Problem solving is a skill set that leaders, managers, and team members alike need in order to be effective. It’s crucial for navigating unexpected challenges and making everyday decisions. Things have been hard recently with COVID and then inflation, but businesses are surviving and thriving. Problem solving helps you take another look at a difficult situation and find a way through.
In this article, we look at the various skills involved in problem solving. From there, we consider strategies for different scenarios, including problems that appear so complex, it’s difficult to picture a solution. We explore problem solving in conflict resolution, management consulting and creativity, and end by looking at developing a problem-solving mindset. Which is something open to EVERYONE.
Why is Problem Solving So Important?
People with good problem-solving abilities stand out in a work team. But in difficult times, problem solving abilities don’t simply distinguish individuals as leadership material, ready and able to grasp opportunities. Problem-solving enables companies to be resilient and agile, pivoting into different ways of working and routes to market. And it allows them to adjust their course as conditions change.
What’s the Most Important Problem Solving Skill?
There isn’t just one! Problem solving involves a combination of skills, starting with critical thinking and analysis to understand problems and juggle possible solutions. Another aspect is being proactive, anticipating problems and acting to prevent them or mitigate their effects. Problem solvers are inclusive leaders, welcoming new ideas and taking inspiration from everyone. They’re also pragmatic, weighing up the factors that affect the choice of solution:
Available resources – money, time, people.
Deadlines that need to be met.
Likely risks and rewards for each option.
Problem Solving is Part of Our Human Nature
Say the word ‘problem,’ and you might think first of a matter or situation that’s unwelcome or harmful. FIRE! It needs to be dealt with urgently, overcome, and put right. Problems can make us feel threatened and anxious. Our fight/flight reaction can stop us from thinking clearly about how to handle them. But calm yourself, and solving problems feels good.
We’re hardwired to problem solve, as evolved primates. Problem solving has this positive effect because it stimulates our brains to produce dopamine, the chemical regulating mood, memory, and concentration. There’s also extensive research linking the happy hormone, oxytocin, with collaboration, creative problem-solving, and being curious and acting on it. Work on developing your problem-solving skills, and you’ll feel better mentally and physically.
Problem solving gives us satisfaction which means we feel good when we’re doing it
3 Kinds of Problem Solvers – Which One Are You?
Independent – Look at a problem and solve it on your own, right away.
Thinker – Think critically about a situation before making a move.
Asker – Ask someone else for the answer, to make sure you’re solving the problem the right way.
This is a trick question! The reality is, we all problem-solve in one or other of these ways, depending on the situation and our previous experience. When you’re in the hot seat in an interview, explain how you’ve used all three approaches, and you’ll do well.
What Makes a Good Problem Solver?
Good problem solvers make decisions and resolve issues using critical thinking and analytical skills. They consider all the factors in situations and decide the best solution. This includes finding solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. Stay focused, break the jigsaw into smaller pieces and you’ll start seeing daylight.
What Are the Strategies for Problem Solving?
Whatever problems we face, work challenges, practical problems, or personal issues, people around the world tackle them the same way:
7 Steps in Problem Solving
#1: Define the problem
#2: Analyse the problem
#3: Develop potential solutions
#4: Evaluate the options
#5: Select the best one
#6: Implement the chosen solution
#7: Measure the results
To Solve a Problem, First You Must Be Clear What it is
Let’s look in more detail at step 1, Define the Problem. The software architect Peter Cripps describes 3 types of problem:
Simple problems have a single cause, are well-defined and have a clear and unambiguous solution.
Complex problems can have multiple causes, are difficult to understand and solving them can lead to other problems and unintended consequences.
Wicked problems: The IT design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber coined this term in 1973. It describes problems that seem so complex, it’s difficult to picture a solution.
Figuring out which kind of problem you’re dealing with is a good first step
Rittel and Webber identified wicked problems as having these characteristics:
Difficult to define.
Hard to know when they’ve been solved.
No clear right or wrong answer.
Difficult to learn to solve them through experience.
Each problem is unique.
There are too many possible solutions to be able to choose the ‘right’ one.
Here Comes the Cavalry!ALL Types of Problems Benefit from a Systematic Approach to Solving Them
Our stress level can affect our ability to see a situation clearly. The 4 ‘S’ Method will help you stay focused on solving the problem. The people who devised it were prepping MBA students for management consultancy careers, but it’s straightforward enough to benefit everyone.
4 Basic Steps in Problem Solving: The 4 ‘S’ method
State the problem: Work to understand it, then state exactly what it is.
Structure the problem: Break it down into smaller parts.
Solve the problem: Having separated the parts, analyse each one separately and address it.
Sell the solution: If you can’t persuade others of your solution’s value and feasibility, you’ll never implement it! When selling it to others, explain your reasoning, but focus on the solution.
Three Types of Problems
People solve three types of business problem:
Hypothesis-driven problems
Issue-driven problems
Creative challenges, including sales, marketing, and communications planning.
The 4 ‘S’ method works for all three types of problems, helping people think clearly and avoid being swamped by detail and emotion.
The ‘s’ method gives you an easy way to remember 4 key steps to problem solving
Now Let’s Get on With the Show
People writing about work and organisational problem-solving use management language like goals, root causes and action plans. But the process they describe follows the 7 steps in problem solving we mentioned earlier. The following list comes from an American university:
The 8-Step Problem Solving Process
#1: Define the problem.
#2: Clarify the problem.
#3: Define the goals.
#4: Identify the root cause.
#5: Develop an action plan.
#6: Execute the action plan.
#7: Evaluate the results.
#8: Continuously improve.
The additional step in this list, continuous improving, covers the issues that arise after solving a particular problem. Continuous improvement involves being proactive in anticipating further problems.
Make Problem Solving a Team Effort
Effective problem solving as a team involves having an environment where everyone can speak their mind and contribute freely. Helping team members gain confidence and experience in problem solving is a key part of developing people. Problem-solving abilities are connected to other soft skills, including:
Everybody’s Doing It – Problem-Solving in Everyday Business Life
Thankfully, problem-solving in business isn’t always about complex, or major, problems! But it still involves following the 7 steps and staying focused with the 4 ‘S’ method. Here are some common scenarios calling for problem solving and effective communication:
Correcting a mistake at work.
Overcoming a delay.
Resolving an issue with a customer.
Overcoming issues related to a limited budget.
Navigating a scheduling problem or staffing shortage.
Troubleshooting and resolving technical issues.
Solving housekeeping problems involving money, customer billing, accounting, bookkeeping etc.
Taking the initiative when a colleague overlooks or misses something important.
Discussing a problem with your superior before it becomes potentially worse.
Solving a safety issue or reporting it to someone who can solve it.
Reducing or eliminating a company expense.
Finding ways to make the company more profitable through new services or products, and pricing, promotion, and sales ideas.
Changing how a process, team or task is organised to make it more efficient.
Using creative thinking to come up with solutions you haven’t used before.
