5 Steps to Lead Effectively When the Ding Hits the Fan!

Here’s a simple fact: anyone can seem like a great leader when everything goes perfectly right.

If you have a great team of people, and everyone does what they are supposed to, and the market conditions stay favorable, and all of your customers are happy, and all of your vendors do what they are supposed to, then being a good leader is a no-brainer.

That’s a whole heck of a lot of “ifs.” If you’re willing to take those odds, remind me never to go to Vegas with you…

The real test of your leadership skills comes when things go wrong. And trust me, they will go wrong. Ding! will happen (hence the title of this post).

This is not me being pessimistic; it’s just the way the world works. There are too many variables out there for everything to stay perfect forever (if you’re even lucky enough to get that situation in the first place…)

How well you lead when things go wrong is not only a test of your leadership skills, but it’s also the reason you have your job in the first place. Your organization didn’t hire you to babysit a bunch of high-achievers and stay out of their way.

You were hired to get the most out of your team, prevent problems before they happen, and deal with problems when they do happen.

Sadly, many managers never give a second thought to what they’ll do when times get tough. As a result, not only do they not fix the bad situations, but they often make it even worse.

To help you avoid falling into that trap, here is a five-step plan you can use to lead your team (and yourself) through the unexpected crises that are bound to occur:

Step 1: Pause and Think

The simplest and most important step you should take when the unexpected happens is also the one that is most often missed.

Don’t jump in with a knee-jerk emotional reaction! It’s easy to calm down when you have time (say, you receive notice that your company is reorganizing your department). It’s much harder to do when you are confronted with an immediate problem (an angry customer is complaining about the service he received from one of our employees).

In either case, the best thing you can do before opening your mouth or springing into action is to pause, take a few breaths, and think about both the problem and your possible solutions.

Problems get quickly exacerbated when we let our emotions control our responses. Don’t fall into this trap. Just…don’t…

Step 2: Take a Look at the Big Picture

Now that you have controlled yourself and paused before responding, you may be wondering, “What do I think about?”

The first thing you should think about is the big picture. When a problem happens, it’s easy to focus on the short term and then do whatever it takes to make the problem go away (for now). The problem with this approach is that often our short-term solutions just end up making things far, far worse in the long-run.

Before you take any action, be very clear on what your long term goals are, for your organization, your team, and for yourself.

Be open and honest in this stage. Sometimes we have clear goals, but then an unexpected event actually changes the entire picture. If you cling to your old goals even after the change, you can end up wasting a lot of time and effort.

For example, let’s say you have a promising employee who happens to be a little insecure. One day he makes a mistake that makes everyone’s lives harder. The mistake was not due to negligence; it was just an honest mistake. Your initial emotional response might be to berate and yell at the employee. That would make you feel better in the short run, and might make you feel like you addressed the problem.

However, if your long-term goal is to see this employee grow and flourish, then berating him may completely undermine your goal. Especially if he is already insecure. A better approach would be to reassure the employee that you understand and then work to fix the situation.

This is not to say you coddle employees and never address their shortcomings. You do, only you do it later, and in a better way (more on that in a moment).

Step 3: Put Your Attention on What You Can Control

Once you know what your big picture goal is, you need to figure out what you can do to achieve that goal.

The critical element here is that you make sure you only focus on the activities that you and your team can do right here, right now.

When things go wrong, it’s easy to worry about the future, complain about the past, or look for someone to blame. The problem is that none of those things help you a) fix the problem or b) move you towards you big picture goals.

Leaders who lead well in a crisis put their attention only on what they can control, and they let the rest go. This is the “secret” they use to quickly and effectively deal with the unexpected.

The next time something goes wrong, ask yourself, “What can we do right here, right now, with the resources we have, to resolve this situation?”

That should be your primary focus until the crisis has passed.

Step 4: Take Deliberate Action

Of course, simply thinking about and talking about what you should do is meaningless if you don’t take any action.

Sometimes, after going through the first three steps above, your course of action will be crystal clear. In those cases it is very easy to take deliberate action.

Sometimes however, the situation will be a bit murkier. You will have multiple choices, and none of them will seem perfect. It is in these cases where you, as the leader, must step up, choose a course of action, and take it.

It’s not easy, and you won’t always be right. However, the worst thing you can do is allow yourself to be paralyzed by uncertainty. Pick an option and run with it.

This doesn’t mean you have to be chained to an idea forever. If you chose one path and it doesn’t work, you can try something else. In fact, you will learn far more by trying something and getting feedback than you ever will by sitting at a desk thinking and analyzing.

And yes, your action can be to take no action at all! As long as it is a deliberate decision that you feel gives you the best chance of achieving your big picture goals (and not fear-driven paralysis), then sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can do.

Step 5: Analyze and Address the Problem

Once the crisis has passed – or at least been addressed – it is time to analyze the situation and figure out why things went wrong in the first place.

This is another step that many leaders miss. They feel that once the problem has been fixed, they don’t need to harp on it any longer. They assume the employee learned his lesson, or that the underlying issue in process or systems has been fixed, and then choose to focus on happier things.

This is a big problem, because if you don’t address and fix the original cause of the problem, you are setting yourself up to have to deal with it again and again.

This is the step where you, working alone or with your team, need to identify what went wrong, why it happened, who was responsible, and how you all can ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

By doing this step last, you manage to

1. Keep your initial energy on fixing the crisis
2. Avoid letting undue emotion enter into your analysis and discussion

Now is the time to chat with an employee, or reprimand them, or even dismiss them, if necessary. Now is the time to identify what the root cause of the problem was (yes, this is basically the time where you sort of “assign blame,” just so you can make sure it doesn’t happen again). Now is the time to complain about the antiquated computer system and try to find the money to replace it.

Problems need to be addressed. They just need to be addressed at the right moment.

In Conclusion

If there were never any tough times, there would be no real need for great leaders. However, you know as well as I do how the world works. Those tough times are coming…

Use the five steps above to navigate through those unexpected events as they occur. Not only will you reduce your own stress and deal with them like a champ, but your own bosses and supervisors will appreciate and reward your efforts.

***
Do the above steps sound familiar? That’s because they are the steps Avish talks about in his keynote presentations and training programs. If you have a conference or management training retreat coming up, then consider bringing Avish for an interactive, funny, and content-rich session! Visit his Conference Speaker page now for details!
 

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By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+

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