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Being on unfamiliar territory always presents a challenge to us as business leaders, and there has been no more unexpected challenge than the current global pandemic. Overnight, the future has become uncertain, whole industries have ground to a halt while others have flourished, and nations have had to get used to working from home becoming a new way of life. What the crisis has shown is just how innovative we can be when we need to, adapting our products and services rapidly to meet ‘the new normal’. And it's a fact that while some businesses will be feeling the aftershocks of this for quite some time, others will emerge stronger, leaner and more profitable because of the experience.
Effective Leadership
Those companies that do thrive will tend to have one thing in common - a leader who can guide the organization through the troubles and respond to rapidly fluctuating conditions with one eye still on the future development of their business. So how best do you guide a team and yourself through such an unprecedented situation - and any crisis scenarios in the future?
Assessing Strengths
When the worst happens, the default response is to look externally - how do we stabilize sales, increase marketing, cut back on overheads? And while this is valuable, one of the best leadership development areas you can focus on is also the ability to focus inwards - on the strengths you have that will shape your approach to this challenge, and on the strengths that your team has that you can level at the problem. Great leaders don’t have to have the answer to every problem - they need a mature emotional response that allows them to understand their own limitations. You will get the best results in a crisis from operating within your personal strengths, and getting the right people in areas where you are not so strong. Processes like 360 feedback can be useful for this in understanding how you are viewed within the organization, and you will know yourself what parts of leadership come instinctively and seem to flow, and what areas always feel like more hard work.
Creating A Communication Plan
No matter how much great work is going on behind the scenes, it means little if you do not use effective communication skills to let everyone else involved know what's going on. Creating a stakeholder map allows you to see all the groups and individuals with a vested interest in the health of the company, and it's your role as leader to ensure that they are kept informed in a timely manner of any relevant developments. In a crisis situation, time acts as if compressed. This means taking action sometimes before you have a fully developed picture of the situation. However, it's a mistake to hold off on letting people know what is happening - the void simply gets filled with rumours and misinformation. So it's perfectly okay to acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers yet, as long as you communicate truthfully about what steps you are taking.