We’re living in an increasingly uncertain world, with a great deal of political, economic and climate instability – and there’s a lot of fear around. Right now in the UK we’re experiencing huge fears regarding the future of our economy, and considerable doubts about the best way to progress.
Faced with such high levels of uncertainty and fear, political leaders have a tendency to want to reassure us, calm us down, and to stick with the original plan. They are extremely reluctant to rattle us by telling us how it is, or to start opening up different scenarios that might affect us deeply, and could mean all of us going through the pain of profound change. They fear both losing our votes, and creating unrest.
Where the bad habits start…
It’s a similar story in the organisations where we’ve been working: high levels of uncertainty, considerable change to deliver, and lots at stake. We’ve seen how leaders can seem to pretend that uncertainty and change don’t require anything particularly different from them. Some appear simply to keep their heads down and carry on with ‘tried and tested’ strategies…
However, this isn’t delivering the results that people are used to and expecting – and it’s hard for leaders to face this, to ‘fess up’ and to find new ways of working with their stakeholders and teams to tackle things in a more effective way.
Ways to ‘dodge’ uncertainty
Here are some things that we’ve observed anxious leaders doing to ‘dodge’ uncertainty and continue as normal. Maybe there are leaders in your organisation doing these things too - and need help to explore more productive options…
1. Waiting for others to make key decisions, often interminably! - rather than bravely seeking these people out, confronting them with the issues, finding out more about their worlds and working with them to move things on
2. Pursuing and stolidly defending an isolated agenda in the face of opposition from colleagues - rather than working in partnership with others to develop a joint agenda, painful though that might be.
3. Creating esoteric, and often impressive programmes/projects that purport to drive performance to a higher level, but simply serve to confuse or distract - rather than having a proper dialogue with colleagues to deepen understanding about what needs attention, and deciding how best to proceed.
4. Getting as close as possible to one particular senior stakeholder and focusing purely on delivering what he/she wants - rather than talking to all the key players and trying to understand and distill the wider issues.
5. Packing meeting agendas full of updates and reviews of things that have already happened, and focusing on the short-term numbers - rather than creating spaces for difficult questions to be raised and tough discussions to be had.
6. Creating lists of actions and/or rules based on ‘old world’ methods and coming down very hard on anyone who transgresses - rather than developing some simple, bold next steps and aligning around the motivational drivers that will deliver
7. Telling followers that things are better than they are and overplaying the possible outcomes of strategies being put in place - rather than courageously facing into the difficulties ahead, telling it like it is and promising to work with them to find a way through.
What next?
If you spot leaders in your organisation exhibiting any of these bad habits, you might like to a) read our blog Five essential skills for leading through uncertainty b) give us a call to discuss!
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