In these times of confusion, worry and stress, leadership counts.  How you react and behave when the pressure is on will give others insight on your leadership abilities.  Holding the title becomes irrelevant, people are looking for leadership action and language.  Around the world we are starting to see how our political ‘leaders’ are behaving and a lot of that behaviour is left falling short.

We don’t always know how we will act in a highly stressful situation, but we always have a choice under any and every circumstance.  Many do not recognise the choices let alone make good selections, some see the choices but revert to their natural response (hit and miss).  Others will recognise the options, evaluate the situation and make a good choice; most times.

Regardless of the size of the company, organisation, team or group you’re involved in, in times of crisis people are looking for strong & authentic leadership.  If you have the title, now is the test; do you have the metal.

Where to start? That is the question. 

Most companies have a set of values, stated behaviours, a culture (aspirational or actual), start with those.  Let’s take a standard set of values from a well-known company:

• Respect

• Integrity

• Teamwork

• Accountability

Four words that are meant to convey so much.  Are all the leaders/managers demonstrating all of these values in their every action?  Well maybe not, but the leaders of the company must, under every circumstance without fail, demonstrate their support of these values to every person in the reporting chain, calling people to account when they are not demonstrating and acknowledging those who do maintain them even under duress.  Failure to support your stated values puts everything into a tailspin and the leader’s integrity is now under scrutiny (that is value 2).  When a value is questioned, all the values go out the window, they are now becoming unrecoverable and people now see that they can also behave as they feel fit; a values breakdown at every level.  Fairness is a major trigger for most people and being asked to behave a certain way, when they do not see it in their ‘leadership’ group, rings the unfairness bell loud and clear.

As our current crisis worsens, and it will, how will you stand up?  Will the pressure of shareholder expectations, loss of profitability, need to reduce costs, even threat of bankruptcy, and several other business challenges cause you to step up or step off?  Will you demonstrate true leadership and act in a way that, at least, aligns with the stated values, behaviour and culture of the organisation?  Or will you give in to expedient behaviour, suboptimal decisions and actions that may hurt the people you purport to lead.

Leadership: Now Is The Time.

About the Author

Peter James is a professional career coach, with expertise in the areas of strategic and ‘hands-on’ change management, coaching, group facilitation, leadership development and organisational design and change. Peter James is director at Career Life Transitions.