Carrying out research to collect data and information to find new solutions.
Finding a new piece of data or insight that can guide a company’s decisions or strategy better.
Boosting the company or team’s performance by improving communication.
This model measures how a person behaves when presented with a conflict situation
Competing
Avoiding
Accommodating
Compromising
Collaborating
The best strategy for handling and resolving conflicts is to seek a win-win solution through collaboration. We’ll now look at how people do this, first in management consultancy, then in solving creative problems.
Think Like the Consultants – Problem-Solving Mindsets for Uncertain Times
In September 2020 the McKinsey Quarterly ran a piece summarising their findings from decades of problem solving with leaders across business, non-profit and policy sectors. McKinsey concluded great problem solvers are made, not born. They learn to adopt an open and curious mindset and follow a systematic process for cracking even the most inscrutable problems. And they’re at their best in conditions of uncertainty.
McKinsey’s 6 Mutually Reinforcing Mindsets
Be curious about every aspect of your problem: Our natural biases can make us ‘shut down’ the range of solutions too early. Better solutions come from being curious about the broader range of potential answers. So, put question marks behind your first-cut answers! Curiosity is the engine of creativity.
Be an imperfectionist, with a high tolerance for ambiguity: Tolerate ambiguity, and stay humble. Challenge obvious solutions that imply certainty, and back your hunches. Embracing imperfection leads to more effective problem solving.
Have a dragonfly view of the world, seen through multiple lenses: Think beyond the obvious. Often, a secret only unlocks itself when viewed from multiple perspectives.
Pursue “occurrent” behaviour and restless experimenting: Don’t just go with what you think will happen, find out what REALLY occurs. And be prepared to experiment. You’ll generate fresh data and get insights others don’t have.
The smartest people aren’t always in the room: Brainstorm with people outside your usual team. The wider the circle you draw on, the more novel and creative your solutions will be.
Show and tell: McKinsey’s piece says the best problem solvers make the solution obvious. Be clear about the action that should flow from your findings. Express it visually, so you can debate and embrace the path to the answers. Present it emotionally as well as logically, and show why your preferred action offers a good balance between risk and reward. Spell out the risks of doing nothing at all, which could be costlier than solutions that aren’t quite right.
How To Solve Creative Challenges
The other important area of business problem-solving is creative challenges, including advertising, marketing, and communications.
Creative challenges call for a slightly different way of problem solving
Balance divergent and convergent thinking: Think creatively to start with, then pick out the ideas that most closely fit the brief.
Reframe problems as questions: Shift from seeing the obstacles to finding potential solutions.
Defer judgement of ideas: There are no wrong answers or bad ideas in a brainstorm.
Focus on “Yes and,” instead of “No, but”: Encourage everyone to feel involved in finding possible answers.
Remember the 4 C’s of problem solving: Communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.
Brainstorming, as in idea generation, involves the following steps:
Clarify and identify the problem: WHY is there this problem? Set criteria for judging the ideas you generate.
Research the problem: Use the available desk research and carry out consumer research.
Identify the creative challenges: In what ways could we address this better?
Generate the ideas: Write down everything people come up with. Don’t let anyone criticise anyone else’s ideas. And set a time limit.
Evaluate the ideas: Do this against the criteria you set, and find which ones meet them most effectively. If you’re the team leader, don’t just pick your personal favourites! You may need to develop some ideas further, but it will be worth it.
Draw up an action plan, and go for it.
And Finally: Developing A Problem-Solving Mindset
A problem-solving mindset is essential in business. Even with the best planning and preparation, things can go wrong. Focus on these critical aspects:
Take responsibility: Avoidance isn’t a problem-solving skill! When you see a problem, be eager and willing to step up and try to resolve it.
Take ownership of your emotions: When things go wrong, it’s important to centre yourself and regain your composure, before choosing your response.
Be clear about what’s gone wrong, what it’s costing you and the goal you’d like to achieve.
Stay objective: Be accurate and detailed about what’s happened, and don’t fill any gaps with assumptions.
Listen actively: People will feel valued and appreciated, and encouraged to be more open, trustworthy, and helpful as you work to resolve the problem.
Probe and reflect: Question and reflect, and gather as much information as you can.
Seek to find the most appropriate solution: Don’t necessarily jump at the first solution that comes to mind. Invite all the stakeholders to offer their thoughts.
We Have The Technology. But We Still Need The Humans!
Whilst technology has made vast developments, we’re still needed for problem solving
The World Economic Forum listed complex problem solving as the number one business skill for 2020. And McKinsey’s leadership group’s research shows organisations with problem solving capability in the top 25% earn 3.5 times higher shareholder return than the bottom 25%. Algorithms are transforming problem solving, but the reality is, combining them with human capability still gives better outcomes.
Yes, the tech can crunch through the data faster than we can, but it doesn’t necessarily come up with the obvious reasons behind it. Or the best solutions. Humans look set to remain essential in problem solving for the foreseeable future. And right now, it’s a skill set we can all develop.
Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” – Bruce Lee
The world we live in is volatile, uncertain, and ambiguous. In fact, the recent pandemic is proof of that. However, in order to survive, we must be resilient and nowhere is this more evident than in the workplace. Leaders have faced challenges they had no idea existed. In the face of constant change, they have had to make difficult decisions. In order to stay ahead, they have needed to be extremely adaptable, proactive, and resilient. After all, without resilient leadership, it is impossible to develop and grow a resilient workforce.
But how do you strengthen resilient leadership?
As with any skill, resilience can be taught, learned, and honed with practice; in this article, we’ll look at why is being resilient important, some strategies and examples for how to do that.
Use the link below to get your pack of cards today!
Let’s first look at what resilient leadership theory actually is before moving on to examples and techniques for enhancing resilience in leaders.
Resilience is an essential trait of high-performing leaders. To advance and thrive, leaders must cultivate it within themselves. They are also responsible for assisting in protecting the energy of the people in their teams.
When we think of resilient leadership, we often envision bold and brave individuals. People who appear to be immune to setbacks and failure. These people may be resilient, but that isn’t what resilience really is.
Toughening up isn’t the goal of a resilient leader. It is the ability to recover and adjust after setbacks. To keep going in the face of adversity. It’s about learning to be comfortable with discomfort while still leading others with empathy, courage, and conviction.
The pandemic meant that leadership had to become more resilient in its practice
Number one is competence, which means knowing all of your skills and what you already do exceptionally well. The things you’ve learned along the way, and the things you’ve picked up during different jobs.
It’s all about reflection. What skills will come in handy when things get tough? What are the skills and competencies required for your role to be successful? Begin by listing all of these and determining whether there are any gaps.
Do you need to invest in some skills to truly ensure that you are prepared for any situation that may arise?
It’s not so much about knowing everything but about having problem-solving skills and knowing the right people so that when things get tough. You should know where to look things up, how to solve and figure things out, or who to talk to.
To reflect on it. Consider the following questions:
What are some of your key strengths?
What are your natural talents?
