Mentor Liderlik Danışmanlık

There’s nowhere to run. Everyone is talking about the crisis. Dollar, euro, changes in the stock market, they all effect everyone in different ways, if they have money or not. Everyone’s plans are upside down. So are the leaders’ we work with. They all follow the news closely, think about developing correct strategies for their own impact areas.

Crisis is a change, too. Managing the change is the strong point of good leaders. A good leader, starts the change, leads it, orientate himself to it and changes himself, too. But the main difference between change and crisis is that the starting point, reason, size, depth, speed and the duration of change triggered by the crisis, is set by outer elements. So it is a change the leaders are exposed to, they don’t have control over the crisis. But they’re not desperate, either. Because they can manage the impact of the crisis on them, their firm and the people in it. And for that reason, at times of crisis leadership gets even more important.

The pressure from the uncertainty and the worry, affects leaders negatively, too. It can prevent them from displaying their skills. So the leaders have to be more strong and resilient in these uncertain times. When people are under a great pressure they get scared; scared of losing what they have, failing, losing the dignity they worked so hard for. That can make them take everything personally and might feel ‘paralyzed’ when they have to make decisions. They can lose hope, lose faith in it will get better again. This fear can last for years and make one focus on himself too much and forget considering things in long term. Or he might feel depressed and may cause a downfall in the energy levels of himself and the others.

My colleagues from Praesta UK office, prepared a suggestion document for us based on the evidence from a research on leaders that are experienced with crisis. We see that three leadership behaviors stand out to overcome the hard times:

First, keep on doing what you feel is right and be true to yourself. Of course in these times, finding what is right is the main problem but the experience shows that the leader has to consider his intuition, too. When there are very disturbing decisions to be made, to take action regarding them, to gain the trust and even support of the others that you’ve made the right decision is only possible if you can defend your decisions easily and with faith. What is right for the institution? What’s right for the people working with us? What’s right for me as a leader? The essence is to grasp the dynamic balance of these questions.

But the times of crisis can tire the leaders emotionally. Strong emotions like anger, regret, worry, fear, disappointment, being worn out, can be harmful for leader’s decision making process. When that’s the case these leaders must be honest to themselves, must not disregard the possibility of failure and must determine where to stop without losing the perspective of reality.

The second effective leadership behavior is being able to fight the difficulties. During this uncertain times when a new challenge presents itself every day, one of the worst threats is not seeing the ‘big picture’. So a leader must have “perspective.” Otherwise in uncertain surroundings, no context is left to set a reference or border the difficulties. Having perspective is effective to protect the leader from this threat.

But to create a perspective they first need to collect reliable data, analyze, then needs a platform to reconsider their decisions by taking the opinions of the people who’ll be effected with the outcome and help form someone they trust. Setting the priorities correctly, fighting the situation with the correct team, being a visible leader by leading the army from the forefront are ‘empowering’ behaviors and attitudes.

The third important point is the leader taking good care of himself. Like the quote, “A healthy mind in a healthy body”, the leader who’s making a great effort physically, mentally and emotionally, needs to watch his health on all three of these. Difficult times usually come with decreased exercise, increased eating and drinking, and the stress damaging our body. Likewise, strong negative feelings are very frequent on these periods. For a leader who doesn’t care for these, it is hard to stay strong during the struggle. So a good personal care is not a luxury but a must.

The leaders who succeeds in staying strong despite of all these physically, mentally and emotionally challenging facts, will of course come out of the crisis stronger, with deeper experience and more confidence. As Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill makes stronger.”