As Leaders one of our main roles is to deal with uncertainty, to provide leadership and guidance for our teams when the way ahead is not always clear or obvious.
This is one of the toughest jobs for leaders to take on, here we need to be bold, we need to trust in ourselves and we need to have the trust of our teams.
Leading teams through difficult crises is, in my opinion, an easier job. As Churchill says, “if you’re going through hell, keep going”. It may be difficult, but we know that of we stick to the plan, and hold our course of acton then we will come through it, in that situation we don’t have that many options, we just need to keep following the plan.
But in times of uncertainty, often the problem is that we don’t know what is the best course of action, it’s unclear what the future will hold, so its difficult to know what is the best direction to take. Or at least we let these questions cloud our judgement and impact our focus.
It is in these circumstances that people look towards their leaders for answers, and it is here that it can be the most difficult.
Whenever I am faced with a situation such as this I try to identify whatI know is certain, plan around that and the focus on achieving that goal.
For example, there have been several occasions when the future of the company, maybe the company would be acquired, or the company would make an acquisition, each of these scenario’s was a possibility, each of which would have an impact on the department, but none of them were certain.
As I mentioned earlier in these times I have looked to focus on what was certain, what I knew to be important for us to focus on, which was to ensure that we operated as efficiently and effectively as possible. Making sure that all deadlines, quality targets and budget targets are met. Any deviation from this would mean that we had let the uncertainty get in the way of achieving our daily goals.
We cannot control what the future may bring, but we can control what we do on a daily basis, and we can continue to focus and deliver.
We need to make sure that we maintain our momentum, if we have developed a Winning Culture and we start to lose focus, then we can start to make unforced errors. Regaining a Winning Culture is harder than maintaining it, and losing it can be very easy.
This is much harder to do than to say, especially if it could have a personal impact.
There were two excellent examples of this in sport last year with Barcelona and Tottenham.
At Barcelona, Pep Guardiola announced, before the end of the season, that he would be stepping down as manager at the end of the season.
At Tottenham, it was perceived the their manager Harry Rednapp, would be leaving to become England manager, and that a new manager would be put in place.
For both of these teams their performance dropped significantly, once they knew or believed that they knew, that there would be a new manager in charge for the start of the next season. I think that this was definitely one of the key reasons why Barcelona lost their league title and lost in the Champions League to Chelsea, and also why Tottenhams’ performance dropped such that they lost a 10 point cushion and ended up as the fourth placed team.
Neither manager was able to provide the leadership and guidance that the team needed in order to maintain their focus on the 2012 season. Their minds wandered to what was to happen in the near future, who would be the new managers, what would it mean to them as players. I’m sure that the managers focus also wandered as to what the future would hold for them.
What should have been very obvious to the players – i.e keep winning your games – became secondary and their focus and consequently their form dropped.
In these circumstances, the leaders needed to continually reinforce that, even in spite of short term uncertainty, our goals remain the same.
When faced with general uncertainty, we need to find some specific certainty to hold onto, something that we can get our teams to focus on.
For me this is one of the most difficult tasks for a Leader and what differentiates a Good Leader from a Great Leader.
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