce the stress that comes from feelings of underachievement. As Stephen Covey talked about in His 7 Habits book you need to ‘begin with the end in mind’. To do this, ask people what they produced yesterday/this week – actual output, not input, achievements, not just actions. You should also ask them what they learnt – about themselves, the business or the job.

So, Shadow of the Leader, Reframing and Outcomes Focus are simple behavioural concepts to help you act as a leader in these strange times. Perhaps when we all return to normality you will see the value of them and incorporate these ideas into your day-to-day leadership and build a culture of positivity inclusion, learning and productivity.

AZTech is a leading international provider of training courses, seminars, workshops, programs, conferences, in-house training and online trainings. We deliver a wide range of cutting-edge training that include Strategy, Management, Leadership, Finance, Accounting, Health and Safety, Human Resources, Project Management, Procurement and Contracts Management, Mechanical, Maintenance, & Electrical Engineering. AZTech Training is all about ensuring that our delegates get Quality Assured Training and this commitment to delivering the best possible learning experience is demonstrated by our continuous working relationship with 11 of the world’s leading professional governing and certifying bodies. Visit us at www.aztechtraining.com

---