Are Your Leaders Agile? Resilience is The Key to Thriving in Challenging Times
Some of today’s seasoned executives have managed through lean times. Many rising leaders who are skilled at leading and motivating a competitive team, though, and responding assertively and quickly to opportunity have never had to respond to a worldwide economic downturn of this magnitude. Are they ready? Do they have the resiliency to weather the unpredictable, changing landscape we face today and lead your company to higher ground? In a challenging economy resiliency becomes more important than ever, according to the Center for Creative Leadership. Are your key executives and managers resilient in response to the daily drumbeat of layoffs, bankruptcy and the challenges the current economy brings to your industry?The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.
Peter Drucker
Leaders who were adept at achieving their targets two years ago are floundering. Their old ways aren’t working but the skills they lack can be developed. These skills will boost performance more rapidly once the business cycle recovers, and have the added benefit of preparing your organization to respond with resilience to whatever the future brings.
What does it mean to be resilient? Think of bridges and office buildings that have gaps built in to the architecture so they sway in a strong wind. Think of the interplay between rigid cell walls and pliable centers that allow a stem to fully bend in flood waters and fully spring back upright the next day, when the waters recede. Resilience is a balance of heavy duty architecture and pliability.
What skills prepare a Senior leader for a rapidly changing and unpredictable business environment? In working with top executives, Clearwater Consulting has identified five key qualities that determine whether leadership breaks down or is resilient in turbulent times. Resilient leaders are:
1. Comfortable with unresolved ambiguities as they navigate change.
When presenting their plan for transition, they are open about the fact that not everything is worked out, and that there may be, probably will be, changes to the plan.
At EarthLink, where technology changes had decimated their core business, new CEO Rolla Huff began simultaneously searching for new opportunities to expand their revenue and reducing costs. … do you want to use EarthLink here?
Other example?
2. Inspire and lead through good and bad times
While Emotional intelligence is considered valuable, often top producers are given some leeway in an organization to behave badly. Star power is less effective when a team needs all hands on deck -- the various strengths of all team members are needed to navigate tough times. In a stressful down cycle, a leader also needs better relationships and a greater ability to influence his or her team to move through it.
Resilient people demonstrate flexibility, durability, an attitude of optimism and a mindset that is open to learning, according to the Center for Creative Leadership. Cynicism, defensiveness, or burnout signal a lack of resilience.
When organizations tolerate disruptive behavior in their executives until it becomes intolerable, they risk losing key talent and a major institutional investment over issues that are readily resolved with early recognition and intervention. For example, a high potential executive at Coca Cola USA had abrasive and ambitious style issues that were impacting his career. We coached this mega-producer around understanding his style’s impact on others while developing an action plan of acknowledgement, repair and accountability over the course of a year. With a focus on results through immediate action, this high achiever soon became comfortable with taking responsibility for his behaviors when he noticed his peers, subordinates, boss and HR stakeholders were perceiving him differently and reacting better to him. As a result, he was promoted to VP in a key marketing position and continued to produce top line business results for the company. Recent studies repeatedly bear out the value of emotional and relational skills to bottom line performance.
For example, an analysis of more than 300 top-level executives from fifteen global companies showed that six emotional competencies distinguished stars from the average performers. They were: Influence, Team Leadership, Organizational Awareness, Self-confidence, Achievement Drive, and Leadership. In another example, experienced partners in a multinational consulting firm who scored above the median on 9 or more of the 20 EI competencies delivered $1.2 million more profit from their accounts than did other partners – a 139 percent incremental gain.
3. Understand diverse leadership styles.
A new style of leadership is needed today. It is not as edgy. It utilizes highly developed
Influencing and collaborating skills. Effective leaders today understand that there are varying, equally effective leadership styles and often they complement one another to create a productive synergy where 1 + 1 is more than 2.
In a recent engagement at Georgia Power Company, a new team leader needed to get up and running very quickly with a group comprised of silo’d individuals & mindsets. We focused with them on the fundamentals of a team assessment – who am I, who are you, and who can we be as a team, overtly recognizing the diverse styles and approaches to work and communication in the group. The results? Immediate and positive feedback was received from the team to the team leader. Coordination of projects became immediately smoother and results returned faster.
