Leading at your best in uncertainty

What a moment. A mysterious contagion overwhelms our medical and political systems and the routines of life that give us meaning come to a shocking halt. Shows go dark. Restaurants go empty. Schools shut down. What’s confounding about this COVID-19 moment is the extraordinary degree of uncertainty and disruption it has produced.

We can’t make the uncertainty — or the anxiety — go away. But we can lead through it with love not fear — and good leadership is more important than ever right now. Here are five principles to put into practice, backed by practice and research.

1 | Think “bigger than me”

Fear and uncertainty can make us small minded and self-protective. Countering that means caring about something bigger than you. Your team. Your mission. The wellbeing of your family. Or of your customers. By switching to this mindset you’ll lessen your own anxiety and help others do the same.

For you: Focus your mind on others’ wellbeing. Find a quiet place and after taking some centering breaths, hold in your mind’s eye the people you care about. Breathe in their anxiety, and breathe out courage for them. It sounds a little woo-woo, but it’s a well researched technique and you’ll emerge with more courage and confidence as a leader. Read here for a deeper dive on loving-kindness.

For your team: Focus the team on a higher purpose and an external ideal. If you’re in a “customer-first” business right now, this is a moment of truth. Will you put them first?

2 | Be curious

Curiosity is a great mindset to counter anxiety about the unknown because it activates a positive set of behaviors for learning, problem-solving, and creativity — it reframes challenges as problems to be solved, instead of burdens to blame.

For you: Become a student. Ask, “what is really going on”, and “what can I learn”? In practice, that means seeking out sources that are competent in the thing you want to understand and avoiding other sources that add noise.

For your team: Encourage an environment of learning and curiosity, where any question is a good question. Differentiate what is known from what is unknown, based on competent sources — because knowledge gives people some agency and control in a moment of uncertainty.

3 | Communicate with empathy

In the face of uncertainty, people feel particularly vulnerable and crave communication and community. The worst thing you could do is communicate infrequently and with emotional distance! Instead, focus on acknowledging the emotional truth of a moment — and create shared clarity about what is known, and what matters. It’s better for companies to hold frequent all staff meetings and share more in those, than to rely on lots of smaller side meetings with slightly different messages.

For you: Practice your empathy skills — listening without judgment to people, looking at things from their perspective, and acknowledging what you hear and feel from them. To do that well, you’ll actually need to have some compassion for yourself, and acknowledge everything you’re feeling without judging it.

For your team: Set up forums for communication on a predictable and frequent basis, and make sure they allow for empathetic dialogue, where you can listen and respond to questions. It’s especially important if people are working virtually to create human moments of connection on video calls. Favor video over phone, and phone over email or Slack.

4 | Get creative

Part of the problem with uncertainty is that we can get stuck waiting for certainty to return, and that leaves us helpless. We can either stay stuck, or invent new ways to be in the world. Creative restaurateurs are moving their business to delivery, or creating outdoor areas for pick-up. Schools are inventing new virtual teaching norms and routines. I don’t want to pretend there are easy ways around a crisis. But I do have faith in human ingenuity and resilience. No one asks for these moments. But when they arrive, we must rise to them with all the imagination and courage we can muster.

For you: Shift from feeling you need to have everything figured out, to creating new ways forward for now. Ask, “what if we?” and “how might we?” to reframe the situation and come up with novel solutions.

For your team: Show everyone you have faith in their ingenuity. Organize teams to invent new solutions that don’t need to be perfect, just useful. You’ll shift people from feeling helpless to feeling engaged.

5 | Laugh and move your body

First off, humor is a great defense against the darkness of anxiety and difficulty. As any fellow Brit knows, you can handle pretty much anything with a healthy sense of humor (and a cup of tea). Our colleague Laura Kurtz’s doctoral research showed that shared laughter brings people closer together. That’s important if we’re otherwise more socially distanced today.

Laughter is a physical act, and I’ll end this advice by reminding leaders how important our mind-body connection is. Anxiety arises in our bodies first and foremost and puts us in a state of fight/flight/freeze. Over time that is damaging. But we have a very powerful tool for changing that: moving our bodies.

Run, bike, dance, do yoga, move like a gymnast at home, swing a kettlebell, garden, go for walks (the great outdoors has a powerful moderating effect on anxiety). Find what works for you. Even getting your heart rate up for as little as three minutes alters your brain chemistry for the better, producing positive hormones and increasing optimism, which you need in abundance in a moment of uncertainty.

For you: Make moving your body a priority. It’s not just good for you — it’s good for the people around you, because exercise will shift your whole being to be more positive.

For your team: Support your team’s ability to find some fun and take time to exercise and get out. Not just implicitly, but explicitly — advocating it, celebrating it, offering tips and financial support where practical.

Lead bravely,