Written by: Robert McAlister, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I have written many articles relating to crisis leadership over the years. If the last 18 months (the global pandemic) has demonstrated anything, then it is the importance of good crisis leadership and thinking about crisis leadership qualities and abilities in a different way.
We would probably all agree that leadership, even on a normal day, can be a challenge. Still, leadership in a crisis defines most leader’s careers by its exceptional demands, complexity, and urgency.
Therefore, this article explores what additional qualities and skills are needed between being a good leader in steady-state periods versus leadership within a crisis.
Most research regarding core crisis leadership skills suggest that the fundamental basics required are the following, and I strongly believe that to be true based on my long years of experience:
Sense-Making
Decision Making
Communicating
If we were then to agree that most crisis priorities are about people. For example, the victims, the families, the responding teams, and their leaders, all of whom are under significant pressure and possible trauma, then this indicates a clear skill set of any crisis leader; that of advanced people skills.
What has become clear over recent years is a greater need for a blend of hard and softer skills. It is the latter that is the most neglected in the crisis field, a field fixated by automation, robotics, technical systems, and standard operating procedures and models.
Leadership Intelligence IQ + EQ = LQ
Without a doubt, emotional intelligence is a key to real crisis leadership success. However, just as cognitive intelligence is not the only solution, nor is emotional intelligence. For real crisis leadership, you need both cognitive intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ). Through the application of both, one can derive Leadership Intelligence (LQ).
Having Leadership Intelligence (LQ) will allow you to demonstrate the relevant job knowledge and skills while also demonstrating emotional intelligence of self and others. Leadership Intelligence (LQ) allows us to switch between leadership styles to suit the situation.
Situational leadership allows the leader to assess the circumstances and chose a style that best suits them. Research clearly indicates that leaders who achieve the best results do not rely on one leadership style alone. A good leader uses an eclectic approach in order to ensure they provide an appropriate and measured response to any situation and particularly in the immediate chaos of a crisis.
Complexity and The Perfection Trap
Decision-making and decision-making models are often-sighted, as one of the mainstays of crisis leadership skill sets, but to make good decisions, there are other complementary skills required, that of situational awareness and critical thinking.
One of the biggest crisis leadership challenges is seeing things as they are, not as we are — with our biases unconsciously shaping what we see and pay attention to.
How do leaders improve their ability to understand, visualize, and describe the crisis environment and context to enable good decision making, often with limited quality information available? This is the challenge.
Thin Slicing
Malcolm Gladwell popularized this term in his work, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. Gladwell explains that people ‘think without thinking’ and indulge in thin-slicing (heuristics) whenever they encounter a new person, a new situation or must make a decision about something very quickly. According to him, people make snap judgments quickly by relying unconsciously on thin slices of experiences.
Characteristics such as:
Do you trust your hunches when confronted by an important decision?
Do you feel in your body if a decision is right or wrong?
Do you put a lot of faith in your initial feelings about people and situations?
Do you put more emphasis on feelings than data when making a decision?
Do you trust your experience when arriving at the reasons for making a decision, even if you cannot explain why?
Sense-Making and The Perfection Trap
In a crisis, when the reality is changing by the day (or even by the hour), when there is no way of knowing with certainty what lies ahead or the best course of action to take, there is no time for perfection.
If we expect to have the perfect plan in place to deal with such a complex challenge like the current global pandemic, we are going to be incredibly frustrated and disappointed with our results and the inevitable criticism this will bring.
Perfection is sometimes a worthy idea, but when it comes to accomplishing our biggest objectives within crises, it is something that we need to get comfortable with.
Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization Health Emergency Program, has been at the front lines of several global health threats, including the fight against Ebola and now the coronavirus. On managing through a crisis, he says: “If you need to be right before you move, you will lose. Speed trumps perfection. Perfection is the enemy of good when it comes to emergency management.”