What are the things that people come to you for help with?
These can be indicators of your unique competencies, and skills that you have acquired along the way.
The second C is confidence, which means that you believe in your own abilities. You have to believe in your own strength and all that you’ve already accomplished. Start by believing that whatever you’ve learned will help you figure things out going forward, that you have what it takes.
You can conduct a CliftonStrengths assessment, for example, or you can begin to reflect on past accomplishments and challenges, looking at everything you’ve already overcome or achieved.
Confidence is key to a resilient workforce
3. Connection
Connection is the third of the seven Cs. To be truly resilient, we must believe that we have people on our side who will catch us if we fall. You need a supportive group.
Who exactly are the people in your life—your friends, your family, your coworkers, your mentors, your peers, your manager, your team. What do they do for you? What are the communities that you’re part of? Have you got any hobbies? Are you part of a club? Who in your life is always there to support you?
Consider reflecting on all the various groups you belong to and identifying the key figures you can really rely on as a way to strengthen this. So, if something happens at work, for example, have someone who understands what’s going on there.
So consider your most important relationships. Then, because relationships are a two-way street, consider what you can do for the other person. How can you strengthen the bonds? So, for each person in your safety network, write down an action to see how you can do something nice or supportive for them in order to build and invest in that relationship.
It is critical that we remember to give as well. And if something happens to you or you require assistance, they will be there. No questions asked.
4. Character
Your character is the fourth C. That means knowing your values, knowing what’s right and wrong, and having a genuine connection to what you truly care about. That is critical for resilience because it will assist you in making difficult decisions. It will help you stay on track.
When things get tough, it will help you see the way forward. You’ll be inspired to go back because you can relate it to the things you value and are most passionate about. It also assists you in forgiving yourself when you make mistakes because when you reflect on your values and why you did the things you did, you will see that you made decisions based on your values.
And, yes, perhaps things did not work out. Perhaps there was a better way to go about things, but your intentions were sound. It’s often much easier to forgive ourselves and feel motivated to try again after that.
So, think about your values. What are your core values? Do you stand for something particular? What are your non-negotiables?
5. Contribution
Contribution is the fifth C in the seven Cs of the resilient leadership toolkit. What have you done to improve the lives of others or the greater good of the world? Is there something that motivates you? What is your mission? That is very important because it will help us find the drive and motivation to try again. You need to understand why you do the things that you do, why you work so hard, and why it’s important to get back up.
So be aware of what you stand for. What do you want to be part of?
Your contribution allows you to be part of a resilient team
To do that, you can start to reflect on your passions, and things that you really care about that excite you and energise you. You can reflect on people that you admire for their contribution. And what about that did you admire? Starting to find some clues of what are the bigger causes that you care about?
It’s not necessary to change the course of history. It could also simply be to have an impact on the people you lead or those in your life. How do you want people to feel when they interact with you? What kind of change do you want to see?
It takes some time to discover your purpose. So keep thinking about it, taking notes, and adding to it and changing it up. At some point, you will be certain of your goal. It will also help you succeed and persevere during difficult times.
6. Coping
Coping is number six, and these are the traditional coping strategies that many people discuss when we discuss resilience. It is about how you cope with and release stress mentally, emotionally, and physically. How do you care for these three aspects of yourself?
Begin to mentally reflect. What can you do to lighten your mental load? Which steps can you take to write down difficult tasks, delegate them, and prioritise your days? What can you do to ease the burden? How can you reduce mental stress?
It is also closely related to your emotional coping strategies.
Mindfulness and meditation are important strategies. How do you deal with stress? Who are the people you can talk to? Maintain regular contact with them. What strategies can you put in place?
Then, physically, how well do you move your body? What is the quality of your sleep and rest? Of course, what do you consume and put into your body?
Consider these things on a mental, emotional, and physical level. How can you develop coping mechanisms to relax and relieve stress? To ensure that our body and mind are in the best condition possible, it is crucial that we take these steps before things get difficult. Furthermore, we are the most energised to face adversity.
7. Control
Finally, control is the final C. You need to remember that you have control over your thoughts, decisions, actions, and behaviours. You can change things.
We often worry about things over which we have no control. We waste emotional energy worrying about things we can’t change or being angry about decisions made by others.
What you can do is choose not to worry about things over which you have no influence or control and instead focus your energy on things over which you have control. This will give you enough emotional energy for your own causes, work, and the things that are important to you.
Focus on the things you can control, not those you can’t
If we waste energy on things we can’t even influence, we won’t be ready and prepared for when things get tough on our end. A lot of things happened in the last few years that were beyond our control. Many decisions were made about our lives and our lockdown that were not always in our control. But what we can control is how we deal with it. What are the decisions we make for ourselves, our families, and our jobs, and are they difficult?
A key exercise you can do here is to:
begin reflecting whenever you feel overwhelmed.
Write down everything you’re worried about.
Begin with everything that you’re worried about, or whatever causes you to feel a certain way.
Divide these items into three groups: your circle of concern, your circle of influence, and your circle of control.
Then, Divide Them
Then divide these items into three groups: your circle of concern, your circle of influence, and your circle of control. The difference here is that your circle of control includes things that you can address, change, or act on right away. These are things over which you have complete control. These could include your schedule, when you wake up, what you eat, what you do during the day, and how you structure your day.
The circle of influence is next. These are things you can influence and impact over time by collaborating with the right people, talking to the right people, and inspiring others to act. They are the things over which you have some influence, but not complete control. You may need to collaborate with others to complete these tasks.
Then you have the circle of concern. All of these things are important to us but we have no control over them. We can’t influence those decisions.
What Do I Know With These Thoughts Now?
So, once you’ve organised all of your thoughts into these three categories, here’s what you should do with them:
Circle of control category: Take immediate action, address the issues that concern you, and find a solution.
Circle of influence: Start by defining actions. Who do you need to talk to? What do you need to do? How can you start to drive change in that area?
Circle of concern: You need to release everything written here. These are things that you can’t change. So even if you spend days and hours being upset you can’t change it. You don’t know what’s going to happen and you don’t have any impact on that. So wasting your energy will take away energy from the things that matter and the things that you can actually control.
Reflect on the 7Cs, remind yourself of your competencies and strengths, build your confidence, and review your values. Speak with those in your support network and use the strategies for your coping skills.
The Resilience Spiral
Resilience Risks
The bottom half of the Resilience Spiral depicts the negative suffering you experience as you progress down the spiral. The body, mind, and spirit are all in distress. Recognizing the early signs of a downward spiral can help you fight it.
Resilience Strengths
As efforts are made to live a more resilient lifestyle, the upper half of the spiral shows the progression of positive resilient factors. Moving up the spiral has a positive effect on both the body and the mind.
The Resilience Spiral shows a visual representation of the strengths and weaknesses
What makes a person resilient? When faced with a problem, leaders can easily allow the situation to control them rather than taking control of the situation. Effective resilient leadership necessitates leaders acting in a timely, honest, and iterative manner, acknowledging that mistakes are unavoidable and correcting course rather than assigning blame.
