When pressures skyrocket and people tank: Choices and actions for extraordinary leaders

Enjoy this rerun from the archives today!

Imagine that conditions are such that pressure and risk are through the roof. Don’t have to think too hard to come up with the scenario, huh? Chicken or egg, it’s pretty likely that money and people are in the cellar. So, what will the extraordinary leader do? Make two choices and take five actions.

Choice #1. Being there is first; showing up is what counts. Everyone on the team wants to know that the leader has already made the choice that he or she is sticking around, and this thing is going to work out. Let’s assume for our current purposes that the endeavor is somewhere past the start-up phase. Doesn’t have to be, but the statistics are certainly more in your favor then. Of course, established efforts and businesses do fail, but that is rare when people of character and resolve decide they are going to see it through. Your team wants to know that you have decided not to be beaten! You can all decide later, when things are better, that it’s time to ride a different horse into the sunset.

Choice #2. As the leader, you are absolutely convinced in the tough times that each member of the team has a vital part to play in surviving and thriving. That’s your choice. Anyone who thinks differently can leave now, thank you. That’s their choice.

On a float trip, hike and camp out years ago – a trip that wasn’t supposed to be a survival challenge – with canoe snafus accompanied by ferocious and unexpected bad weather, and just a hint of getting lost, we began to wonder if we might make headlines and some very sad family members. Choices one and two had to be rock-crystal solid and clear or we were going to add abject fear and runaway panic to our bad luck list of the day.

Action #1. Obvious but essential and often skipped, assumed or avoided: Assess the situation objectively and communicate honestly. This isn’t borrowing tomorrow’s trouble; it is naming today’s disaster.

Action #2. Naming it is the beginning of taming it, if you include a plan of address. No pretense that it’s a ready-made solution. Instead, this is assigning people to parts of the problem – people who will investigate further and observe for changes. These are good tactics, but good strategy as well. There’s recon, but there’s also the explicit call to arms of the whole team, and there’s the reassurance that this crisis isn’t going to slip up on us anymore.

Action #3. What did your recon tell you about the crisis? Is it different in degree but not in kind from others you’ve faced, and do you have the reserves to weather this one? If so, say so, and give your team the realistic – but ultimately encouraging – hard news. Or is this a different beast entirely? If so, it’s just rational – though emotionally exceedingly difficult – to put on the “disruptor hats” you’ve been sporadically trying on before and face this crisis head-on but with new eyes.

Very likely it won’t be your whole team that should be given this assignment. You need them for recon anyway. But, they aren’t all the right choices for this task, are they? Do you know who your truly divergent thinkers are? And, get ready for a slap in the face here….Can you honestly put yourself in that camp? If not, you can’t pass the buck, but you ought to pass the mantle for your disruptor team leadership to the one you know can and should lead it.

Action #4. We’re on one of two paths – though we all know that artificially dichotomous analyses are their own sort of hobgoblin for little minds. We’re on something like one of two paths. Weather the crisis like you’ve done before, encourage the socks off your team, give up something yourself to give them a little bit of comfort in the long winter, and prepare both to celebrate when it’s done and plan aggressively your strategies not to be back here in this shape in this sort of trouble again.

Or, you’re on the path that takes the road not taken. You have decisions to make, a vision to cast along with your disruptor team, reassurance to offer everyone you’re leading, and courage to find and to share that allows you to stare down this very real new risk – as to whether your enterprise will survive and, likely the scarier vision, that surviving, it will never be the same again.

Action #5. The first path where you weathered the storm ended painfully but successfully with Action #4. If you’re down to number five, you survived but you did it by being something totally new, or at least something that feels almost totally new. Are you the leader for this new creation? Can you welcome and celebrate it? If so, then congratulations! Your life just got interesting and successful in a whole new way. If not, then congratulations! You have clarity about a personal change you need to make, because you want your leadership to be heart-deep. And offer the same room to everyone on your team, not as ultimatums but as opportunities.

Before you decide I wear rose-colored glasses and my middle name is Pollyanna, I know there’s real life, jobs, money and practical limitations all over the place. As much as is in your power, though, create the space for this to be a win-win for all. After all, your team has a truly transformative victory under your collective belts. Wear it like a world wrestling title belt and buckle, shiny bright and nice to hold high once at a humongous victory celebration, but definitely too heavy and annoying to wear in real life. Get on with it, and enjoy the new creature you’ve helped to create.

Two choices, and five actions for the extraordinary leader to be a part of – and partly responsible for -- a Phoenix rising from the ashes. It’s a pretty cool possibility for the very real possibility that you’re going to face some terrifying crises if you lead for more than just a little while.