Management Consulting will never be the same
julio 11, 2025
Growth
julio 11, 2025
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A new CEO leadership approach
A LEADERSHIP APPROACH IN THE COMING NEW REALITIES
This Pandemic. Many of us will wake up from a long sleep filled with nightmares. Individuals will search for their past employments, or their private professional and business activities. They will search for the places in which they used to be a regular customer and likely will not find them fully operational. Even the streets will seem different. Their plans, their aspirations may have been shattered and they are back to base zero. Companies, similarly will face many questions. Will the market be able to keep them at capacity? When might it happen? What will it take? How is the immediate future going to look? Will their workforce come back in full force? Do they have the financial strength to carry out new plans?
Businesses will need to reexamine their financials, their markets and their strategies. The questions are: What to change? How to change? And how to do it fast.
The bottom line is that everyone, at all levels, will look at leadership to provide answers, direction, guidance, as we come out of this pandemic with the fears and imbedded feelings induced by uncertainties.
Do we have the needed innovative leaders? Can they come back with strength and tensity and face the new realities? Will they overcome the paralyzing fears? Will they be able to use their energy, knowledge, and past experience to drive companies and communities forward? Do they have the inner strength to believe in themselves and mobilize the energy of all those who surround their businesses?
The truth is that the nature of the uncertainties, their depth and diversity have no precedence. Hence only part of acquired experience may be useful. Little has been written about such situations except in the context of experimental psychology. It is almost like saying that what we may know and appreciate of the behavior of leaders and the team’s members or communities’ responsiveness has been tested only in laboratory.
What may be the scope of the uncertainties within which leaders need to act?
Uncertainty generally refers to the knowledge of situations involving unknown information, no data, and/or changing state of mind due to external, uncontrolled, and unpredictable events. The new rules of the game, so to speak, are not clearly understood. It relegates the operations stadium into a stochastic environment, and is affected by the risk of leadership procrastination, conditioned by ignorance and fear. All fields that were dealt with for a long time in an acceptable stable state, or at least in a manageable tolerance of changes, are going to set new ways of doing business and professional activities. This includes insurance, finance, size and value of real estate, total compensations, individual’s and community’s psychology, OKRs (Objective Key results), KPIs, (Key Performance Indicators), life style, social needs, work place, and handling information, to name a few.
About three decades ago, the management guru, Peter Drucker, commented about the need for leaders to learn to act in uncertain environment. He noticed there was one guaranteed thing executives and leaders could count on: not much.
He wrote: “Uncertainty – in the economy, society, politics” – (and the psychology of survival) “has become so great as to render futile, if not counterproductive, the kind of planning most companies, managers and leaders still practice.”
Historical approaches, attitudes, plans and knowledge should not be a barrier or a straightjacket just because they worked then or if the board had already approved it. Everything needs to be reassessed, reexamined under new glasses.
The individuals who are self-employed, independent contractors, or owners of small businesses have to become their own leaders. CEOs have to lead organizations and teams of higher diversity in a more complicated decision-making environment. The companies and their stakeholders, internal and external, have been battered. However, they all have to find a new formula for adequate answers to the new challenges. These formula needs to be based on acceptable common individual and societal values.
What are the components required to present a strong post-pandemic variety of leadership formulas? We may find some responses by studying the behavior of a few recognized leaders who have dealt with unprecedented situations, even if their stadiums were not directly business related. The commonality is that there were no precedents. They relied on instinct, actively listening, and knowing what they needed to achieve, and understanding their goals. They were willing to do what it took to win their own war. Who were those role models? Well, we may learn from Roosevelt, Churchill, Martin Luther King, Mandela and a few others. They all demonstrated courage. They all had the people, countryman in mind; and they were all committed to the truth.
Studying these historical behaviors, I would suggest that there are five components required to achieve a solid and stable formula. They are briefly presented in what I consider the order of relevance and complexity.
- Tolerance of ambiguity. The degree to which one is able to act comfortably in a loosely defined environment, confront low predictability, and conflicting directions. Can the person act effectively in such an undefined decision-making environment? The unknown is intimidating and causes anxiety. When this occurs, paralysis can set in and credibility or self-confidence may be lost. A leader is expected to act with confidence. He needs to identify the problem; explore all options; and then act according to his best judgement.
