We've all done it — in a moment of stress, we do something out of character.
For example, your laptop battery dies and the entire computer shuts off. You lose hours of work.
Next thing you know, a member of your team pings you with a quick question. You snap at them, saying they should be able to figure this out on their own.
This kind of thing happens all the time to leaders. The stress of one situation causes us to overreact in another. The challenge is that people will remember your negative reactions, influencing their impressions of your moving forward. Depending on the reaction's visibility, word may get around, affecting your leadership reputation for years to come.
And this scenario was just a minor mishap — imagine the type of stress a major crisis could cause.
A crisis is the worst time for these behaviors as a leader, especially when your teams are also under a great deal of stress. Every interaction matters more during a crisis, so it's important to take a moment to assess your own emotions and recognize those feelings of unrest and uneasiness.
Being able to control your emotions, especially in a crisis, is one of the things that sets great leaders apart from everyone else. During a crisis, you need to be very self-aware to successfully lead a team. While most think they are self-aware, only 10-15% of people in a Harvard Business Review study (registration required) actually demonstrated self-awareness.
But training and self-awareness might make it easier for us to better take control of ourselves during a crisis or stressful situation.
Recognizing Personal Tendencies
During a crisis, leaders must demonstrate peak leadership behaviors.
Yet, as leaders, we may not be aware of our behaviors' impact on others. Perhaps we don't receive much feedback or our behavior went unchecked. It might have even been reinforced, so we don't question it. But recognizing personal tendencies is critical for leadership success. It makes it possible to control our impact on others.
A lot of things go into our leadership behaviors, starting with personal values. These are built in from life experience, personality, family and society. Environmental factors influence our behavior. These are intensified during a crisis. Normally we don't feel the pressure to act quickly and handle tough decisions. The pressure affects how we react — good or bad.
During a crisis, we should take an inventory of our own emotional stability and abilities, including:
• How you deal with emotions and recognize others' emotions to assess how they're handling the crisis
• Your ability to quickly act and assess risks during a crisis
• The confidence to firmly address situations, while still being able to remain open to others' perspectives
• Your ability to quickly pay attention to detail, while not losing sight of the bigger picture and long-term business opportunities
• How to take a practical and pragmatic approach to problems, evaluating and accepting creative, innovative solutions
• Remaining calm, without coming off as aloof, while displaying empathy and compassion for others
The Risk Of Derailing Tendencies And How To Manage
Along with personal tendencies, everyone has a set of derailers. Derailers are the dark side of our personalities. These are qualities and learned behaviors that get in the way of day-to-day effectiveness. Our personal tendencies can be triggered during times of stress and cause us to do something negative.
This is where self-awareness is most important. It's usually difficult to recognize your own derailers. Stress, being tired or feeling unqualified can bring out different derailers, such as being overly perfectionist, dependent on approval, volatile or imperceptive of others' feelings. If you don't know your derailers, you can take advantage of free tools that help you recognize your negative tendencies.
It's important to be aware of personal derailers to be able to properly manage each one. With proper derailer management, it's possible to help achieve goals, while helping others deal with stress and crises.
There are several ways to manage derailers, including:
• Take time to reflect before reacting.
• Ask for and recognize the value of others' viewpoints and praise them for their contributions.
• Tell a trusted friend about your personal derailers and ask them to let you know when these tendencies arise.
• Consider worst-case scenarios when faced with challenges or decisions.
• After important discussions, check with others to ensure everyone received the same message.
• Take the time to realize the impact or lack of impact of your communication.
• Recognize your potential for intimidating others and soften how you deliver messages.
Each derailing behavior requires a different management method. Anyone in a leadership role, especially during stressful times, needs to be aware of how to handle their derailers so they can communicate effectively.
We're all human, and every leader struggles with their own unique challenges. What makes leaders great is knowing how to manage those challenges. If you can master that, you can accomplish great things, especially in moments of crisis when your team needs you the most.
