Leadership in times of challenge
Over the past few weeks we have seen some challenging events in our community. And into everyone’s life, as they say, “some rain must fall”.
These events can be macro events like stock market crashes or economic failures. These events can be personal like a job loss, or the end of a relationship, or a sickness or death in the family.
What I want to talk to you about today is how you respond to these types of sudden, big, violent and tremendously difficult challenges. The type of challenges I’m talking about are things like unexpected accidents or deaths or rapid, unexpected changes and events that impact you, your family, your organization and your community suddenly, right now, and permanently change your frame of reference.
The first thing you need to understand and wrap your big brain around is that these out-sized events, whether good or bad, are outliers. These types of events won’t hit you every week, but you will get a handful of them in your life. And the magnitude of these outliers makes them significant enough for you to think about how to react to them and how to lead in the face of them.
These situations will ‘come out of the blue’ and you will not have time to plan your response. These are not situations where you will choose to lead. Most of these events will be forced upon you and you will be forced to lead. You will be shoved into a position of leadership due to the great chaos and leadership void these events create and the great fear they produce in your community.
You’re community will be in fear and without direction. They will need you to lead and you have a responsibility to do so.
The second thing you need to realize it that leadership need not require that you are the one in charge. You can lead from within the pack. The way you react, the things you say and do will influence those around you – even if you are not the person in charge. You ARE in charge of how you act and react. What you do very much influences a community in shock that is looking around for a trace of direction.
You cannot plan for these outliers but your ability to lead in a crisis is dependent on how you have trained your brain every day up to that point. Your ability to do the right thing will be greatly enhanced if you know yourself and what your core values are. Your comfort in your self will allow you to lead others in a crisis. That is something you work on every day of your life.
What are the specifics of crisis leadership? What is the script that you can follow when your chance comes?
- Don’t over react. When crisis happens your dinosaur brain will want to take over with panic, emotion and a cesspool of unhelpful chemicals being pumped into your limbic system. Take a step back. Use your big brain. Assess the situation and determine what your narrative is going to be.
- Be there. No crisis is ever helped by hiding or running away. As awful as something is you have to face it to come to grips with it. You can’t lead and you can’t help your community if you retreat inside yourself.
- Set the tone. Once you understand what your narrative needs to be to help your community start walking the walk and talking the talk. Lead by acting and talking along the lines of that narrative whether it is helping, grieving or healing. People are watching you and you need to act out your leadership.
- Get it out of your system. Don’t bury the shock or the trauma of the crisis. Do what you need to do get the poison out of your system. Talk it out. Write it out. Run it out. Love it out. Accept it and work through it.
- Decide on your narrative. The true response in a crisis is going to depend on your messaging. What is the story you are going to tell? When you look back on this crisis in 10 years what is the story you are going to wish got told? How did it play out? With chaos and vitriol or with the community pulling together to help and over come? What is the narrative you are going to throw your weight behind? Create your narrative.
- Live your narrative. Once you know the story of how this is going to play out make it happen. Every time you interact with someone in your community tell the narrative, shape the narrative and live the narrative. Embody the story you want to be told.
What does the narrative include?
- Acceptance and understanding. Don’t dwell in the crisis but you do need to accept it. “Yes this was a crisis. Yes this was an event and yes we were all traumatized by the impact of this event.”
- Assurance of ‘OK’. “Yes this is a crisis but we’re ok. We are still breathing and the sun is going to come up tomorrow.”
- Painting the picture of positive response. “Yes this was a crisis but we are all blown away by the way our community has pulled together…”
- Painting the picture, narrative, vision of the future. “Yes this was a crisis but we are going to work together and tomorrow we are going to be stronger and the day after that stronger still…”
Finally there are going to be those who want to leverage the crisis to promulgate their own negative narratives and sensationalism. You cannot let them influence your narrative. When they ask you “Isn’t this crisis horrible and aren’t you devastated?” Simply repeat YOUR narrative. Your leadership narrative.
There will be a lot of noise. The news and the politicians will look for ways to fan the flames. Ignore the noise. It has no bearing on you and your narrative. Responding to the noise is like feeding a bad dog – it will just get stronger in a feedback loop of the negative. Don’t feed the bad dogs. Keep telling YOUR narrative, your story, your version and soon the noise will fade and your version will be the one that leads your community out of the dark times of crisis into the light of the future.
Think about how you will respond in a unexpected crisis. What is the story you will tell? What is the narrative you will throw your weight behind? How will you lead your community in thought and action to a better future?
Postscript
Thinking about this last night I feel it’s important to note that times of crisis and challenge are not just opportunities for positive leadership. They are also opportunities for negative leadership.
When a crisis happens and there is a leadership void people are scared and unsure of the narrative and look for direction. That is fertile ground for sociopaths to step in with their own warped narratives.
Throughout history we have seen sociopaths, evil-doers and the merely criminally misdirected seize power during times of crisis because if the opportunity to create and shape a new narrative.
I won’t dwell on this risk, but I will say that this makes your responsibility to your community even more acute in times of crisis. It makes your responsibility to stick to your core principles and act positively to shape the narrative that much more important.
So, I ask you again, in the face of all this, how will you lead your community in thought and action to a better future?