Leadership in times of crisis
Learn to use the ‘power of three’ to move forward in a changing world. By Arinya Talerngsri
Crisis is something our world is very familiar with, unfortunately. When we look at the news, there are so many things going on that it can be difficult to keep up. Crises come in all shapes and sizes, affecting many people in many ways.
Businesses too can face different types of crises, with internal or external origins. In a way, a crisis can be considered a form of disruption, reflecting a failure to remain agile and adapt, which could have drastic consequences for businesses.
Like governments and other organisations that engage in disaster planning, businesses too have preventive measures to ensure that people can avoid calamity. But some difficulties are unavoidable, and whether we follow general protocol or use a crisis management manual, we need to work together to solve them.
As business leaders, however, you usually have to go beyond what’s written on paper. So here are some tips to keep in mind to keep the organisation moving forward in times of crisis.
First, be aware of your mindset and practise a positive mindset. Why is this important in a crisis? Your mindset is the basis of your understanding and reaction to certain situations. To give you a clearer image, when you have a negative mindset, your perception of others will also be negative; therefore your reaction to others will also be negative.
The mindset is so important, especially when facing a crisis, as your natural human instinct is to react and solve the problem as quickly as possible. When you train your mindset in a positive way, your behaviour will follow.
Adjust your mindset to the problem and everything else follows. As the American author and life coach Tony Robbins has said: “Every problem is a gift. Without them we wouldn’t grow.”
Second, understand the situation. As a business leader, you must first understand what the problem is. You may not be on the front line of dealing with a problem, but it is still important that you know what it is, how it occurred and what could be done to address it.
Keeping yourself updated on the problem is part of understanding your business, and it also helps for public-relations purposes. But the best argument for staying on top of the situation is that if you don’t understand the problem yourself, how would you be able to guide your people to solve it?
Not fully understanding the problem is often an obstacle that business leaders face. As the English writer GK Chesterton once observed: “It isn’t that they cannot find the solution. It is that they cannot see the problem”.
Once you’ve understood the problem at hand, you must react and solve it. An organisation must be agile when it is facing problems. Not only do you and your organisation have to work with speed, but you also must be able to adapt.
At the same time, as a business leader, you mustn’t panic, as that will cause panic among your people. You must be able be able to strike that balance between supportive problem-solving and a sense of urgency.
With that in mind, timing is also important when reacting to the problem. There is a right time and place to address everything, whether it is your people or external stakeholders. Reacting and solving too early could cause you and your people to overlook important elements; and moving too slowly could mean you and your organisation are not agile enough.
Fourth, learn from the experience. When facing problems, there will be failures. You won’t be able to solve everything successfully 100 percent of the time.
Fifth, integrate innovative thinking. Sometimes, the best way to solve problems, and potentially for the long term, is through innovative thinking.
The thing about innovation is that it takes time. So integrating innovative thinking with problem-solving must take place in the context of building a learning culture in your organisation. And an important thing to keep in mind is that innovation is not a result; it is what you constantly practise and aim for.
Integrating innovative thinking during a crisis is a way to encourage creative ways to potentially solve problems. And just like leading towards innovation, sometimes the idea may fail — but that’s okay. You’ll be able to learn what worked and what didn’t, and that could help lead to more innovative solutions.
As a leader, sometimes to truly lead your people you need to be a part of them, truly understanding and guiding them through the harsh realities. As Zig Ziglar, the American author, salesman and motivational speaker, said: “You don’t build a business. You build people and then people build the business.”
The mindset is so important, especially when facing a crisis, as your natural human instinct is to react and solve the problem as quickly as possible.