The ability to effectively guide an organisation through periods of adversity has always been a desirable trait for leaders, but it has become dramatically more important throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, even before the pandemic, it was clear that today’s leader faces unprecedented challenges. Indeed, 80% of respondents to the 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey stated that 21st-century leaders have unique and new requirements that are important or very important to their organisation’s success, with the ability to “lead through more complexity and ambiguity” cited as the biggest challenge.
Clearly, coronavirus has forced us to contend with an abundance of complexity and ambiguity. Yet concerningly, just 30% of those surveyed by Deloitte said they are effectively developing leaders to meet evolving challenges such as these.
Not everyone is naturally blessed with the ability to lead through adversity. But this is not to say that only a select few people are capable of effective crisis leadership; key skills can be learned through personal development, experience and coaching.
Traits & Behaviours for Effective Crisis Leadership
Whether in business or public service, there have been countless examples in recent months of leaders who have failed to rise to the challenges presented by the pandemic. At the same time, other leaders have drawn praise for their handling of the ongoing crisis.
What separates those two camps?
While not intended to be an exhaustive list, leaders who have risen to the challenge have displayed some or all of the following key traits and behaviours:
Making an Active Choice
There is a world of difference between actively choosing our response to a situation and simply operating on “autopilot”.
In Season 1, Episode 7 of our podcast series, Coaching You Through Crisis, Executive Coach Mark Milotich discusses the “choice point” – that is, making an active choice in our response to adverse situations.
He notes that we cannot change the situation in which we find ourselves, or how others respond to it. Nor, to a large extent, can we change how we think and feel about that situation.
But what we can control is our behaviour and the way we respond, Mark explains:
“It’s about becoming mindful in the situation that you do have a choice to focus on when your heart starts pounding. That’s your body telling you that something is not right in the world. You have an emotional reaction, and [you need] to become aware of that and to give yourself the time [to make a decision].”
Of course, in the midst of a crisis, arriving at the right decision can be a major concern and source of anxiety for leaders. Especially in a rapidly evolving situation such as Covid-19, it is simply not always practical to wait for all the data before making a decision. By the time it arrives, that data may be quickly outdated. This is where Mark recommends being aware of the bigger picture:
“Give yourself the few seconds that you need, rather than automatically reacting out of this emotional response, to say, ‘What is a more long-term beneficial response that might be in line with my long-term interests and my long-term values?’”
Two habits can help to strengthen our ability to make smart choices in times of adversity, says Mark. They are:
- Being mindful of our own thoughts and feelings in a situation;
- Reflecting on what went well, what did not, and what we said or did in each situation.
Dealing With Personal Vulnerability
To a greater or lesser extent, all leaders will experience feelings of vulnerability when dealing with a crisis. Am I making the right decision? How is this going to play out? What if I failed to consider X or Y? And what impact will this have on my team?
Vulnerability can cause indecision and self-doubt. But if dealt with effectively, it can also become a source of strength and resilience, according to Executive Coach and former Chairman of NHS Kingston, Dr Neslyn Watson-Druée, CBE.
In Season 1, Episode 8 of Coaching You Through Crisis, she discusses how the ability to draw strength from vulnerability stems from knowing your objectives and understanding what it takes to achieve them:
“The leadership within the organisation need to be very clear about how they want the organisation and the company to be. What is the major purpose of that organisation and that company? How do they want it to be? And then to think about the skills that they need [to get there].”
Maintaining Honesty in Communication
During a crisis, communication skills are placed under the microscope. Numerous world leaders have drawn criticism in recent months for lacking transparency in their communications. Once people lose faith in your ability to communicate openly and honestly, announcements that lack transparency can easily be interpreted as “hiding the truth”, or even worse as outright lies.
So what is the secret to effective communication in times of adversity?
There will inevitably be times when leaders have to deliver bad news. Effective leaders will do this in a clear and straightforward manner, without giving a false impression that everything is fine. Bad news rarely stays concealed for long, and leaders who fail to give all the facts quickly lose credibility – which in turn leads to panic and overreaction.
Even when the situation is bleak, the public would prefer to be given honest answers, according to research from Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, a professor in the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and Roxane Cohen Silver, PhD, a professor in the department of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine. Significantly, they also found that once people lose trust in a leader, it is hard for the leader to win it back.