Getting Comfortable with the Unknown
When looking at our biggest objectives, it is easy to fall into the trap of wanting to design the perfect path forward, so we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the steps we are taking are leading us to where we want to go. The problem with that is that the bigger the goal, the bigger the unknowns.
If you have ever hiked up a mountain, you have probably encountered a “false peak.” For those who might be unfamiliar, when hiking up large mountains, you will eventually face a hill that from your current perspective, looks like the summit. It has a crest, it stands against the sky, and by all accounts, you will believe it is the end-goal. However, the closer you get to the false summit, you will realize that the hill you are walking up is blocking another hill you will need to climb.
The term false peak has been used periodically throughout the pandemic, particularly relating to lockdowns and the light at the end of the tunnel, such as the easing of current restrictions and a return to normality, whatever that make it look like.
There is no such thing as a perfect crisis management plan. As crisis leaders, our days are littered with moments when we think, “I wish I would have known that sooner.” But the trouble is—you could not have known that information going in. It would not have been possible.
We know what we know. We know what we do not know. But we do not know what we do not know. Those types of unknowns will not show up on our radar until we come within range of them.
Personal Resilience
The emotional consequences of perfectionism include fear of making mistakes, stress from the pressure to perform, and self-consciousness from feeling both self-confidence and self-doubt. All these will undoubtedly affect your performance as a crisis leader and, ultimately, that of any response or recovery efforts.
When looking at the goals, we want to accomplish. It is important to be mindful that most of them will require us to take one step forward and one step back so we can then take two steps forward.
During great uncertainty, leaders across all industries are adjusting strategies, rewriting the rules of operating, and sometimes making things up as they go. This kind of leadership demands great confidence, mental agility, and a huge amount of personal resilience.
As anyone who has been a crisis leader will tell you, personal resilience and awareness of your own resilience counts.
The good news is that research suggests positive construal can be taught. Leaders can make themselves vulnerable by how they think about things. Therefore, teaching leaders to think of stimuli in different ways—to reframe them in positive terms when the initial response is negative or in a less emotional way when the initial response is emotionally “hot”—changes how they experience and react to the stimulus. You can therefore train leaders to better regulate their emotions and pressure. This training seems to have lasting effects.
The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none. Frame adversity and pressure as a challenge, and you become more flexible and able to deal with it, move on, learn from it, and grow.
Getting caught up in wanting everything to be perfect the whole way through is not realistic, and it is a good way to keep ourselves from accomplishing anything at all as crisis leaders.
Crisis Leaders of the Future
Crisis Leaders need to manage people in some of the most complex of real-world situations, requiring rapid coordination, communication, and decision-making under extreme pressure.
Crisis Leaders of the future need flexibility, agility, and creativity in leadership thinking and styles, the ability to perform under pressure whilst maintaining vital interpersonal and self-perception skills to achieve maximum results.
As I always say to my clients, “Threats Change – So Must Our Thinking.”
Robert McAlister, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Robert’s mantra is ‘think differently’ and he certainly walks that talk in everything he does. Certainly not one for taking the easy path, he thrives on a challenge and the words ‘the most tenacious person we know’ are a major understatement. He is a recognized leader in the field of leadership and team coaching. and is the Director and driving force behind Glenbarr Coaching, who offers a very different coaching experience. For over 30 years he has worked globally with a diverse range of high profile clients from Governments to NGO’s, Private Sector Corporates to Public Sector Agencies. Celebrities and Senior Executives who have all benefitted from his sought after talents. Such a wide portfolio and body of work has provided him with very unique insights and approaches to training and coaching strategies that work and are sustainable. The central theme to Robert’s career has been people development and growth. Specialising in mindset, behaviours and team dynamics to effect positive outcomes and increased performance. Equally at home in the boardroom or challenging field environments getting his hands dirty, Robert’s real magic is bringing the best out of individuals or teams to achieve their goals. If you are looking for a truly transformational experience that is remembered and relived long after any official training or coaching session, then Robert is the guy to talk to!
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