Resilient leaders have:
Flexibility
A leader must be able to recover quickly and protect their team. A car bumper is installed to provide a bounce back and protect the passengers in the event of a collision. A resilient leader is an organisation’s car bumper. They can deal with bad news or disgruntled opinions by listening and responding constructively. Being flexible means being open to change, adapting to situations, and seeing different perspectives and possibilities.
The best way to gain flexibility is through feedback. Flexibility and trust increase productivity, and resiliency. Team members take surveys to give honest, direct feedback on a leader’s effectiveness in these areas.
Agility
Leaders must be able to pivot and change direction quickly as needed. Leaders who are open to suggestions and willing to change their ways of doing things will be more agile in difficult situations. We live and work in uncertain environments, especially today, but resilient leaders can shift their focus to meet needs while still nurturing high-performing teams.
Realisticity
A resilient leader is both realistic and optimistic. They can recognise a problem and look beyond the present situation to envision a bright future on the other side of a difficult situation.
It is valuable to acknowledge a problem or bad situation—and the feelings associated with the circumstances—but the key is not getting sucked into the negativity and pessimism. The focus should quickly switch to solutions
Understanding your team’s emotions means you can help one another be more resilient
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the ability to manage and understand your own emotions as well as the emotions of those around you. High EQ levels enable you to label feelings appropriately and identify how they affect a situation and other people. It is important to be able to express and control emotions in the workplace, but a resilient leader must also be able to interpret and respond to the emotions and needs of others.
The most effective way to improve your emotional intelligence is to become aware of situations in which your natural response may be ineffective. You should intentionally practice adapting your approach to achieve more effective results.
Locus of Control
The belief that one has some control over outcomes, situations, or experiences is referred to as a locus of control. A resilient leader’s locus of control indicates that the focus is on what can be controlled rather than what cannot be controlled. Breaking situations down into controllable and uncontrollable categories makes challenges appear smaller and more manageable.
What is the Relationship Between Leadership and Resilience?
Why is resilience important to leadership? You may be wondering. Leaders’ resilience influences how they think, feel, and perform. It also has an impact on their teams’ performance and engagement.
You will notice in your work that when resilience is high, leadership behaviour is high, stress is low, and people report better team dynamics. Business leaders must adapt and transform at an increasing rate as a result of constant change and technological advancements. You will see a lot of resilient leadership examples in every successful business.
Today’s dynamic complexity demands an ability to thrive in the ambiguous. Unmanaged, it causes anxiety, reduces productivity, and undermines leadership effectiveness. To put it bluntly, the world has changed at such a rapid pace that it has created a significant risk. A risk that, if unabated, will have an impact on the leader, the larger team, and the organisation’s effectiveness and resilience. That risk is a lack of resilient leadership. More specifically, a lack of ability to influence, build and sustain resilience through a dedicated skill set.
It is important to understand to impact that resilience can have on leadership
Take a look at this resilient leadership pdf to learn more about the impact of resilience in leadership.
What is a Good Example of Resilience?
A manager loses two key employees in a week. They complete the advertising and recruiting aspects of replacing those employees while keeping their workload manageable. Resilience is about capability and the ability to learn. As the example shows, resilient leadership isn’t about suppressing or avoiding negative emotions or experiences. It is about dealing with them using all of your mental, and behavioural abilities.
Resilient leadership entails involving others in the organisation’s journey. Leaders must act independently, they must also communicate their strategy to others. The transition process will be much smoother if a new strategy or direction is explained. Leaders should communicate critical information in a variety of formats to ensure that it is received.
Cultivate Positive/ Trusting Relationships
Leaders should concentrate on fostering trust and embracing differences within their teams. Building positive relationships will result in a more adaptable and successful team. It will be more difficult for the leader to make changes if those relationships do not exist. With the right team dynamics and relationships, even drastic changes are possible.
It is critical to stay competitive by learning new technologies, techniques, and strategies. Resilience, like any other skill, can be honed and developed over time. Organisational challenges can provide learning opportunities for open-minded leaders. Every time a leader navigates a crisis, their resilience and perseverance grow. Obstacles are unavoidable, so it’s critical to learn from them.
Promote Change
In order to facilitate change, resilient leaders must be open to change both personally and professionally. A leader must have a vision for the organisation’s future in order to foster change. They must also have the courage to lead change, even when it is difficult. A large part of being a resilient leader is balancing a vision with the reality of an ever-changing landscape.
Encourage Others
Encouragement from your team builds a stronger connection
Leaders must empower and prepare others for success. Encouraging others creates a positive environment in a team where mistakes and failures are acceptable. By encouraging employees to embrace failure and move forward, leaders will help them develop creative solutions and problem-solving for the future. When someone is struggling, assist them by pointing out areas for improvement and recognising their efforts.
It is your responsibility to guide the organisation through good and bad times. People should be rewarded and celebrated when times are good. However, nothing beats emerging from a storm as a stronger leader and a more cohesive team. Accept the difficult times with open arms and use them to grow yourself and develop the resiliency required for long-term success as a leader.
Resilience is the capacity to bounce back quickly from change, adversity, or misfortune. It is the result of taking a broad view. You can supplement it with a supportive network of professional and personal relationships and use it to become accustomed to being uncomfortable.
Your actions in a crisis serve as a model for those who follow you. Remember that as a leader, your followers are constantly watching you. If you act like a weak leader, those around you will pick up on your leadership style. On the contrary, if you demonstrate resilience and strong leadership skills, they will remember that lesson and strive to become more resilient themselves.
The Takeaway
Resilience is an essential trait of high-performing leaders. To advance and thrive, leaders must cultivate it within themselves. It’s about learning to be comfortable with discomfort while still leading others with empathy, courage, and conviction. To achieve true resilient leadership, we must believe that we have people on our side who will catch us if we fall. If you want to know more about resilient leadership and discover how to embody a calm and stable leadership presence amid daily pressures, take a look at this resilient leadership book.
What are the qualities of a good leader? Check out our great leadership article to know more.
Co-Founder of DICE Business Game Changers, Kate Cousens, Shares her Top Tips on Increasing Resilience in the Workplace.
Being resilient has become a business buzzword in recent years. This is not surprising given the sheer volume of change that has affected every workforce across the globe. But what does it take to enact resilience in the workplace as an employee, leader, or business owner?
What is Resilience?
There is a famous Japanese proverb ‘fall down seven times, get up eight’, and that to me is the perfect way of summarising what being resilient is. It is the ability to pick yourself up and dust yourself off when things don’t go to plan. It is learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable. As humans, we inherently don’t like change. When we are subjected to change or even the threat of change, it can make us fearful and trigger those most primal feelings in the body of ‘fight, flight or freeze’.
