Jamie MacPherson’s Top Takeaways: Maintaining High Performance Leadership in Times of Uncertainty

In the aftermath of 9/11, I was a fresh faced (significantly fresher than now!) young graduate in the beginning of my career. I remember to this day the overwhelming feeling of job insecurity as the economy was heading directly into the precipice of a recession. Last through the door, I was certain I would be the first one out. However, to this day I have never forgotten when the leader of my company stood up and said:

We operate in a £550m market, even with a 10% recession, we will still be operating in a £500m market. As a £1m company we still have plenty of room for us to navigate and even reach £2m. There are still opportunities out there. It’s easier said than done, but it is possible. If we focus on reaching a bigger audience, getting better at what we do and getting clearer on the value we bring, we will continue to thrive.

Just by reframing the situation, his leadership in that moment helped us change our mindset as a team. It oriented us more to what was in our control. I was no longer looking at the precipice. I was looking to what we could do.

In this rapidly changing world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Across a team there are a multitude of ways people might be affected when they face uncertainty. As a leader, it’s important to not assume you know them all. Remember that even if you’ve been through multiple economic disruptions, the twenty-somethings in your team probably haven’t. They will likely be feeling the uncertainty more than you. Some may worry, hesitate, or freeze up. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen leaders and teams raise issues ranging from the micro to macro, personal to professional, internal (within their company) or external (in their marketplace) and wider economic, political, social uncertainties:

Employee retention – The UK currently has more jobs than people. Keeping employees engaged and wanting to stay is a larger issue now than ever before. (The BBC)

Rising production costs e.g., one client we’re working with is seeing rises to the tune of 25-40%.

Inflation is expected to surpass 10 per cent (The Times).

The UK is facing one of the deepest economic and social crises in post-war history. UK Living standards are predicted to fall at the fastest rate since records began in 1956-57 (New Statesman – Searching for new ideas).

On our recent webinar held on the May 25th (recording available via link), Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? Co-founder Tom Barry and I shared our Olympic winning Prepare, Accept, Do strategies (PAD) around ‘High Performing Leadership in Uncertain Times’. We really enjoyed sharing 3 key practical strategies and our recent client stories with everyone who made it on the day. I thought I’d share my 3 top takeaway recommendations from the session as well as some video snippets of each. Like the leader I had in my 20s, you can start to use these strategies to reframe your team’s mindset and encourage control and resourcefulness in the face of uncertainty.

STRATEGY ONE: ‘Get The Crocodiles Before They Get You’

Harriet Beveridge, who co-authored the Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? book, coined this curious phrase after watching a survival show years ago. While the survival “expert” waded through croc-infested waters in the Australian outback, they looked back at the camera and rather peculiarly shouted that the key was to “get the crocodiles before they get you”. Despite being quite eccentric and perhaps stating the obvious, Harriet kept coming back to that phrase through her work with teams on dealing with change and uncertainty. There was value there in terms of as leaders, how can you help others to anticipate change? Looking outwards, where might our team face blockers? We often talk in our work about how we build ‘Bouncebackability’ to help people build resilience from setbacks. Here I explain how leaders need to be almost “bouncing forward” – to get ahead of what could get in the way of us achieving our goals? What are your crocodiles? How can you start to scan and plan ahead for yours?

STRATEGY TWO: Accept The Facts, Challenge The Negative Interpretation 

It’s very easy to come up against challenging circumstances and develop a negative interpretation. When telling his story en-route to winning Olympic Gold, Co-Founder Ben Hunt-Davis writes “Many of us don’t think about the difference between fact and interpretation and that can be dangerous. Opinion can too easily feel like a fact because we feel certain about it. We confuse a feeling of certainty with something being true, when the two are completely different.” Try using the word “fortunately” to reframe your interpretation so that it’s useful. This is not to suggest that we put a positive spin on or gloss over what are difficult circumstances. However, we can find a more useful interpretation of a scenario that can help us turn our attention to something that will help make our boat go faster. Watch Tom share how you can accept the facts and find a more helpful interpretation using “fortunately” as a guide:

STRATEGY THREE: Leverage The Support of Those Around You

So, if you’ve isolated your crocodiles and found a useful interpretation, how can you then circle the wagons to take some action. In particular, I share a series of questions here that we frequently use with leaders to help them create the space with their teams to have conversations around challenges they face. By going through this process it helps leaders leverage the support of their teams. Try using these questions to scope with your team to get them thinking about what you can do to get your crocodiles:

Tom and I were struck in our conversations around the webinar as to how leaders can use these as ongoing methods to get ahead of change. Despite the range of feelings that can be experienced across a team, by regularly going through the process of Prepare, Accept, Do, we can routinize a team response when facing uncertainty.

If you’d like to chat to us to learn more about how we help businesses do all of the above exercises and more, please feel free to book a no-strings attached call with us via our contact us page. We’d love to hear more about your key challenges and to share our expertise. All the best for leading through uncertainty and giving clarity and confidence to your teams.

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