How To Offer Leadership In Uncertain Times

Following the shock Effective Persons In How To Achieve Leadership Qualities Northern Rock and Societe General, a cold wind is beginning to blow across the business world. Around the country Business Managers are wondering what their next challenge might be: growth or cutbacks? Leading through uncertain times requires a different approach to leading during times of certainty whether How To Achieve Leadership Qualities As Asserting is certainty of expansion or of belt tightening.

The Challenges of leading through uncertainty are many:

How to keep up morale and motivation in an atmosphere of increasing despondency

How to maintain a sense of Deciding On How To Achieve Leadership Qualities forward when the Achieving Leadership Qualities At Church is uncertain

How to create hope and optimism in a general atmosphere of pessimism

How to remain pro-active Achieving Leadership Qualities In Parenting reacting to events you can't control

How to keep your best people while they wonder how safe the ship is

How to stay closely attuned to changes in the business environment while focussing on getting the best from your organization

How to be flexible enough to respond to changing situations while still making plans and doing things

How to continue to get the best from people while they are distracted for concerns for their own future

While some of these challenges are about business acumen, most are about knowing how to lead and manage people when you can't give them what you think they want, a rosy picture of the organization's, and their, future.

Many leaders become paralysed by their inability to give clear, Demonstrations in How to Achieve Leadership Qualities reaching answers about the future and so try to avoid such conversations altogether, or, offer false hope and promises which are rapidly spotted as such by those they seek to reassure.

So what can you do instead?

Be honest with people that you don't know for sure what the future holds

At the same time be optimistic about possibilities

Engage and involve people as much as possible in making the decisions that CAN be made

Develop the ability to act 'as if' you knew what to do for the best

While at the same time being flexible enough to change tack when new information comes in

Recognise that everything you say and do as a leader has meaning for your followers - there is no such thing as a neutral transmission of information or 'doing nothing'

So make sure you manage the meaning you create by how you communicate and by what you are focus on

Help your people make the most productive and useful sense of what is happening

Act 'as if' they both have a future both inside the company and out. So ensure that they realise that the projects do are doing will increase the likelihood of the company surviving, and, increase their market worth

Don't make promises you can't keep

Find someone outside the organization (a coach for instance) with whom you can have the 'dark night of the soul' conversations, don't burden or scare your staff with these

Yet at times be prepared to be honest that you too have doubts and uncertainties about the future, your future

Be prepared to listen to people's concerns about the future and offer what you can to help them feel better

Try to ensure that people continue to feel that they have choices about what they can do

Find ways that people can be pro-active in dealing with the needs of the business and their concerns

Recognise that you have a wealth of expertise, intelligence, skill and resource in your organization to help meet the challenges ahead

Don't feel because you are the leader you must have all the answers

Be your best authentic self

Recognise and encourage the value of positive emotions - laughter, playfulness, passion

Create stories of hope, possibility and good futures that are accepting of current realities

People know you can't fortune tell. What they want is that you acknowledge how they feel and work to help them feel Demonstrations In How To Achieve Leadership Qualities about things so that they can pro-actively do things to help make a good future more likely.

Sarah Lewis is the Managing Director of Appreciating Change, a psychological change consultancy focussed on helping leaders and managers achieve positive change in their organisations.

0845 055 9874

sarahlewis@appreciatingchange.co.uk

http://www.appreciatingchange.co.uk

Sarah Lewis is a chartered occupational psychologist and managing director of Appreciatingchange (which is a trading name for Jemstone Consultancy). Sarah and her How To Achieve Leadership Qualities Within Self work with managers and leaders in organisations to achieve effective organisational change at individual, team and organisational level.

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