September 4, 2020
by Kimberly Sully.
I recently had the privilege of speaking at the annual conference put on by the International Legal Technology Association. For the first time, the event was entirely virtual because of the ongoing pandemic. Sunny Bane, Director of Knowledge Assets at DLA Piper, organized and moderated the session. Along with Skip Lohmeyer, CIO at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, and Ray Meiring, CEO at Qorus Software, I was speaking about leadership. Our session was titled “Keep Calm and Lead On: Leadership in Times of Crisis.”
I don’t think anyone can deny that COVID is a crisis, so for those who weren’t able to attend the session, here are some of the key takeaways.
Communication. Communication. Communication.
Shall I repeat that?
From the very first planning session, Ray, Skip and I agreed that great communication is the primary tool to get through a crisis. The communication should be calm, clear, and consistent. But it goes deeper than that. A lot of nuance and tact is needed, and it’s absolutely not effective if a leader is simply talking at people, or barking orders, or being a task master. As Skip noted, we shouldn’t “mistake a leader speaking as the means of good communication.”
Engage the Team and Create the Vision
It’s important to recognize that leaders don’t generally resolve a crisis on their own. Leaders should engage their team and work together. Skips calls it crowdsourcing. Tap into the talent and ideas of everyone on the team to help establish the best path forward. Once you have created the vision of where everyone is headed to get through the crisis, make sure the team continues to be pointed towards that vision or goal. As Ray reminded us, it’s easy to fall into thinking negatively about the setbacks we encounter during a crisis so to help overcome that you have to “keep re-emphasizing the vision and the direction the team is headed towards”. If it was created with the help of the team, the benefit is that employees are usually that much more engaged in working towards a goal they helped develop.
Have Empathy
In any crisis, the impact may be different from one person to the next. Or different between the internal team and the customer. Leaders must recognize a crisis doesn’t present as one size fits all and our communication should adapt accordingly. In the midst of COVID, it is critical to recognize that team members with young children who are now being home-schooled or team members who may themselves be in a high-risk category are each having dramatically different experiences than what I am experiencing. Being aware of and empathetic to these differences is not only important for working through a crisis, it can create even stronger relationships. “Understanding the challenges and pains that we’re all going through, it draws us together,” Ray added.
Measure (and Celebrate) Success
Depending on what the crisis is, the ability to measure or define what success looks like could be radically different. If a data center has gone down, success looks like all systems are back online. If there is a virus infecting your Exchange system, success looks like identifying, blocking and removing all traces of the virus from servers and workstations. But what does success look like if the crisis is one centered around people? How do you measure whether you’ve handled a crisis successfully? That comes right back to communication. And as Skip noted, a lot of it is about perception and whether someone feels their needs have been met. You can’t know that without asking the question and then actively listening to the response. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown challenges us to ask colleagues to “paint success for me”. Regardless of how you measure it, when you see even small successes – be sure to celebrate them with your team.
Culture: The Pre-Crisis Work
This was the main point I kept coming back to during the session. You cannot establish a healthy culture within your team or establish good organizational health when you’re in the midst of a crisis – that work needs to be happening every single day. Creating an environment that promotes mutual trust and respect, that encourages open lines of communication, that recognizes failures are opportunities to learn, that demonstrates vulnerability, that thrives on the notion that big ideas are welcome even if they go nowhere…having all of this in place allows everyone to use that as a solid foundation to then simply focus on the actual crisis. As one participant noted in the Zoom chat at the end of the session, culture eats COVID for lunch. So true!
In Summary
As leaders, we will undoubtedly face many different types of crisis throughout our career. What a unique experience to be going through this COVID crisis together. Hopefully we’re doing our very best to help ourselves, our teams, and our customers work through it as best we can, starting with great communication. I’ll let Skip have the final word since his comment so succinctly captures why it’s important. “People are resilient and they will overcome adversity. And they overcome faster with really good leadership that focuses on good communication.”
Recommended Resources
Sometimes You Win – – Sometimes You Learn: Life’s Greatest Lessons Are Gained from Out Losses, John C. Maxell
The Five Dysfunction of a Team: A Leadership Fable, Patrick Lencioni
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, Patrick Lencioni
Dare to Lead, Brené Brown