The good news is that we can learn to become more resilient. Most of us do this through experience over time. We come to realise that we can’t always control the outcomes of things we do in business. So we get less attached to things going a certain way. I believe my resilience grew when I learnt to ‘go with the flow’ of what was, rather than try to manipulate things to be a certain way. Obviously, there will always be certain things that you would like to happen in work, and in life generally, but coming to terms with the fact that things won’t always be exactly as you plan them to be certainly helps you have a more resilient outlook.
The Job Interview Example
Take going for an interview for a new job. I am sure we have all been in the same boat where we desperately want the job we have applied for. We have put our heart and soul into preparing for the interview. We genned up on the background of the organisation, and spent hours researching their values and business strategy. Only to get to the day of the interview and metaphorically mess up.
Maybe you misjudged your train times and got there late, or maybe the interview itself didn’t go great. Maybe you even think you did a sterling job, only to receive feedback that your answers hadn’t met the mark. Someone who is lacking resilience might catastrophise that good things never happen to them, that they will never get another job, that the world is against them. As opposed to a resilient person who might naturally feel a sense of disappointment but would quickly move on, chalking it up to experience and looking ahead to their next opportunity.
A resilient person quickly moves on with a smile
I have wondered whether you can naturally be a resilient person or whether it is something that you learn. Reflecting on my own teenage children, I can see that between the three of them, there is an intrinsic difference in how quickly they can get over things, which is largely personality driven.
Bouncing Back
The ability to bounce back quickly from adversity is something I personally had to learn from a very early age. I moved school and home several times as a young child. At the time, this wasn’t always pleasant but I think it prepared me more than most for the inevitability of change. Likewise, leaving home and fending for myself from the age of 17, putting myself through university and working two (sometimes three!) jobs at a time to fund my studies equipped me with more resilience than most.
But what if you are leading teams who haven’t been exposed to that degree of challenge or change? What practical things can you do to help people become more resilient in the workplace?
The Five Pillars of Resilience in the Workplace
Know these five pillars to build a strong foundation for resilience
Whilst building resilience takes self-reflection, time, and practice, there are five key pillars of resilience that can support your people. Understanding and learning how to manage and positively influence these can make a big difference to how they feel and act at work. These are:
Taking each one in turn, Emotional Wellbeing is how well you manage your emotions and thoughts. This is often referred to as ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and is intrinsically linked to how you view yourself and the world. This is arguably the most fundamental pillar of resilience. If you can understand yourself and manage your emotions, you are far more likely to be able to overcome challenges and smash through hurdles that come along your path. It starts by getting people comfortable sharing how they are feeling at any given moment.
Ask any of my clients and they will tell you that we always start every development session with a ‘check-in’ to allow people to share how they are feeling….’fine’ and ‘ok’ are not emotions! This gets them into a habit of thinking about their feelings. This is one of the main ways you can increase your emotional intelligence. If people in your team need support with their emotional wellbeing there are many books and resources available to help them. The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters is a great place to start.
Inner Drive
Inner drive does what it says on the tin! It is the ability to set goals and motivate yourself, as well as adopt a forward-thinking approach to progress through life. Whilst it might not be something you can force on individuals, it is something I have seen people expand themselves through teaching, mentoring and development sessions.
Future Focus
Future focus is the ability to focus on solutions and positive change, whilst also encompassing acceptance of failures and adversity. This is possibly the one pillar that you can positively influence through training and development. Teach people to come at things with growth rather than a fixed mindset. This can help them to explore potential opportunities for the future and move on more quickly.
Relationships
Having strong relationships with friends, family, and colleagues to provide emotional and physical support is another pillar of resilience. This is largely driven by the individual themselves. However, this can be encouraged in the workplace through the organisation of team events and organisation-wide get-togethers.
Physical Health
A healthy person is better able to be resilient
Finally, there is physical health, in which I would also include mental health, recognising the importance of looking after yourself physically and mentally. Where this isn’t the case for an individual, it can impact the other pillars. This is where, as a leader, it helps being able to spot the early warning signs for people. Such as in terms of their sickness absence records or recurring ailments such as headaches. Offering support through Employee Assistance Programmes or access to fitness classes or gyms and alternative healthcare can play a part in supporting people.
In summary, within the workplace I would suggest that resilience can be cultivated through leaders being in regular contact with their people, getting to know them on a personal level and understanding what is happening for them both in and out of work. I believe this is best done through regular check-ins and one-to-one meetings.
Final Thoughts on Resilience in the Workplace
It is also something that leaders can encourage people to take ownership of. They can do this by sharing their experience and tips on how they have got through challenges and overcome adversities. Everyone has their fair share of highs and lows in life but sometimes people choose not to share these with others. They glide through life like the proverbial swan, whilst paddling like mad beneath the surface of the water! Particularly in this Instagram world where people’s feeds are a collection of high points and happiness. It can make people think that it is only them who is experiencing difficulties.
Personally, I believe that the more open you can be to sharing your experiences and lessons learned with others, the more authentic and the more relatable you become as a leader, which in turn cultivates greater resilience in others.
If you need any support in growing resilience in your team, pleaseConnect with Kate on Linked in.
Action: For even more useful content on team building, check out our ultimate guide on Team Building Skills.
In the film ‘Rocky Balboa’ 2006 there is a great scene where Rocky is talking to his son that feels overshadowed by his famous father. He tells his son that the world isn’t sunshine & rainbows and that nothing will hit as hard as life. Rocky finishes his inspirational speech by telling his son that It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep movin’ forward.
Everyone that saw that film wouldn’t have failed to feel the message of resilience, but that’s the stuff of Hollywood. For us mere mortals that have been locked-down, possibly losing & then hunting for a job, or going through one of the toughest stresses of all – financial uncertainty. How do we keep moving forward?
Let’s not begin with the advice from the internet or the experts. Instead, with what you do now. You have developed a resilience. Though some days you’d rather pull the duvet over your head and forget the world. What 3 things do you do now to be resilient? To get back up when life has knocked you down with a telling off from your boss, a cancelled order from your client, or another bank letter arriving in the post.
3 Things
For me, the 3 things I rely on are:
1. My partner – a problem halved is a problem shared.
2. My office walls are littered with letters, drawings, & words ‘you can do it’ from family & friends.
3. All those phrases, quotes, & images we see on Linkedin, & other social media I print. Then I leave that folder on my office chair and it is that which I look at before I sit down for the day.
Keep moving forward
Our first step to building the resilience muscle is to recognise what we already do and do more of it because it works. The second step is to return to the internet and the experts for their advice because we need to exercise our resilience muscle. But there is no point in demanding more of your muscles when you are in a triathlon. It is the work before that is important.
Similar to our resilience muscle. It’s not when life has knocked us down that we start seeing how strong the muscle is, we need to exercise and build it ready for those times. The way to do this is by having the strategies in place that will help.
