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Leading without knowing the answers

‘How can I lead if I don’t know the answers?’ a leader asks me. In fact, not only is it impossible for the leader to know all the answers, but neither is it the leader’s role to know all the answers. The complex and uncertain contexts we’re all living in now have highlighted that it’s the leader’s role to recognise that uncertainty and complexity demand a new approach to leadership: an approach which means the leader can enable themselves and others to ask questions, to look at things from multiple fresh perspectives, to create an environment which is psychologically safe enough for those around them to experiment, learn, experiment again, and to move with curiosity towards some answers and new questions.

The risk of disempowering

Implicit in this approach is the need to be more agile in the face of what’s unexpected and emergent. Knowing the answers, or expecting yourself as a leader to know the answers, risks disempowering those who might have offered fresh thinking that might illuminate some of the emerging answers. It also risks discouraging naïve questions which can throw light on inappropriate principles or on assumptions that can divert thinking down rabbit holes or involve expensive, but ultimately fruitless, effort.

Certainty is an illusion

Looking to yourself as leader to provide all the answers risks keeping you and your team stuck and immobile, because your thinking is limited by being just one human being. In an uncertain environment, it can also be misleading to set the expectation that you will be able to offer the certainty that is in fact an illusion.

The need for multiple perspectives

The need to act, behave and think differently is heightened by our world being turned upside down by huge new currents: the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, interacting with the increasingly urgent impact of climate change, and both interacting with the new consciousness related to Black Lives Matter and the need to look through different lenses at those whom we often speak of as minorities – lenses that include racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, able and less able, and formally educated or less formally educated, which often also perpetuate an illusion of the intrinsic superiority of the majority. Such polarisations mask and deny the subtleties and nuances inherent in complexity. When these subtleties are recognised it becomes easier to contemplate multiple possibilities and perspectives and to avoid seeking comfort in the black-or-white answers that, again, can be misleading or distorting.

Psychological safety and compassion

The ability to create a climate of the consistent psychological safety that allows for this kind of fertile thinking, and for the compassion that people can find liberates them to be their best, also play an important role here. Although most business education and most leadership development make no mention of compassion as a must-have leadership quality, it makes an important contribution to making uncertainty and complexity more accessible and more palatable. This in turn creates business benefits. For example, the Economist reports that “research by Professor Shimul Melvani, from the University of North Carolina’s Fliegler School of Business, found that compassionate leaders have increased levels of engagement, and have more people willing to follow them…..

“When we as leaders value the happiness of our people, they feel appreciated. They feel respected. And this makes them feel truly connected and engaged. It’s no accident that organisations with more compassionate leaders have stronger connections between people, better collaboration, more trust, stronger commitment to the organisation, and lower turnover,” says Hougaard”.

Embrace complexity and uncertainty

In short, complexity and uncertainty – which are constant factors in organisational flourishing – can be usefully addressed by the leader who allows in and opens up the rich perspectives offered by embracing them and engaging with these factors rather than trying to pin them down, avoid them or simplify them.

Photo by Thomas via Compfight

Leading in complexity and uncertainty

Rather than it being the leader’s role to know all the answers, it’s their role to recognise that uncertainty and complexity demand a new approach to leadership: an approach which means the leader can enable themselves and others to ask questions, to look at things from multiple fresh perspectives, to create an environment which is psychologically safe and compassionate enough for those around them to experiment, learn, experiment again, and to move with curiosity towards some answers and new questions.

Self-care for the leader

I've been working with two leaders who are preoccupied with doing a very high-quality job at a time of significant external pressure and uncertainty – and both are experiencing extremes of stress, approaching burnout. Both are explicit that their performance is at about half the level of what they're used to delivering. Neither of them has been putting in place any boundaries or limits on what they’re asking of themselves, and both are struggling. They’re both trying to do the same job and deliver the same quality as pre-COVID, but in radically different circumstances – and it’s an impossible task. While there's no silver bullet resolution, there are options for changing approach. ‘Normal’ isn’t what it was - and we all need therefore to prioritise our self-care and have the courage to look through new lenses and do something different with what we see.

Isolation, connection and leadership in COVID-19

The isolation that has been a feature of life worldwide ever since the known beginning of COVID-19 in Wuhan is fundamentally at odds with the fact that human beings need to connect with each other in order to survive and to maintain our mental health. Dr Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory tells us that we can create ways of helping ensure that colleagues feel connected. He recommends particular awareness that a lot of modulation in a voice – rather than monotone delivery – along with a friendly face, and open body language, maintain calm and nurture engagement. Similarly, smiling conveys cues of safety and empathy because it involves movement in the muscles round the eyes which, in a smile, convey the message ‘I’m happy to be with you’ – and a sense of safety encourages both engagement and learning.