Crisis Leadership in Action: What It Looks Like
Easy as it may be to forget, coronavirus is not the world’s first crisis (and nor will it be the last).
Recent history alone gives us countless examples of leaders who have been thrust into varying degrees of internal or external crisis, and have been forced to adapt their approach to guide their organisations out the other side. They offer practical takeaways for leaders today.
Lee Iacocca: Taking Personal Responsibility
Rising from the ranks of engineer at Ford to become the company’s President, Lee Iacocca was reportedly fired by Chairman Henry Ford II with the words: “Sometimes you just don’t like somebody.”
Iacocca’s next move saw him take up the Presidency at beleaguered rival automaker Chrysler. With the company on the verge of bankruptcy, he was forced to make dramatic changes to its structure and processes, replacing much of the senior leadership team, laying off thousands of workers, and rolling out a new quality control procedure.
These sweeping reforms ultimately worked – but they could easily have failed had Iacocca lost the support of the company. Clearly understanding this, one of his first moves was to request that his salary be reduced to just $1.
Granted, substantial stock holdings ensured that he was far from impoverished, but it was a powerful gesture that won the President the backing of front-line workers and even the union bosses with whom he was discussing lay-offs. After all, no one could accuse him of demanding sacrifices from others without first making them himself.
“I discovered that people accept a lot of pain if everybody is going through the chute together,” he later wrote.
Steve Jobs: Focusing on What Matters Most
Having co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, Steve Jobs returned to the company – first as adviser, then as CEO – two decades later.
Since his original departure, Apple was in crisis after years of stagnating sales and a broad portfolio of largely unpopular products – described by biographer Walter Isaacson as “a random array of computers and peripherals, including a dozen different versions of the Macintosh”.
Jobs attended product review sessions over the course of several weeks, before losing patience. Interrupting the latest meeting, he walked to a whiteboard and drew a 2×2 grid – two columns topped by the words “Consumer” and “Pro”, and two rows labelled “Desktop” and “Portable”. He instructed his team members to focus on just four products – one to fit each quadrant – and discontinue everything else.
“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he told Isaacson. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”
NR Narayana Murthy: Providing Support & Reassurance
In 1981, NR Narayana Murthy co-founded consulting firm Infosys. He eventually stepped down as Chairman in 2006, before being recalled as Executive Chairman seven years later following multiple quarters of low or negative growth.
As a crisis manager, Murthy drew inspiration from one of his first bosses. Working for a software company in Paris, he found a huge error within the operating system late one Friday evening. The glitch was his fault, and everyone else on the team had already left, with the exception of his boss.
“I explained that the repair task would take about 24 hours,” Murthy explained. “He just smiled. He and his wife were supposed to go to someplace for dinner that night. He cancelled it. He sat down with me. He told me jokes. He brought food and coffee for me. And I completed the task around 4:00 pm or 4:30 pm the next day.
“That was when I realised that a great leader would provide you full bottom line support when the going was bad, and that he would not get upset. But once the task was completed and once we had recovered from the crisis, he or she would show his or her anger. This is something I have practised. There were many occasions when my colleagues felt that I had not got upset in a crisis.”
David Cote: Sticking to the Plan
A graduate of General Electric’s internal auditing program, a breeding ground for top executives, Cote became CEO and President of the international conglomerate Honeywell.
At the time of his appointment, Honeywell was in the mire. Stock prices had already plummeted following the company’s acquisition by AlliedSignal in 1999, while the European Commission’s 2001 decision to block a proposed takeover by GE on competition grounds plunged Honeywell into a malaise that resulted in the ouster of then-CEO Michael Bonsignore.
Cote soon found that the situation was even bleaker than anticipated: “Once I got there, I realized as bad as it looked externally, it was even worse internally.”
However, with his refusal to veer off-track or be distracted by competitor activity, Cote was able to turn the situation around. He eschewed high-profile acquisitions, instead focusing on mid-sized deals that expanded Honeywell’s core product lines, and refused to overcommit the company by following rivals into new markets.
His disciplined approach paid off, with the company’s market value more than tripling during his decade-and-a-half in charge.
In times of adversity, organisations need the right leaders working in environments in which they can make the biggest positive impact. Morgan Latif can help you to get there. Get in touch to find out more.