Firstly, the 3 things that we do, and secondly I challenge you to try one other thing this week that could become your fourth strategy for picking you up when you get knocked down. You probably know what they are. Just in case; Phone your best friend, meditate, go for a walk, get some big pens & an A3 sheet & write a lot, phone a parent, swim/run/gym…
The question isn’t – How resilient are you? The question is How good is the plan you have put in play that will help you to be resilient when you most need it?
Resilience and Wellbeing: The Key to Businesses and People Getting Back on Track
UK office-based working patterns are unpredictable at the moment because some businesses are still home working. Growing numbers of offices are back full-time, while other people are going in odd days. After long months of working remotely, this new stress is taxing our resilience and wellbeing.
We’ve heard those two words a lot during the pandemic. We’ll most likely go on hearing them a lot for the next few years. But do you understand what they mean and how to benefit from them? And do you know how better understanding could help you succeed?
Resilience and Wellbeing Can Come as Easily as Breathing
You can work on resilience and wellbeing and practise mindfulness or meditation, and see changes quite quickly. Join us on our ‘tasting tour’ and pick up some pointers to incorporate in your life. And don’t forget to check out our Top Ten Takeaway Tips at the end!
What Does Resilience Look Like?
Resilience is a quality you can’t pin down. But at its most dramatic it enables people to be knocked down by life and bounce back stronger. Rather than have failure overcome us and drain our resolve, we find ways to rise again.
Recovering and thriving can seem remote possibilities when we hit difficult or traumatic circumstances. But working on our resilience and wellbeing certainly makes us more likely to turn things around and come through.
How is Resilience Linked to Health and Wellbeing?
Change can be stressful and affect our wellbeing and mental health. Resilience helps protect us from various mental health conditions stress brings on, like depression and anxiety.
Also, resilience can help offset factors that increase the risk of mental health conditions, like being bullied or the effects of previous trauma. You can improve your wellbeing, and hence your resilience by mindfulness or meditation and working on self-care.
Resilience and wellbeing have been tested throughout working remotely during the pandemic
Is Resilience a Skill?
Resilience is a special skill because it is defined by our individual outlook and response. It’s an adaptive mode of thinking, which takes working at. So you can develop it gradually, alongside techniques for improving your initial response to something bad or unwanted.
What are the Three Categories of Resilience?
For leaders and managers, steering an organisation through the pandemic means developing three categories of resilience:
Personal
Institutional
Post-crisis
With so much complexity and uncertainty, resilience and wellbeing are essential in the workplace. They underpin leaders’ and managers’ ability to think with clarity and achieve goals. Whoever we are, these qualities help us make positive decisions that shape our lives.
Wigan Wellbeing and Resilience
If we don’t take our wellbeing seriously, we can find ourselves needing help from social services. Wigan Wellbeing and Resilience supports adults over 16s with wellbeing-related needs. Their website points out that childhood traumas and mental health issues can lead to offending and substance or alcohol misuse. Moreover, the disastrous consequences can include homelessness or prison.
Our dwindling resilience and wellbeing can be the cause of our mental health suffering
One in six of us will be affected by mental health disorders during our lives. So, we need to recognise the symptoms early and take action. If you experience low wellbeing over a period of time, you’re more likely to develop mental health problems.
Recognising Resilience and Wellbeing in the Workplace
Many businesses talk about building and improving workplace culture and resilience. The best actively support their people’s wellbeing and mental health. A good resilience culture looks like this:
Employees handle work stress better and develop protective factors.
They have greater job satisfaction, happiness at work, commitment and engagement.
Improved self-esteem, sense of control over life events, sense of purpose and better relations between employees.
Better productivity for the business.
The £33 Billion Question – Just Why are Resilience and Wellbeing in the Workplace so Important?
Before COVID, in October 2017, Deloitte reported that mental health cost employers over £33 billion a year. On the plus side, the report quoted the average return on investment of workplace mental health interventions as over 4:1.
Many UK trade sectors have suffered in the pandemic. But a lot of businesses are better off as a result. In a recent Guardian survey, 88% of organisations made real estate savings in 2020 through remote working. And home working prompted at least one marketing agency to shed its costly London office. It all sounds rosy.
But there’s a downside to remote working. For many people, it means social disconnection, burnout and falling morale. The Bank of England has suggested online working can become a drain on creativity and collaboration. Because we’re social creatures, who need to be with other people.
For young people starting out, the physical workplace is particularly important. It provides valuable opportunities to make friends and get the feel of an organisation. Stuck at home, they miss all this.
Seven Skills of Resilience
You can do a lot to build your personal resilience:
Cultivate a belief in your ability to cope in difficult situations.
Stay connected with your sources of support.
Talk to people about what you’re going through.
Be helpful to others with their situation: try and make a difference for someone else who’s going through it.
Activate positive emotions: do what makes you happy and keep your sense of humour.
Cultivate an attitude of survivorship. A “survivor narrative” is much better for your mental health.
Seek meaning and purpose: find a sense of meaning in the difficulty you’re facing.
Resilience By Numbers – Positivity Pointers on Parade
With a complex subject like this, it helps to break ideas into lists. Stopping the flow of words allows your brain to pause and take things in.
The 4 Capacities
Businesses need to develop reliable responses to difficult situations. Good preparation contributes to sustainable performance, but primarily it’s down to organisational resilience. This involves four capacities to respond:
Bounce back.
Develop ‘workarounds’ to absorb losses and shortages.
Adapt continuously to changing conditions.
Deal methodically with problems that arise.
4 Kinds of Resilience
Whether you’re leading or managing a business, or a team member, you need to build your personal resilience:
Mental resilience: The ability to pay attention and motivate yourself to do difficult things.
Emotional resilience: The ability to invoke positive emotions when you need them, like optimism.
Social resilience: The ability to reach out for help when you need it. This also means learning to be someone others want to support and encourage!
Physical resilience: The ability to face physical challenges. Stress is physically demanding and we have to look after our bodies as well.
4 Pillars of Resilience
The four different pillars of resistance will help you to balance life
On its website, the US Defense Logistics Agency says balancing these four Pillars of Resilience will help strengthen your life. Here are their words:
Mental: The ability to cope with mental stresses and challenges. Pay attention to your needs and feelings. Our thoughts control our energy.
Physical: The ability to adopt and sustain healthy behaviours. Regularly exercise and monitor your physical stamina.
Social: The ability to network. Build and value interpersonal relationships. Strong connections widen our perceptions and grow character.
Spiritual: The ability to adhere to beliefs, principles or values needed to persevere and prevail in accomplishing missions.
The Defense Logistics Agency serves alongside fighters in forward areas. That’s challenging enough! But they say the pandemic added extra hurdles in 2020, by bringing changes in military operations and safeguarding personnel. Even they were affected.
5 Pillars of Resilience
The Bounceback Project is a medical project in Minnesota that promotes heath through happiness and focusing on the positive. They list 5 pillars:
Self-awareness
Mindfulness
Self-care
Positive relationships
Purpose
5 More Pointers: PermaPlus+
The American psychologist Professor Martin Seligman devised a wellbeing framework called PERMA+. Designed to be easily memorised, these are:
Positive emotion
Engagement
Relationships
Meaning
Accomplishments
Widely adopted in Australia, this resource is available online and worth checking out.
