“Leaders Through Lockdown” A Personal Manifesto for Business Leaders Through Covid-19 Part 2 of 3 Gareth Chick Leaders in Lockdown In the first part of this trilogy published 3 weeks ago at the start of the lockdown, I implored Leaders to be wholly driven by purpose and by principles, since their stakeholders had had to accept that the targets they had previously been stressing about were now unachievable. I advised Leaders to follow an adapted 3 stage change process with their teams, which I re-named: Calm, Curate, Create. 1. Calm – focus first of all on calming people, in order for them to be able to access their rational and moral centres to be collaborative and proactive 2. Curate – get people listing all the immediate problems to be solved 3. Create – get people to come up with solutions and divi up tasks So while Leaders are unable at this time to restore certainty, what they can do is give people a real sense of control back through coordinated short term tasks. The ‘new normal’ We are now about half way through a strict lockdown, past the first existential threat point. But now we’re entering the next one very rapidly. We’ve come to a second wave of uncertainty. What will happen to us when we come out the other side? Throughout this time I’ve been deep in 1:1 conversation with many senior leaders – more than 50 in the last 3 weeks, and probably another 100 or so in small groups. Some very interesting themes have emerged, and while I do not underestimate the fear that still sits on the shoulder of many Leaders still contemplating the potential demise of their business, most Leaders have guided their organisations to a place of at least temporary safety. They have navigated those early terrifying moments, and are now more able to think straight, to gather sound advice and feel the sense of camaraderie from their followers and stakeholders and even from their investors. www.ceq.com So what are the themes that have emerged? • While face-to-face contact has been eliminated, most Leaders are actually feeling more connected • What had been perhaps a gradual, maybe even glacial move to online and digital processes and platforms has been transformed into astonishingly rapid progress • Changes in structures, working practices and processes, which had been considered simply too radical to foist on people before the crisis, have been executed with little or no pushback. This dynamic caused Dave Lewis to comment that “Tesco have changed more in a few weeks than in 10 years” • ‘Red tape’ is disappearing or being cut through before our very eyes. Leaders are simply rejecting bureaucratic reasoning and steamrollering through barriers put up by unproductive agents who are divorced from the front line and who simply add no value in a crisis. Hopefully many of those roles will never again have any sort of status. At the same time, Leaders are backing calls from their front line staff for compliance to safety and quality processes with a zeal that’s really quite humbling to witness • It’s now ok to have a life outside work – in fact it’s more than ok. It’s beautiful. Suddenly it’s totally acceptable to be a Mum or Dad with small children (and therefore to be knackered, distracted and sometimes unreliable) or to have aged parents who need a lot of care and attention (and therefore to be frustrated, sad and sometimes unavailable) • It’s now ok to rest – in fact it’s more than ok. It’s admired. Suddenly it’s totally acceptable to set one’s health and wellbeing as a top priority, in fact it’s now seen as the act of someone who is confident and trustworthy. Furthermore, those who are clearly not looking after themselves are now looked upon as foolish or even irresponsible • And it’s now ok for Leaders to be truly vulnerable – in fact it’s more than ok. It’s inspirational. Suddenly it’s totally acceptable for Leaders to be clumsy, to not know the answer to everything, to genuinely ask for help…..oh, and to have kids and aged parents, and need rest, just like the rest of us mere mortals So what’s changed? What’s changed so profoundly in just 3 weeks that these dynamics have swept into play? Well it’s simple – Leaders have been liberated from fear. Not from the fear of failure, but the fear of that failure being their fault. Not from a fear of bad things happening, but the fear that we Leaders will be blamed for allowing those bad things to happen. www.ceq.com The often petrifying (in the truest sense of that word) grip we feel of expectations and events has evaporated. We have been liberated. And in the absence of those expectations immediately being replaced with a new set of craziness (since no one has any clue what to replace them with!) Leaders have been able to call on the one thing they actually have in abundance – their authenticity. When we are scared, we don’t ask for help, since that would communicate weakness. When we are scared we don’t tell our stakeholders that what they’re asking of us is not possible, since they would simply replace us with someone who told them the opposite (even if that were palpably untrue). When we are scared we cannot allow people to be human, since that would surely diminish the maximization of effort, focus and results. But when we’re authentic, we are open to the essential ingredients of every truly successful venture: Purpose – galvanizing a whole community behind a mission or purpose that is truly worthy and wholly deserving of our fullest commitment Engagement – genuinely involving every member of that community in playing their fullest part, not just in human effort but in human ingenuity Collaboration – with arbitrary and unrealistic targets having been and therefore the destructive dynamic of competition having been expunged from our working life, people have been able to revert to the most natural form of human association in a common endeavour – true collaboration Self Discipline is the Key I’ve spent the last 20 years evangelizing about coaching in corporations. I’ve taught several thousand managers to coach. But boil it all down, and actually all I’ve taught them to do is to be far more self disciplined, because the reality is that 99% of managers are pretty good Coaches when they’re calm, but awful Coaches when they are under pressure. My ‘discovery’ of OUCH! – Our Unconscious Controlling Habits – sits at the heart of every success I’ve had in business. As a reminder, there are 3 habits that get the better of us when we are under pressure: 1. Closed questions – we ask closed questions as a lazy and manipulative form of directing people, in fact closed questions have become our prime controlling tool, and yet we are unaware of how we are using them, and completely in denial about the number we ask www.ceq.com 2. Filling silences – in moments when the pressure on us is causing frustration, irritation and impatience to be our accompanying dynamics, even when we ask an open question, it will be rare for us to wait the few seconds the other person would need to construct their answer. We take their ‘hesitation’ not as evidence that they are giving our question due consideration, but as evidence that they are not as clever, fast or committed as we are. And this only serves to increase our frustration with them. So we fill the silence, either with the right answer to the question, or with a motivational statement, designed to inject them with the sense of importance and urgency they so clearly lack. 3. Finally, we give people multiple inputs – we seem physically incapable of crafting a decent question, asking it, waiting for the other person to respond, and then listening to their answer. Again, pressure gets the better of us, and we launch a stream of consciousness at the other person as we actually solve their problem ourselves, and give them pretty much everything they need to go and do what we want them to. Why does communicating over VC bring out the best in us? On VC we’re not interrupting people – because it doesn’t work! When we do this in face-to-face conversation, the other person will either immediately give way (especially if we are their boss!) or they’ll carry on talking, and we end up locked in some pathetic battle, like rutting stags. But on VC we’re just way more disciplined. And while there is undoubtedly warmth and humour, there are no wisecracks, no banter and no sarcasm. Somehow these dynamics, which were so prevalent in our interactions before the crisis, simply don’t feel appropriate on VC. (Of course they were inappropriate before now, but on VC we no longer need the protection or distraction of those anachronistic behaviours.) So now our humour comes from a place of comradeship and not from irritation. And while we may be a bit awkward, we’re not covering that discomfort with ludicrous wisecracks, but owning it instead. How wonderfully refreshing. Since in these times we genuinely want to know how people are, and what they think, we are finding ourselves rather magically asking way more open questions. We are more curious and so we really want to know their answer. Not the answer, their answer. And so we’re listening way more intently (which in itself is creating huge connection and trust) and we’re noticing when someone doesn’t actually answer the question we ask – not because they want to lie, or be evasive, but because it takes a lot of encouragement and permission for people to uncover their real truth. www.ceq.com On VC we’re having to really pay attention, otherwise we’ll simply not hear what someone says, or even notice who has said it. And as we are paying attention, we’re actually better at noticing non verbal communication – the smile that creeps across someone’s face as they entertain a thought; the look of someone clearly taken aback at the last idea; the nervousness of someone as they express something that is clearly less than wholly truthful. Finally, we’ve re-connected to old-fashioned ways of communicating – curiosity, playfulness, compassion, sincerity, empathy, clarity, selflessness, collaboration, friendship. Just why were we so poor before? Why did we allow people to ‘hide’ in meetings and all hands before? We tolerated people avoiding our eye contact; we allowed them to check their phones, even answer e-mails; we let people avoid answering our questions – either completely (suddenly the floor becomes very interesting) or by letting them answer a totally different question. We let people talk over other people; we let them have side conversations. To sum up – we were crap! What is profoundly clear now is that one of our biggest problems was the wholly inadequate facilitation skills of Leaders. Now suddenly we’re having to get good! You know how much I like my 3 step processes…………….. So, indulge me, because here comes another one, and again it’s an adaptation of an old favourite, especially for this crisis. Remember the process we frequently bring out at offsites or when we are seeking feedback – we ask people the following questions: • What must we stop? • What should we continue? • What should we start? Here’s my adaptation: • What must we stop? • What can we accelerate? • What can we start? What we must stop? Anything ridiculous, non-productive, belonging to the old world. Not only should we stop, we should refuse to ever take them up again. www.ceq.com What can we accelerate? Notice, not ‘continue’. No – accelerate. This is a time when Leaders can harness massive energy behind developments and changes that people have already bought as necessary. You can accelerate things because people are no longer held back by fear or convention. People are blasting through things in days. What can we start? In readiness for the new world, we can start research, creative work, disruption, future scenario planning. What could our world look like? When we are feeling isolated and scared, this is a frightening question. It evokes our victimhood. But when we are calm, collegiate and led by someone we trust, this question is incredibly exciting, and inspires people to truly believe that the future will not only be good, but that they will be a valued and important part of it. In a few short weeks, Leaders have had a massive wake up call. Let’s not spend time right now analysing just why we were so poor; let’s simply embrace the ‘new normal’ and relish stepping into our true role as leaders – to enable people to perform to their very best. “Leaders Out of Lockdown” will complete the trilogy in early May 2020 www.ceq.com
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