One of my CEO leadership coaching clients knows that for his company to thrive she needs to create a climate of trust and possibility. I am consulting with the company senior leadership team to develop a new direction for the business. They are currently evaluating a new business strategy.
The CEO knows that thriving in the future depends on all company leaders modeling the qualities of good leadership. He is empowering her leadership team to create a more empowered company culture. Human Resources is partnering with the CEO in helping the company create a more sustainable future. Our current executive coaching and leadership consulting work is focused on helping leaders and all employees become more change resilient.
Six Essential Leadership Traits for Hard Times
The following behaviors characterize a good leader in a downturn:
1. Honesty and credibility. This can prove difficult. Nobody can be certain about the business environment and its direction. How can you tell people what you believe when you lack full confidence? The only viable options are intellectual honesty and humility. Your authority depends on your ability to facilitate understanding and solutions — not from omniscience.
2. Ability to inspire. Many people are extremely anxious. The recession descended as suddenly as a tsunami, destroying hard-earned savings and putting jobs at risk. People don’t trust what they hear, see or read. You and your team must inspire employees by working with them to toughen their resolve. Help them develop one or two realistically optimistic pictures of what can lie ahead. People need a vision that sparks the creativity required to develop new ideas and solutions.
3. Real-time connection to reality. Reality is a moving target. You have to keep updating your picture of it, continuously monitoring change with ground-level intelligence. The same applies to your team, whose members must put all concrete information on the table, however bad it may be. Gather info from unconventional sources, and don’t get locked into one view. Allow the picture to change as you gather new intelligence.
4. Realism tempered with optimism. Unadulterated pessimism is no more realistic than unbridled optimism. The first order of realism is to understand and accept a problem’s magnitude. Then, focus your people on a vision of what’s possible. Energize them to search for actions that will help them realize their visions.
This kind of leadership becomes a performing art. When you introduce the right touch of optimism, your people will tap into their psychological reserves to deal with bad news and transform fear into action.
5. Managing with intensity. Dig into the right details more frequently than before. Hands-on participation is essential. Only through personal involvement can you acquire the ground-level intelligence needed to act with the required speed.
6. Boldness in building for the future. The need to conserve cash and survive may pressure you to shortchange the future. You must resist. It takes imagination and guts to place strategic bets with no guaranteed payoffs when there’s little money and great uncertainly; however, it’s critical to aim for long-term payoffs.
Are you working in a company or law firm where leaders demonstrate honesty and integrity when things get tough? Does your company or law firm provide leadership coaching and leadership development to help leaders temper realism with optimism? During tough economic times, leaders need to fully engage their people in building for the future.
One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I a leader who inspires people to develop new ideas and solutions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who want to become more inspiring so that their people and organization will thrive.
Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help you create an organization that will co-create and execute a sustainable business strategy. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company or law firm.
I am currently accepting new executive coaching, career coaching, and leadership consulting clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to mbrusman@workingresources.com.