The 7 ‘C’s of Resilience
Dr Ken Ginsburg, a paediatrician and human development expert in Philadelphia, has identified seven interrelated components that makeup being resilient:
Competence: The ability to handle stressful situations effectively. Having the skills to face challenges and practising using them.
Confidence: This is rooted in children knowing they have competence.
Connection: Having close ties to friends, family and community helps build strong ties and less likely to seek out alternative destructive behaviours.
Character: Enhancing self-esteem and knowing that you can make “wise” choices towards your values.
Contribution: Experiencing personally contributing to the world teaches you the world’s a better place because you’re in it.
Coping: Children who have coping skills are better prepared to overcome life’s challenges.
Control: When children realise they have control over their decisions and actions, they are more likely to make choices so that they bounce back from life’s challenges.
These have been turned into the basis for various child development projects.
9 Ways to Build Resilience and Wellbeing in the Workplace
Building resilience requires teamwork
The writer Barry Winbolt has come up with these tips:
Cherish social support and interaction.
Treat problems as a learning process.
Avoid making a drama out of a crisis.
Celebrate your successes.
Develop realistic life goals.
Take positive actions in the face of adversity.
Nurture a positive view of yourself.
Keep a realistic perspective.
Practise optimism.
And Finally…
As promised, here are 10 takeaway tips you might find helpful.
As we’ve been saying all through, even if you’re not naturally resilient, don’t worry. You can develop a resilient mindset and attitude by applying yourself. Think about incorporating these tips into your life:
Learn to relax: develop good sleep patterns. Do some exercise you enjoy. Use physical relaxation techniques like mindfulness or meditation. It’s all deep breathing, anyway.
Practise thought awareness: think about how you think about things.
Rewrite your outlook: practise changing the way you think about adverse situations and events.
Learn from your mistakes: think about how you can grow after a crisis. Re-assess your life.
Choose how you react: your response is actually up to you.
Keep perspective: your situation may seem overwhelming but it may not have much of an impact in the long term.
Set ‘SMART’ goals: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.
Build your self-confidence.
Develop strong relationships.
Be flexible, willing to change.
This concludes our whistle-stop tour of resilience and wellbeing. As you’ll have noticed, there are some consistent themes. You have to take ownership of your situation and see it in perspective.
How Can I Develop Personal Resilience?
One thing you can do is build up your social network. We’re not talking here about ‘likes,’ connections and followers. Find people who genuinely care about you. It’s far easier to develop and maintain resilience if you have a healthy social network. It’s true even if your network is just a few people. If you’re looking to develop your resilience, ask yourself:
Recognising the people who are helpful and loyal to you is important. But equally, make time and emotional space for others. Be genuinely interested in them: show they can lean on you in hard times too.
Can I Be Trained in Resilience?
You can certainly be trained in mindfulness, as we said. That’s a good starting point. Before the pandemic, poor mental health was the UK’s leading cause of sickness absence. In 2013 it accounted for 70 million sick days a year. Mindfulness training was found to have a clinically significant effect in treating anxiety and depression.
Mindfulness was also found to reduce perceived stress, anger, absentmindedness and physiological symptoms. It improved positive outlook, self-worth, autonomy, motivation and morale. And it’s as easy as breathing in and out.
We Should Do This Stuff in Our Office
It can feel like company wellbeing schemes are where it’s at, when you look on social media. But some of the existing wellbeing boosters are really effective. And you needn’t spends any money for you and your staff to benefit.
Mindfulness training can support organisational resilience by:
Giving a greater sense of awareness, helping staff understand and be more receptive to responsible self-care.
Enabling people to recognise signs of stress and respond more effectively.
Equipping people to recognise and change their habitual reactive thought and behaviour patterns which add to their stress.
Supporting an open-minded culture, where relationships are fostered and valued.
In the grocery industry, for example, access is free to GroceryAid’s Health and Wellbeing portal. It helps counter ‘presenteeism,’ as in being at work but distracted and underperforming. They even have Woebot, the AI counsellor available 24/7 via an app.
Gimme Five! It’s Doctor’s Orders
The NHS is the UK’s largest provider of wellbeing services. So it would be rude not to include them in our roundup of resilience and wellbeing ‘numbers’:
NHS England’s 5 Steps to Wellbeing
The NHS have many helpful models and tools to help you build resilience and wellbeing
The NHS England website says there is evidence to suggest there are five steps you can take to improve your mental health and wellbeing:
Connect with other people.
Be physically active.
Learn new skills.
Give back to others: volunteer, give your time.
Pay attention to the present moment (Mindfulness again).
The NHS website also says, don’t rely on technology or social media to build your relationships. They point out it’s easy to get into the habit of only ever texting, messaging, or emailing people. Clearly, as we come out of the pandemic and we can meet people, this will change. But the habit is so ingrained…
Now you’ve read this, put your phone down for a moment. Think about someone you can talk to about what you’ve just been reading. Don’t keep it to yourself. Share what you know about resilience and wellbeing and help the world!
I imagine there are thousands of journal articles, academic papers and written thoughts concerning the current pandemic of Covid-19. There will be many more in the coming months and years as we try to make sense of it all. Differing aspects will be presented from well being to managing teams through to leadership models. In reality, the one element we need to keep in mind is our agility to change and consider the present. Certain leadership models will just not work when faced with this kind of scenario. Aspects of a number of leadership models fail to consider the necessary requirement when a national instruction has been issued. Effectively crisis leadership demands holistic clarity and resilience that may not have emerged in the same way previously.
One thing to bear in mind when considering emergent models will be the quality of research and appropriation to our lives at that time. If not, we potentially fall back into the world of ‘experts’ where well-meaning individuals provide their knowledge as truth. With this in mind, this piece considers crisis leadership developed during the current situation with outcomes and, unusually, the past in mind. Moreover, there is an honest attempt to consider how we can lead and provide direction in the here and now.
All Stop
Covid-19 prompted a response from the government that has not been experienced before. This national instruction and the change it brought will have affected each individual in differing ways. For many, this would have invoked a ‘what do I do now?’ response, leading to an all stop situation.
We fail to consider the impact on leaders due to the view of our own situation
For most, this was an ‘I don’t know what to do’, rather than a ‘won’t do’. We were, and probably still are, not ready for such a dramatic change to our personal situations. The all stop approach is a natural reaction in any change. Questions such as, ‘what does this mean for me?’ often occur. This can invoke differing reactions in people such as anxiety, shock, and clarity for some and anything in between. It is at this point we look to our leaders for information, direction and a sense of purpose. Often, we fail to consider the impact on leaders due to the view of our own situation.
Stop, Pause And Reflect
A recent Health Service Journal article indicated that NHS managers are working more than 20 hours over their contracted hours. If this is week-in-week-out, fatigue will set in, performance drops, and mistakes are made. In essence, the more hours worked, the lower the actual performance leading to possible sickness. There has been, in some articles, recognition to stop, pause and reflect and understand the silence after the noise.
