The one certain thing about leadership in our times is the need to manage ourselves and our teams through uncertainty.
I was recently on a call with three colleagues who work with executives and managers in a range of organizations across the globe. Ali, one of the leadership development experts on the call, shared her concern about declining business, “How do I get my clients to consider training vital when, in their panic to quell the tidal wave of disruption, they judge time spent on training to be vestigial?”
Today, knowledge is outdated with the refresh of a page. As the world faces tectonic shifts in technology, ways of working, climate, and economic forces, trainers can build manager resilience and agility. The capacity to pivot quickly and build stamina through every convulsion will determine whether organizations forge new frontiers or careen off the cliffs created by the rift between past and future.
Based on workshops I’ve conducted, and one-on-one coaching with executives and other decision makers, here are four strategies to lead effectively amid persistent uncertainty.
1. Create strong structures.
In my book, “You’re the Boss,” I mention that the job of a manager is to create the container, not the content. A container is a set of structures, processes, and rituals a boss architects to provide the guidance and guardrails within which their team can do the work. For example, managers can provide a set of norms for how a meeting is run such as listing every idea during brainstorming, holding discussions where each person says something on the topic even if it’s just “pass,” or establishing clear time boundaries for each of a specific set of steps.
During some workshops, I provide the container. Participants get to see a blueprint for an effective container and practice having productive conversations within its confines. We might have an activity where individuals share an area they’re struggling with and receive coaching from their peers. We might refine the structure, so the presenter shares their challenge for five minutes, then everyone asks open-ended questions for 10 minutes, followed by colleagues providing feedback without the presenter responding at all during a 15-minute segment. Then the presenter shares their takeaways without defending or further explaining their challenge.
Clear time boundaries and prompts for each segment teach individuals how to hold each other accountable and offer and/or listen to feedback without getting derailed by lengthy explanations or defensiveness.
The more chaotic the content, the more helpful it is to have a robust container. Standardized rules for discussions, when so many rules are up for negotiation, anchor people as they explore the unknown. We achieve this outcome through clear training protocols and repeatable rituals consistently upheld without compromise.
2. Engage below the neck.
Managers repeatedly hear phrases about change management, mindful communication, and the need for resilience and agility. This is our opportunity to help them learn by experience rather than through didactic lecturing. Change is about the heart and guts more than pure intellect and logic. Change activates and engages us “below the neck.” How can we grow the participants’ capacity to manage themselves and others when they’re emotionally triggered? By engineering activities with less emphasis on talking and more on doing. The more unconventional the activity is, the more potential to build resilience and agility.
For example, let’s say everyone expects you to be the expert in the front of the room. But instead of being the talking head, you assign them to plan how to teach a segment of the class. What if you were to simply go silent for five minutes with an invitation to them to experiment with exploring the unknown? Schedule pauses at regular intervals and ask them to make sense of what’s going on in the room. You might provide data to help them along, such as “in the last hour, 17 people have not spoken,” or “on topic X, only women shared their opinion.”
Any experiential activity needs to be followed by robust debriefing. First, ensure you create a container: Establish the purpose (e.g., learn about others’ experience during the exercise), how you’d like people to participate (e.g., we want to hear from everyone), anything you’d like them to refrain from (e.g., only speak to your experience, not someone else’s), and seed the conversation with a few key questions. If the experience was emotionally intense, have individuals start by journaling their experience, then discussing it in trios before sharing with the full room.
By designing visceral experiences, we can help participants move from being emotionally hijacked — caught in a reactive, amygdala-driven state — to operating with greater awareness and performance under pressure.
3. Reduce the Sole Provider Power Gap.
Amid uncertainty and anxiety, we need all the help and perspectives we can get. But the more experience we have, and the more senior we are, the more likely we are to fall into the narrative of the “Sole Provider Power Gap.” This is a belief that we’re the only ones who can or should perform a task or we do it better and faster than anyone else. The Sole Provider fable creates and widens distance between us and our teams by reducing transparency, squelching team members’ growth and exacerbating pressure on the few while leaving the many languishing. To train managers on the downsides of being a Sole Provider, design exercises where they do a demanding activity individually and then with others. Discuss the pros and cons of working as a team.
4. Create blank space.
When we are stymied without clear solutions, a flurry of activity only creates busy work, reduces agility and adds pressure. Instead, dedicate time to reflection. Some of our best insights blossom in conditions where our brains are resting in the shower, while commuting or when exercising. Carve out blank space where participants are offline, not talking to others, and spending time in solitary reflection or ideation. This is challenging in our hyper-connected times, so setting clear boundaries and agreements is vital to this strategy’s success. My clients find that blank space often reveals an answer hiding in plain sight — inside their minds.
Conclusion
Resilience and agility can’t be learned passively in a classroom. Instead, convert the classroom into a gym where you create conditions that invite people to practice resilience and agility. Muscles grow stronger through sustained exercise over time — leading in uncertain times is no different.