High functioning teams are motivated by a clear purpose and clear communications. The Clearwater Consulting process for teams begins with helping team members make that mental shift from “me” to “we”. Without that perspective, commitment to shared purpose and goals is fraught with challenges. Essential to moving forward is clearly defining purpose with a two-pronged strategy based on corporate mandate and appreciative inquiry which asks – what does the team do effectively and how can we build on that? Once teams have clearly identified their purpose, then goals are established, accountabilities defined and the team is on track to achieve results. Results reinforce, motivate and build resiliency.
4. Communicate Transparently
Our initial challenge at EarthLink was to help the culture become adept at giving and receiving feedback. New CEO Rolla Huff felt leaders exchanging ideas and challenging one another would stimulate better solutions faster for adapting to the changing realities of the market. A combination of assessments, listening to top managers’ requests, cross-team courses and discussions as well as individual and group coaching helped them retain top talent and begin the realignment of their business with the market even in the face of unparalleled economic stress. By being as transparent as possible with both employees and stockholders, Huff was able to gain trust, retain top talent and has seen a remarkable rise in share prices.
We use assessments to gain objective data on where to begin with each member of the team. Over time, we have discovered that assessing and addressing current challenges in the individual, teams and the culture allows team members to develop more openness to change, and focus on building skills and resiliency to respond to the next challenge that arises.
If you don’t tell people what is going on, they will make it up, often imagining the worst, says Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the Wharton School and director of its Center for Human Resources. But remember that communicating the change is different from selling it, and top performers prefer to make up their own minds, says Pat Zigarmi, vice president of business development for the Ken Blanchard Companies in Escondido, Calif. You want to give them enough data about the organization as it is and as it needs to be so that they can come to the same conclusions you have. You must make a compelling business case for the change.
5. Anticipate the next wave of change
Excellent leadership is sometimes counterintuitive – where management may be inclined to hunker down in a crisis and become less communicative thinking to leave themselves more flexibility, the resilient leader devises a courageous plan of action balanced between current realities and a vision of the future, and communicates that plan realistically. There is no question that in turbulent times, effective executives are key for the company to survivie and thrive.
The natural tendency is to become myopic and withdraw the organization to perceived safety, says Mimi Bacilek in Human Resources —a posture that stifles the very things that cause the organization to thrive. The savvy executive champions future success, connects people to the future and engenders confidence that the organization is in capable hands and that the best decisions are being made. While leaders can never provide a message of unequivocal safety, in times of great uncertainty they must reassure staff, customers and suppliers or risk losing precious, hard-fought-for ground.
The ability to bounce back from adversity—and to navigate today's hard times—is not innate. It has a lot to do with how you think about the challenges you face, and it is a set of skills that can be developed, say Mary Lynn Pulley and Michael Wakefield, authors of Building Resiliency: How to Thrive in Times of Change.
Resilient leaders Accept change as constant and inevitable and become comfortable with change, they say. And they are open to learning. This doesn't necessarily mean going back to school or retraining. But it is about trying new approaches, being open to new skills, and adapting their behavior. Many managers resist learning new ways, even when it's obvious that the old ways don't work anymore, say Pulley and Wakefield. Resilient leaders are constantly improving.
Research shows that executives close their minds to new ideas when they are under stress. They tend to reach for the same levers they have pulled in the past, even if those levers don't work in the new conditions.
Harvard Business Review
Leading in Turbulent Times
In 2007 Circuit City faced declining sales and increased competition; the company decided to reduce the workforce by laying off experienced talent. The outcome was Circuit City lost its competitive advantage, sales declined even further, and by late 2008, the company filed for bankruptcy protection. Of course, in 2007 there were blue skies all around and few were predicting a market downturn. But companies who had a strategy in place to develop current and future leaders had the talent they needed to weather the storm.
The business environment is rough now, but when the economy recovers there will be new challenges. Are your leaders ready? Insightful executives recognize that the market will get better, but the work will not get easier. What can get easier is the ability to respond with insight, and resilience.
