• by Jim Solomon and Bruce LaRue, Ph.D. •

“Integrator Leaders possess the unique ability to see what isn’t there, channeling the collective energy of others to make their vision a reality. Simply stated, leadership is about leading change. Rather than engaging in futile attempts to manage, adapt to, or resist change, Integrator Leaders help their teams to build a future yet to be born.”

Leaders who have developed a culture of trust and innovation find, especially during times of crisis, that their organization will thrive when others fail. In our discussions with highly successful leaders across the United States, each an Integrator Leader, we see a pattern in their messages.  Leaders speak to these common practices: remain calm, communicate, care for your team, and self-discipline.

How are you successfully leading and thriving during these uncertain times?

“My experience surviving Hurricane Katrina prepared me for what I am dealing with today.  As leaders, we have to remember that we need to be there for our people and our customers.  The lesson I learned from that time is twofold:

1. 1. We are on an emotional roller coaster of uncharted territory. Speak to your people daily.  Understand that they will cycle through “everything is great” to “the world is ending” and complete hysteria.  And that cycle can also occur in a matter of minutes.  Their reaction is fueled by their family, the current news cycle, and the person they just spoke to.  Be calm and reassuring and allow them to respond in any way with no judgment.  And when they are in hysteria, focus them on something small they can do or work on for you.  This is true for our employees and our customers.
   2. Remember YOU are a person also. You are absorbing all of the crazy and need to let it out.  You are also going to cycle.  Figure out what you need to do to release.  And do not watch the news 24/7.  You can get everything you need from one, 30 min broadcast a day.  It will not matter if you hear that Tom Hanks, or Sean Peyton tested positive 24 hours after America learns it.  The constant news heightens your anxiety.”

Josh Bowen, US Army Officer and founder of the 3×5 Leadership (a blog dedicated to making people and organizations better by providing robust leader development resources)

“Leadership is having people look at you and gain confidence seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.” ─── Tom Landry“

I believe this quote from the famed football coach captures the essence of leading during crisis. It may not be any specific knowledge, skill, or other attribute that we bring to the team that is most valuable. Often, it may merely be our ability to communicate and instill needed energy, attitude, and perspective with our people. To do so, leaders need to emphasize three essential behaviors as they lead through crisis:

• • • Lead with love: Never forget that leadership is a people business, even amidst the urgency of crisis. To be successful, teams require trust, innovation, and dynamic collaboration for timely problem-solving. These don’t just appear when we enter a crisis. Leaders must cultivate psychological safety, appreciation, and love within the team. Sometimes, loving and caring for your people during these extremely challenging times is the most important thing you can do.
    • Create high levels of engagement: Crisis stresses our time, attention, and capacity both on an individual level for leaders and at the collective level across the team. It can also disperse the team more over time and space. Maintaining connection and personal engagement with your people is crucial. Never underestimate the power of a simple text message, phone call, FaceTime call, or Zoom chat. It lets them know you’re thinking of them, value their efforts, and care about them. I like to say that leaders are never too important or too busy to show appreciation. This still applies through crisis. Routinely remain engaged and in-tune with your people.
  • Ensure clarity: Leaders communicate who we are, what we do, and why we do it is important. Leaders do this often through many different methods and platforms. During crisis specifically, leaders must ensure there is clarity across the team on what we are doing and are not doing to successfully navigate the challenging environment. Priorities and ways of doing business likely shift in crisis; our people need to understand that and know why.”

Chip Pierce, President, Stone Oak Solutions

“Take this time to re-evaluate your mission, vision, and nested tasks.  Is the organization off course or headed as planned?

Set your routine and use the time saved in commuting to reading, and thinking, and planning.  What made the great leaders great was their daily time devoted to those three tasks.”

Rory Malloy, CSM, U.S. Army, Retired and Executive Director, Campbell Strong Defense Alliance

“Don’t change who you are and what made you successful as a leader.  Leverage your experience and characteristics of why people chose to follow you and want to be part of your team.  Focus on servant leadership and treating your team as a respected and valued member of the team.

Remain focused and don’t overreact. Create an atmosphere that will lead to building confidence across the organization that as a team, this too shall pass and, in the end, all will be fine.

