Leading During Crisis
"In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path - the path of compassion, courage, understanding, and love." Amit Ray
In my career as an employee, leader, and CEO, I have navigated the realities of crisis bleeding into day-to-day work. I have seen leaders showing incredible skills in supporting their employees, and I have also seen poorly executed crisis management in the workplace. There is one thing that separates a good experience from a bad one. It is pretty simple, leaders who humanize their experience and allow their team members to do so, we're always in a better position to navigate the difficult times.
Leadership is more than the title
Leadership is not described by the title boss, management, or executive. Leadership is demonstrated by our impact on those we influence or follow us. In the wake of most recently the pandemic, a formula shortage, and now the horrific acts in Texas, we have to show up differently even if it feels uncomfortable. We have to lead with vulnerability and strength to support.
Transparency is Important
While I was leading teams in the past, a learning and training exercise we did was working on the ability to say the words; “I don’t know” when you do not, in fact, know the answer. This training was developed to avoid saying yes to something you can’t commit to and help prevent over-committing to a client when we don’t know if we can actually provide the support. Still, it also was instrumentally valuable in supporting my individual team members. Sometimes there is no answer in that moment, or there are no words. The important dialog is actually to be transparent with the ability to give options to others. Transparency, in this case, does not mean sharing it all but can simply be, “I don’t know the right words to say here, but I can understand why today is hard and know that if you need to step back for your mental health, I support that. I’m struggling with this too.” It’s not perfect or necessarily polished, but that is not what we are trying to achieve as leaders in this moment; in fact almost the opposite. We show up but in an authentic way that personalizes the realities of hard times. This concept is covered in a more in-depth way in our new parent employee programming and leadership training.
Humanize the experience
Why is it a benefit to humanize this experience in the workplace during times of crisis? The reality is that this is how people start to see you as the true leader who believes in employees' well-being in and out of the workplace. These actions build trust, empathy, self-integrity, and self-awareness, all essential traits to have within any team and leader.
Your needs can not be ignored
Leading in a crisis is difficult and as a leader navigating the crisis for your own needs can seem impossible, but they do not have to be ignored; integrating them is essential and taking the above actions is one step in doing so.
"In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path - the path of compassion, courage, understanding, and love." Amit Ray
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Author for this blog post: Founder and CEO of Learning Motherhood, Kimberly Didrikson. Kimberly spent 15 years working for a Fortune 100 company prior to starting Learning Motherhood. She was an integral part of building out the West Coast sales team. She spent her last 6 1/2 years in leadership before starting Learning Motherhood. She now provides support for organizations by building out new parent programming and training for leadership teams to support working parents.