Coaching through COVID

Coaching through COVID is a pro bono coaching programme which offers a listening ear by psychologically-minded coaches to any NHS or care worker during and beyond COVID-19

A high-performing team through COVID-19

While it’s still early days, this programme is without question delivering value at a time of considerable stress, anxiety and exhaustion for NHS staff dealing with COVID-19. High-quality coaches at an advanced stage of coaching maturity are supported by teams of wellbeing and trauma specialists, and the core team shares a clear purpose, to which all team members are passionately committed. We are privileged to experience humble and inspiring leadership from Mark McMordie, constantly with an eye both on the present and the future, and with a focus on both the big picture (a systemic, creative and far-reaching view) and the operational detail to implement it, and attention paid to team members’ wellbeing and self-care so that we can sustain ourselves as well as the programme. This is distributed leadership in action, with all team members feeling free and trusted to take initiative, and all working with agility and flexibility. The outcomes of the team ethos are showing in coachees' positive feedback.

Pro bono NHS coaching for COVID-19

In COVID-19, NHS medical staff are facing an encounter with an illness whose scale and rate of transmission is nothing like anything they’ve ever encountered before. They are frightened, stressed, anxious, exhausted from working long shifts in a new, uncertain yet threatening context, and in some cases, they're traumatised. The pro bono coaching programme COVID-19 Rapid Response Coaching (C19RR), set up in mid-March, is a professional, high-quality coaching programme, supported by supervision, trauma specialists, counsellors and therapists, and is being rolled out at speed. It has started with a pilot at a large London teaching hospital, and demand is growing exponentially.

Never enough time

The underpinnings of clients' 'too little time' often turn out to be something from a completely different source, such as patterns related to taking responsibility, unclear priorities or unclear purpose, being distracted by the short-term rewards of 'helping', or aiming for perfection. The costs of striving to fit an unrealistic amount of work into too little time can include stress and exhaustion without ever feeling you've got anywhere. So struggles with time are often actually struggles with embedded patterns of thinking, behaviour and loyalties. Gaining insight into those patterns and so giving oneself more choice is the key - and fundamental to that is taking time for honest and courageous reflection, either alone or with a skilled coach.

Seeking momentum

For momentum to build and sustain, whether for growth, cutting costs or increasing profit or benefit, organisations need their people to be aligned in their purpose and focus, and they need their leaders to inspire them and keep them on track. Momentum seems to me not be a linear process, but rather a complex process – and leaders sometimes forget to what extent the pace and the momentum inevitably create disruption and turbulence, both of which inhibit the momentum. The effort to achieve momentum may be experienced as turbulence for some time before there’s any sense of things settling into a pattern, and particularly any sense of wellbeing with and within that pattern. People struggle to build momentum while things feel turbulent or unstable: momentum and turbulence are uneasy companions. Leaders need to anticipate this process as part of their planning for the momentum they want.

Presence and gravitas

Leadership is at least as much about being as about doing - so a leader’s presence and gravitas help resource them to motivate and inspire others. Personal presence is most obviously about authenticity, integrity, non-judgmental awareness of, and openness to, all aspects of one’s environment (internal and external), and acceptance and self-acceptance. Gravitas results in impact and influence through the power of communication and the impact of relationships. It conveys a sense of authority, substance and weight, but also includes humanity and humour. Contributing factors to gravitas are presence, behaviour and expertise – and they are all necessary conditions. In other words, gravitas combines being with doing and communicating.

Keeping quiet and carrying on - or finding your voice

When most of us see or hear - or indeed experience - behaviour by our leaders at work that lacks integrity, justice or humanity, our usual response is to keep our heads down and carry on, fearing the penalties if we speak up. When we have an emotional reaction to what we've witnesed, as long as we don’t act, both the injustice and our own lack of action may continue to rankle. So we get caught in a double bind: it’s too dangerous to speak out, and it’s too uncomfortable not to speak out. Speaking up can require significant courage. As an executive coach, I’m privileged to be able to provide a safe space in which leaders engage with the risky process of finding their voices, articulating their own truths, becoming more of who they are – and in the process becoming more effective and compelling leaders, invariably with greater integrity and humanity.

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