Leading is easy when the course is clear. When you know the direcction your company is headed and what the future holds, leadership is about helping everyone do their best and achieve the most optimal outcomes along the way. But what about times of uncertainty when you don’t know what lies ahead?
This is when true leadership is essential. Times of change or instability can make it challenging to stay the course. These times are when it is most important to re-center and stick to your organization’s core values as the landscape stabilizes or you identify a new course in changing times.
Let’s explore how leaders can continue to guide their teams well through uncertainty.
Rebuild Your Center
The first step is to rebuild your center. Identify what brings your team together and what makes you strong. This can involve the shared company values, your value-offering in the current market and landscape, and the teamwork that has always ensured your shared success in the past.
- Focus on Shared Values - Company values and a shared mission are what bring people together as a team. Refocus on your shared values. This will help everyone stay centered and confident in your shared tasks, and it will help guide you toward the best course of action that aligns with your shared values and mission.
- Identify Where You Stand in the Changing Landscape - Determine where your company stands in the context of uncertain times. World events, market disruption, and changing trends can be unnerving, but knowing where you stand among these elements gives you a solid place to start.
Strengthen Your Team
Once you have a clear view of the situation, focus on strengthening your team. A team that is dedicated and confident in your teamwork will weather uncertainty with more resilience and fortitude than a team with a more tenuous bond. Use your inherent and trained leadership skills to strengthen your team’s sense of loyalty and determination to weather the storm together.
- Show Empathy - Empathy helps you understand the situation from others’ perspectives. Ensure your team feels heard when they express their concerns and adapt your leadership style based on the individual and collective needs of your team.
- Create a Foundation of Trust - Work together to build a foundation of trust. Communication, reliability, and determination to forge a new path together will build that essential trust that makes a team strong.
- Be Accessible and Transparent - Make sure that you are available to answer questions and share information you have. A leader that is accessible and transparent can be trusted as part of the team, not aloof or above the team.
- Encourage Team Ownership - At the same time, encourage each team member to feel personal ownership of the team’s success, shared projects, and your shared future course. This will foster dedication and ensure you hear everyone’s best ideas.
- Instill a Growth Mindset - Kindle a growth mindset in your team so everyone is ready to build and adapt as the strategy changes based on new circumstances.
Find Your Path
Building your center and strengthening your team will make your company resilient in the face of change and uncertainty. But as a leader, it is also your job to guide your team toward new routes to success. That means reading the changing landscape or marketplace to find a new direction and forge a new path.
- Where are New Opportunities? - Keep your eyes open for new opportunities. Adapting your business model to meet new and changing demand is inherent to long-lasting brands. There are many potential new opportunities if you know how to identify them and pivot your strategy.
- What are Your Clients’ Needs? - One source of new direction is the changing needs of your clients. If your clients have requests and pain points that haven’t been addressed, you may be able to design or adapt your products and services to meet that new need.
- What are Other Industries Doing? - Look into how other industries are handling the same changes in the business landscape. You may gain inspiration from how they are creatively adapting to problems like supply chain interruptions, new types of demand, regulatory requirements, and other disrupting forces.
- Choose a Clear Direction - Once you choose a path, provide your team with a clear and unwavering direction. Outline why you have made your choice and then work together to build the optimal path toward success.
- Take Proactive Steps and Act Decisively - Don’t wait for change to happen. Take proactive steps and act deciseively to claim new opportunities and adapt your business model to changing demands.
Prepare for the Future with Platinum Group.
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