Leading Your Team Through Uncertainty

I sincerely hope everyone is doing well during this very crazy time of the quarantine amid the COVID-19 situation. We are trying to share information and thoughts for how to navigate this time-period and give you and your teams the best chance of coming through unscathed or at least minimally scathed. Last week I shared with you some basic ideas and thoughts about navigating the coronavirus for each of us personally and professionally. To reiterate, the three thoughts were:

1. Don’t panic- demonstrate leadership by being calm in a stressful situation.

2. Keep things as close to your normal as you can. Keep the money flowing into the economy if you can afford it (of course this is dependent on whether you are on a mandatory lockdown).

3. Look for multiple sources for your news. None of them are without bias, just take a few extra minutes to confirm what you hear and are worried about certainly before you share it with anyone else.

Those 3 little pieces of advice are helping a lot of us navigate this crazy situation we find ourselves in. But let’s take a little bit of time and talk about how we now should be formulating the “what’s next?” Let’s put on our helmets and shoulder pads and square up to this thing.

The key to having a great plan is to consider what is next, and what we would do “if”. The magic that lives in the word “if” is truly breathtaking. If is such a tiny word that carries so much weight. If you’ve never heard the story of ancient Sparta, let me share this with you…

Around 350 BC, King Philip II of Macedon started invading Greece. After he had several key footholds under his command, Philip decided to start putting pressure on Sparta, and sent them the following threatening message:

“If once I enter into your territories, I will destroy ye all, never to rise again.”

The Spartans recorded reply was simply the word “If.”

And if you don’t think that’s awesome, you might want to check your pulse because that’s awesome! By the way King Philip decided to avoid Sparta, at least for the time being.

However, the “if’s” here my not be quite as cool. Some of these if’s are pretty darn terrifying. But before we get into the actual “if’s” let’s talk about how to move into this next phase.

First, this isn’t intended to be a singular act of strength and courage. It should be a team effort driven by the leadership team of the organization. Hopefully, the leadership group performs like a team. If not, we can help with that…but let’s assume that they do. The point is that a group of people that represent sales, operations and finance and other departments working together on a singular goal are much more effective than any one of those groups acting independently. Form this group and start asking the questions. We will cover the questions in the next session. This is all about getting a group of smart people to think through what could happen, and how the organization would respond. This is a fantastic exercise.

Next, it’s important to realize that other folks who aren’t in the room need to know what the hell is going on so communication is very important. It’s important that we tell the people around us what we are thinking about, worrying about and preparing for in the coming future. This is often an overlooked step and a very important one. Unfortunately, a lot of people still get their news from Facebook and other online sources that have zero journalistic integrity. While we are at it, many of the mainstream media sources have zero journalistic integrity but I digress. The point is that we need to be as forthright and upfront as possible for our people to tell them what’s going on. For some reason, if we humans are left to develop our own stories, we come up with the singular worst possible outcome possible. If you’ve ever had that friend that has a headache and becomes convinced that she has a brain tumor? Well if you don’t control the message, imagine a group of people who all think that they have a brain tumor. Not fun and horribly ineffective.

Finally, search for the clarity for what is the next most important thing for this group needs to do. Meaning, it’s not the individual tasks that matter the most, what does the group need to do to make the next thing happen. There are things that happen because of our actions, and there are things that happen because of our inaction. 9 out of 10 times, the things that happen because of our actions are more impactful than the things that happen because of our inaction. I would rather swing and miss at the 3rd strike than watch the 3rd strike go by, so holding on “tight” and hoping is not a good strategy. What actions does the team need to take and put in place.

I highly recommend that you start up a weekly virtual staff meeting. If possible, use a hosting platform that allows video conferencing like Skype so your team can see each other. Ignore the kids in the background and people should stay in t-shirts or sweatshirts but give them an outlet to talk with each other, share the news with each other and then discuss and decide how they should stay in contact with the rest of their teams.

We are all better when we pull together and act in the interest of the greater good. Rallying together is crucial in times of emergency and crisis. So, gather your team or your group virtually and start working on this approach if you haven’t already. Next week, we will talk about some of the specific questions you may want to explore.