When one considers the present current economic crisis, it would be profoundly dismissive to view this as simply another tepid period we need to get through. Unfortunately, today's combination of urgency, tremendous complexity, and uncertainty will persist as the norm long after the pandemic ends. Organizations can't simply erect a wall against leadership apathy, employee disengagement, intensifying competition, untethered customers, and political instability. The current crisis which some businesses will get through, with the help of adaptive employees, leaders, and customers, merely sets the time for a sustained or yet perpetual crisis of unfamiliar and formidable challenges. 

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Think about the heart attack that occurred in the middle of the night. Emergency personnel rushes the victim to the hospital, where expert trauma and surgical teams execute the established practices because there is little time for improvisation to stabilize the patient and then deliver new vessels for the heart. Once the emergency has passed, a somewhat less urgent set of challenges remain. Having improved from the surgery, what can the patient do to avoid another attack? How does she adapt to the ambiguities of a new reality in order to thrive? As the crisis is a long way from over.

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The task of leading during a crisis, whether one is the leader or a manager heading up a company initiative, is treacherous. Crisis leadership has two distinct phases. First is the emergency period, when one's job is to calm the situation and get more time. Second is the stage when you confront the underlying triggers of the crisis and construct the capacity to flourish in a new reality. This is the adaptive phase, which can be especially tricky. People will exert enormous pressure on you to respond to their anxieties with reliable certainty, even if doing so requires exaggerating what you know and disregarding what you don't. As you request others to make essential but uncomfortable changes in their behavior or job, they may attempt to take you down. People clamor for more direction even though you are faced with a way forward that isn't at all obvious.  

However, you must still lead.

The threat in the current state is that people, whether in positions of authority or not, will hunker down. Leaders will frequently try to solve problems with short-term fixes by tightening controls, across-the-board cuts, distrusting employees' remote activities, and streamlining plans. They'll react to their default position of what they know to do in order to reduce frustration and assuage their own and others' fears. Their primary approach will be drawing on familiar expertise to help their organizations survive the storm.

That is entirely understandable. It is instinctive for leaders to try to protect their employees from external threats so everyone can promptly return to business as usual. Although in these times, even the most competent leaders will be unable to offer this protection. The organizational dexterity required to meet a relentless string of challenges is beyond anyone's current expertise. No one in a position of authority, none of us, has been here before.

However, you must still lead.

The threat in the current state is that people, whether in positions of authority or not, will hunker down. Leaders will frequently try to solve problems with short-term fixes by tightening controls, across-the-board cuts, distrusting employees' remote activities, and streamlining plans. They'll react to their default position of what they know to do in order to reduce frustration and assuage their own and others' fears. Their primary approach will be drawing on familiar expertise to help their organizations survive the storm.

About Jim Woods

Jim Woods is President of Woods Kovalova Group. Since 1998 he has developed the firm into one of the leading unconscious bias training providers in the world. Jim is a former U.S. Navy Seabee, University professor, and fifth-grade math and science teacher. He has authored four business books and two children’s books.

He strives to enable managers and frontline employees to have meaningful conversations on race and reimagine diversity and inclusion programs that create collaboration and increase the leadership capabilities of under-represented people everywhere through virtual programs and discussions. Hire Jim.