Ambiguity is a form of adversity which individuals have to face. In 1997 P. Shultz in his book, “Adversity Quotient: turning obstacles into opportunities,” introduced the term of AQ and developed an Adversity Response Profile (ARP) measurement. The AQ measures the ability to deal with adversities, ambiguities, and uncertainties. Leaders, who deal better with ambiguity, will have higher AQ, and an ARP that shows stronger and more stable attitudes, tolerance of mental stress, quick learning, and comfortable with change.
- Many refer to adaptability as a skill. Such a skill demonstrates the ability an individual has in order to change, modify his actions, and approach. He has the capability to respond to quickly changing environment.
Recently our world changed radically. We have not yet reached a steady state.
While adaptability requires quick adjustment to changing and unpredictable situations, inventiveness requires fresh thinking to come up with novel ideas that are situation appropriate and practical. (The National Academies Press, 2015)
Thus, Adaptability and Inventiveness are complementary to successfully face the post-pandemic uncertainty brought about by new challenges.
- Embracing the truth. The truth is fact or reality based. Embracing truth relates to accepting it without embellishment. It is often painful, uncomfortable or unexpected. Yet by rejecting it or ignoring it, it does not change the facts or the reality.
The truth is often uncomfortable to some, while it is easily acceptable by others. However, from the perspective of a leader or the individual who faces the need to make difficult decisions, the facts, clear and proven, have to drive decision-making. This includes the consequences that follow in a drive to achieve the expected results. Objectivity in this diction making process is critical and it must account for the wellbeing of team.
- Motivation and care. Facing the uncertainties demands strength and positive drive demonstrated by leaders. Such attitude is a process of stimulating communities and individuals to adapt their thinking to the changing reality. They must mobilize their inner strength, approach, and drive to accomplish needed and expected goals.
Motivation is an intrinsic factor of leadership. It is the leaders’ responsibility to enhance the inner value of individuals and the values the community accepts, embraces and by which it lives.
Leaders who are responsible for a community need to show the motivation to succeed and their attitude has to become contagious. While showing inner strength to overcome obstacles, such motivation is enhanced by demonstrating care for the members of the community or single individuals who have to face in the new reality.
- Energy and courage. As we face new circumstances learning and fresh approaches, are needed. It is necessary to appreciate and understand that leaders have to show decisiveness, the courage to face the new circumstances and act with energy.
The need for decisiveness does not allow for hesitation that could be interpreted as fear or confusion. To enhance the courage and confidence the leader has to listen to colleagues, supporters, and constituents. Work together, learn together and harness the courage to face the new world together.
Do not tire; and as soon as one identifies the new space, the boundaries and the possibilities, “Keep playing the long game!”
The question that we face is how does one master these attitudes? According to Drucker, successful leaders (and individuals who lead their own small businesses) achieve all that is needed through others. Leading with the attitudes I discussed earlier generates the opportunity to accept the contributions of those one is expected to lead. This is a behavior that in turn contributes to master the needed attitudes. Keeping the required attitudinal adjustment present at all time and allowing them to strengthen by way of mirroring those who contribute will lead to mastering these behaviors.
Napoleon Hill, a reporter who interviewed during the 30’s and 40’s a long list of successful and wealthy self-made leaders in their fields, discovered that none of these successful people did so strictly by his/her own actions.
Leaders, who take the time to understand the scope of the required attitudes, will achieve all that is needed with the contribution of others. Lead your team and your business to quick response and success by acting jointly with the talent that surrounds you, while mastering the attitudes we discussed.
I believe that the combination of the attitudes I analyzed briefly are best summarized in the words of the psychologist Adam Grant: “Bad leaders believe people work for them. Good leaders believe people work with them. Great leaders believe they work for people. Especially in crisis, we depend on servant leaders to put others first.”
- The challenge is about looking forward, learning to anticipate the future and drive towards re-invention.
- The new reality forces us to leave our comfort zone and make decisions with a new level of uncertainty.
- Individuals who show resilience, courage to adapt and reinvent themselves and their businesses will cultivate the survival instinct
George Kastner
4-5-2020/ 11-10-2020