Establish and focus on critical priorities and not let the insignificant issues dominate the day. Don’t overreact but rather follow a decision-making process that includes feedback from across the organization.

Trust the team you have built and spent time developing.  Leverage their hidden talents by opening yourself up to listening to their ideas.  It will take contribution from all to maneuver through a crisis, with a favorable outcome. “

Joe Byerly, Founder and Editor From the Green Notebook

“The best commanders I’ve seen lead through tough situations, focused on communication. They over communicated to create and maintain alignment; they understood that with all the chaos going on, the organization could quickly become misaligned. They communicated with facts; they knew that in the absent of facts, people would automatically fill the space rumors, assumptions, and their own interpretation of events. Finally, they owned their own communication–they ensured the messages came from them and not other people in the organizations.”

Bret Kinman, Senior Analyst for the Joint Staff J-8, Patricio Enterprises, Inc.

“With temporary, but major shifts in how we work, move, and conduct the basics of our daily life, the need for steady leadership within organizations and institutions is increasing.  Despite the turbulence to our routines, leaders (and teams) should seek out normalcy wherever they can. Several have already commented on the need for trust and communication with the workforce.    These two elements are key for both leaders and their team.  I have one thought to add to both trust and communication.  In a more virtual environment, the context of the message, guidance or task can be lost in emails, telecons and even video chats.   So, this is where the trust comes in for leaders- to share more of their thinking, concerns or challenges in their communications with the team.  I have seen a shortly worded email for an “all hands” meeting create confusion and concern- when there was none- but the context for why the meeting had been called to begin with was not included.  The team did not know that it was a routine-but unscheduled meeting to cover a few “With temporary but major shifts in how we work, move, and conduct the basics of our daily life, the need for steady leadership within organizations and institutions is increasing.  Despite the turbulence to our routines, leaders (and teams) should seek out normalcy wherever they can. Several have already commented on the need for trust and communication with the workforce.    These two elements are key for both leaders and their team.  I have one thought to add to both trust and communication.  In a more virtual environment, the context of the message, guidance or task can be lost in emails, telecons and even video chats.   So, this is where the trust comes in for leaders- to share more of their thinking, concerns or challenges in their communications with the team.  I have seen a shortly worded email for an “all hands” meeting create confusion and concern- when there was none- but the context for why the meeting had been called to begin with was not included.  The team did not know that it was a routine-but unscheduled meeting to cover a few administrative items and the leader was taking advantage of an opportunity with everyone in one place.  Trust and communication can overcome a lot of challenges for a group, and with that trust the team can easily overcome the distance.

One other aspect that leaders and teams must consider is what I call “maximization” and I put this into two areas- the tools and the time management. With the changes to schedules there is a different scale to the time and space of the day and week.  With a distributed and virtual workforce, the day can be divided differently. Maximizing the tools means the team should use the virtual tools to chat or conference as needed- file sharing instead of email can also save time and bandwidth for the team.  It may be useful to have a chat update versus another actual telecon to check on progress and work.  The team may be able to more easily engage in a short chat update than a multi-party call.  To maximize the time- get back to those projects that have been put aside, some of this may include reviewing the past work for trends and follow up, updating common documents or beginning more detailed work on the next “thing”, or those things you have been “meaning to get to”.  “Get to” them now, where there is time and space, because once things change again-the distractions will return. One other task in this time is to define whatever the “new” procedures are going to be.

Final thought: self and collective discipline will be hard.  Everyone and every organizations daily routine is going to be different. Everyone will have a different routine to adapt to and that routine may change.  Staying flexible to those changes is important, as is staying committed to keeping calm, sound and aware.  Developing a self-discipline mind set individually and collectively will help. What is done should not change as much, but when, where and the conditions present no doubt will differ.

A postscript of positivity.  The disruption to our daily lives, routines, economic activity is real and will have carry-on effects.  Keep in context that there is no physical damage. Without getting into math- the preponderance of the workforce is still available and capable.   Roads, vehicles, airplanes, trains, water/sewer, power, internet, lights, air-conditioning all still run and provide service.  The infrastructure is still in place and when our constraints are reduced, the ability to resume our routines will be quick.  Just think, after several weeks of virtual meetings, how many will actually look forward to the staff meeting on that first Monday back in the office…..?”