This has been a prevalent message from many sectors, and not least for healthcare. As this pandemic is a new scenario for every individual, team and organisation, this would seem like sage advice. A question here would be, to reflect on, what? Try as we might, there is little to go on in terms of active models and guidance to work through. Though collective sense-making, stopping, pausing and thinking can at least provide a point of reference.
Leading With Resilience
Leaders and managers will be measured partly for their follow through on what they say. For the main part, this will require resilience through a nationally imposed change. One psychological definition of resilience is:
‘The process by which individuals demonstrate more positive outcomes than would be expected’.
Personal resilience can only be understood in the context of responding to significant adversity. Recent research for the University of Oxford provides a view of resilience. It states individuals who see a crisis as an opportunity to grow and learn, tend to be more resilient. In this mindset, a positive view of outcomes is adopted to guard against negative effects promoting positive mental health. Within this, selective attention, not being pulled into a negative mindset, and effective processing sets the agenda for a strong foundation. This foundation is the groundwork for motivational change and adaptive behaviours where adversity is a threat.
There is no doubt that Covid-19 has created a situation that is life-changing. Some people are thriving, some are barely surviving and, sadly, recent statistics show that some are not surviving. These are the deeper scars this situation has left us with. It is these kinds of experiences that make viewpoints such as ‘let’s just get on with it’ absolute nonsense. The push back here is ‘get on with what’? The issue with personal resilience is that this is not an all or nothing trait. It is probably the case that some individuals are more resilient than others in given circumstances. This is especially the case where there is a focused positive cognitive pattern than not.
Affecting Change in A Crisis
Through pausing, we can begin to look to gain some kind of clarity on our situation. While we read in the news all the political decisions being made, there is a need to focus on ourselves. Affecting change in a crisis could ask us to consider change modes such as the Kubler-Ross model. This is a useful starting point for behaviours and emotions but does not help in terms of organisational crisis leadership.
Leaders need to pause for a moment to collect thoughts and think about their business and teams before planning the action
We need to turn thought into action, what we need to do.Therefore, a starting point for pausing should note that we can’t affect external changes. A focus on what we can affect seems a logical and helpful place to begin. Left unchecked, we could continue to perform work that is not relevant for this time. While action is applauded are we affecting the right things?
One element to consider here is the curse of inaction. Inaction occurs when we don’t know what to do and therefore do nothing at all.
There is a saying:
‘You can’t plough a field by just thinking about it’
So, through pausing for a moment we can collect our thoughts, think about our businesses and teams and plan the action.
Attributes Over Skill
Attributes are our innate qualities such as patience, adaptability and situational awareness. These come into play when we enter unknown situations and are uncertain of the events. Attributes come forward through our behaviour in these crisis situations and show us and others that essence of leadership.
Attributes win out over skill because skill is gained through many hours of practice, riding a bike, driving a car and such. Let’s consider athletes, they become the top of their game through repetition and constant practice. There is a natural end game here. When a crisis happens, that skill is rendered almost useless. Patience, adaptability and situational awareness will provide better outcomes than relying on skills alone. Trying to push your skills into this situation will only serve to make you weary and question yourself.
Situational awareness linked with pausing and allowing time to reflect will provide clarity. A series of questions can be answered in this moment:
Is the ‘ask’ right now?
What would make the most difference to our team now?
Is this our highest priority?
When have we faced similar challenges? What helped?
What skills and experiences do we have to overcome this? Who else can help?
What actions will we take?
What routines or processes do we need to set up?
The list could go on. These are a good starting point for reflection, utilising situational awareness and enhancing attributes over skill. Linked to the collective sense-making model below, a clearer way forward begins to emerge.
Collective Sense-Making for Crisis Leadership
The collective sense-making model offers us an opportunity not only to pause but add meaning and clarity. When the crisis of Covid-19 broke, many of those still working will have tried to organise their previous normal. This would have been an attempt to ‘hold on’ to some kind of normality. It rarely makes sense for us to stop or drop what we are doing except in a crisis. The ability to think clearly and rationally is superseded by panic and shock.
Crisis response measures are different depending on the time in the crisis
This model provides us with a plan to move forward with clarity. While a reflective model, it asks us to understand the present and future and not the past. This is a pertinent point as the current crisis did not exist before February 2020. Therefore, your processes may have been right for that time. There is a need for honesty within this model mainly considered when we review the ‘Let Go’ quadrant. When observed in action, the crisis-response model has the ability to aid in understanding efficiencies.
Old Practice / New Practice
If we break the model down to old practice / new practice we can reflect on what we require moving forward. This considers your operating model and what you might like to bring forward into the new world. ‘Let Go’ offers an opportunity to drop the processes that are not fit for purpose moving forward. This may be the largest change and the area where you may need to convince others. This will also mean a more directive leadership style during the crisis. The reason is there may be a comfort for employees in performing processes the old way. ‘Restart’ is not exactly doing what we always did. They are, however, processes that are generally critical but may not need to be performed in the same way. This is a change in itself.
End / Amplify
The End/Amplify quadrants are potentially the most challenging. End is a response to the crisis itself and has been useful in carrying through decisions based on the situation. Individuals and teams may view this as their ‘new normal’ and wish to continue. This view is taken because it works and results are provided. There needs to be a realisation that this process will only work for now. This is where the challenge of ‘Amplify’ comes into play. Amplify is maximising the opportunity that the crisis brought.
Amplifying is maximising the opportunity that the crisis brought
This may seem callous and insensitive. Covid-19 has brought benefits that would have taken years to realise. A pragmatic approach to Amplify does need to be taken. This is about potential not an absolute. This is about using this time to test, evaluate and select the right elements to pursue. More than this, consider the agility and emerging themes from these.
While the collective sense-making model is not a replacement for a strategy. It is a temporary state that can move us to action while concentrating on the right actions. It may provide the opportunity for a strategy refresh, especially where ‘amplify’ processes are working. The collective sense-making model concerns change and change usually concerns people. This is their journey also. Through anecdotal evidence, some individuals have thrived through this situation. Realising their talent and agility is essential. The ‘collective’ element in this model is as important as the matrix itself. Allow others to be a major part of the change and seek their input.
Final Thoughts
Whichever business you are in, Covid-19 is a crisis that will have changed the way you operate and approach leadership. At least, for the time it is here. From moving our organisations online to the way we physically connect with each other. Collective sense-making provides an opportunity to pause for a moment and provide a certain direction. As stated in the introduction, there will be a huge amount of research in the coming years.
This article looks to provide some essence of clarity now in a very confusing time. While our teams get to grips with their new situations, there is a chance for leaders to pause. An opportunity to prioritise and understand what is essential to moving from surviving to thriving.
Action: For even more useful content on leadership, check out our ultimate guide on Leadership Skills.
