How can you lead effectively and with poise, when there’s disruption and uncertainty all around?
The last few years have been a bruising experience for many business leaders. The COVID pandemic; lockdown; remote work; hybrid work; war; the Great Resignation; supply chain disruption; cyber attacks; market turbulence; environmental concerns; inflation; a tight talent market. And all this whilst investor pressure doesn’t seem to lessen, and the pressure to produce is as high as ever.
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There’s no leadership playbook for this level of disruption. Nobody was taught this at school. And so the image of leading in the midst of a hurricane, blown about by violent and unpredictable winds, may resonate.
Many leaders - perhaps you included - are exhausted. There’s a longing to ‘get back to normal’ or to wait for the immediate turbulence to pass. But it’s become evident that this isn’t a blip in the normal course of affairs; the business environment is best seen as a continuing hurricane - fast-moving and unpredictable.
However, it is possible to prepare for a hurricane. The path is somewhat predictable and there are certain precautions you can take. And - crucially - there is an eye; a place of eery calm and stillness right in the midst of it all.
I put it to you that the metaphor applies to you and your leadership. You can get out the rain bands, where the storm is blowing the most violently, by moving to the eye of the storm.
How to lead ‘from the eye of the hurricane’
“Moving to the eye of the storm sounds great,” I hear you say, “but is it realistic? Or is this just a poetic nicety, unrelated to my reality as a corporate leader?”
Good question. Let’s answer it. What exactly would ‘leading in the eye of hurricane’ feel like? Perhaps:
How then, as a senior leader, do you actually move to this ‘eye of the hurricane’, this place of calm in the midst of all the chaos?
1. Be ready to flex
When we encounter disruption and uncertainty, our tendency is often to get defensive and resist what’s going on. But trees that grow in hurricane zones have adapted to be able to bend with the winds, instead of remaining rigid and ultimately breaking.
So: where are you resisting or yearning to get back to ‘how things were’ (a previous way of working, a more stable environment, whatever)? Let go of your previous attachments (your identity, your value-add as a leader, your team charter, your way of operating, …) and be ready to adapt to whatever the business most needs from you.
2. Strengthen your roots
You can’t flex without deep roots. Make sure you’re covering the basics: adequate sleep, exercise, prayer or meditation or mindfulness, healthy food, and the like.
What’s one small shift that will strengthen your resilience?
3. Practice stillness
Leading from a place of stillness and groundedness is such a game-changer that I’ll write more about this very soon. This has been a huge learning for me of late: I’m quite a thinker and have have a million thoughts competing for attention at any one time. And this, combined with an “achievement mentality”, is a recipe for constant thinking and constant action!
But in recent months I’ve been learning to slow down my thinking, get out of my head, and become present to the reality around. This creates something akin to a ‘flow state’ where the complexities fall away, and clarity and focus return. This is truly the eye of the hurricane, the place of calm where high performance and influential leadership are found.
Are you doing your thinking from a place of stillness, or from a place of turbulence, mental agitation, and distraction?
4. Build future capability
The final practice for leading in the eye of the storm is to anticipate. When we’re in the ‘rain bands’ and in survival mode, short term thinking is all we can muster. But when we get into that place of stillness, we can start to think about the capabilities we need to build in our team or organisation that will better prepare it for where the storm is headed next.
To use the analogy I mentioned earlier: the trees that have learned to bend in the hurricane didn’t build that capability at the point of need. When the next storm hits, your ability to thrive will depend on the capabilities you’ve previously built. So this ability to anticipate separates the great leaders from the rest.
What new capabilities will your team need to thrive in the next two years, given the likely shifts in organisational structure, market demands but also the inevitability of more surprises and shocks?
Summary
The real power of analogies is how they can shift how you see the events going on around you, and your own role in them. So, sit a little with this idea. What’s the insight that the idea of “leading from the eye of the hurricane” gives you? And how can this image help you find the ‘still centre’ from which to lead your organisation?
