Leaders Respond to Crisis With Calm
Be thankful for the opportunity to live an examined life. Everything matters.
Transparent leaders are often challenged with just how much to reveal to their teams on a personal level. Do we let it all hang out in a corporate setting, as Paul did?
Our teams expect us to share all the good, bad and ugly times. They want us to be real.
While I don’t believe my team needs to see me throw myself on the floor in a raging fit, teaching moments can occur in the course of walking out a challenge. Leaders have bad days. Things go wrong.
When leaders are transparent about their need to cope, trust is built. We teach others how to cope by how we model our coping skills.
It seems true that a team reflects the actions of its leader.
Bad days are not simply about survival. We can teach and model how to thrive even on our ugliest days.
Our teams will note our range of responses to everything. If my response is wide and varied, my team will lack stability.
I pray that over a long season of working with me, my team will see controlled and predictable responses within an acceptable, narrow margin. I do not want my highs to be high or my lows to be low. I want to demonstrate a peaceful, relatively straight-lined wobble on the Richter scale.
People tend to remember personal quakes in a leader’s behavior. I don’t want to lose it. I’m too old to find it again!
My go-to response in every rough patch is to refocus on vision. The thorns and heavy brush are not as troublesome when I remain focused on where I’m headed.
I can’t lose my why. When we lose our why, we lose our way.
