Balanced Leadership for Crises

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the person!!


With the current COVID19 crisis, leadership in different spheres has been pushed under the lens of scrutiny.  Political and medical leaders are the first to be watched - what are they doing / planning to do? Does their plan make sense? Or worse still - do they know what they are doing?

Now, there was really nothing in the past few decades to prepare any leader or individual for such a situation.  So we cannot really point fingers at leaders who don't seem to be doing a great job.  This post is not about finger-pointing at all.

This post is about how the leaders are acting or reacting.  To put it simply, every leader has had to REACT. There wasn't any choice.  However, once the initial stage of reaction passed, what was the next step?  This next step (according to me) clearly showcases the two types of leaders:

• A Transactional Leader.

A Transactional leader is one who takes care of business as it is required in the moment.  This is pretty much the formula in the Situational Leadership Model, where the leader's style is dictated largely by the willingness and readiness of his team members.

Make no mistake - this leader is critical to get the business plans and day to day operations executed.

• A Visionary Leader.

A Visionary Leader is one who provides direction to the organization for the long journey ahead. S/he is able to look beyond the pressures of the current storm and plot out a course. Perhaps revise the old direction completely and create a new one. Alternatively, s/he would coach the immediate reports to think and plan alternative means of getting to the future they have already identified and worked towards till the start of the COVID19 crisis this year.  Perhaps s/he and her/his team will decide to personally call their best customers, understand their situation, ask what support they might need - AND NOT SELL in the first call.  I am sure this will strengthen customer relationships and energize the team by giving them something clear to focus on to build or rebuild the business.


While the leader would have to perform both roles, a balance is required.  Too much focus on transaction may lead to too many unhealthy cuts of manpower and budgets and growth plans.  Too much focus on the new future (which no one really knows anything about, no matter what the experts say) will lead to some crucial decisions being missed out.

I guess the important question is - How does one develop this Visionary ability?  Here are my thoughts:-

• Be completely human in your approach. So - acknowledge your emotional side, speak about the feelings that people are going through, and share yours too.
• Be totally clear about your personal values and those values that the organization stands for, and talk about how your plans and actions are in line with those values.
• Develop analytical skills, make use of data modeling and AI to partway support your visionary journey.
• Re-evaluate your internal processes to see what can be done to increase customer satisfaction to both survive and thrive. This would have the added benefit of making your customers your brand ambassadors.
• Focus on realigning staff (instead of retrenching) as processes are changed so that the impact of the effectiveness increases.
• This means ensuring that the most effective employees are retained, along with those who are not that effective, according to your resources and balance sheet.  Ricardo Semmler's book "The Seven Day Weekend" gives interesting insights about this critical aspect.
• Please don't look only at Performance Management ratings when taking people decisions. Try and adopt a Potential Assessment approach so that you don't end up sending away an average performer today, who could, some months ahead, end up being a critical contributor. HR folks - your opportunity to let your strategic side shine, not to mention your ability to make HR data valuable beyond the compensation budget.
• If you have to let people go, please ensure that their dignity is intact - and this applies to all levels. You will definitely enhance the Trust Factor within and outside the organization, and enhance a supportive Employer brand image in the departing employees' minds.
• Review the organization's culture and processes and see what can be done to improve the ease of doing business or reduce the associated bumps and scars.

I haven't numbered these to allow the leader to rank them in some order of importance, according to his business.  In fact, it would be a great exercise to do with your top team, and some of you may have done it already.  You want help to do this? Write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call +919820155778 for a discussion.

You have more ideas?  Please do share.  

When your Strengths attack - YOU!

As I waited to cross the street the other day, a motorbike rider was going past. As he slowed down at the intersection, I noticed that the sidestand of his bike was sticking out. This is a dangerous thing, as any biker knows, since it can cause the rider to wobble on a turn or have a fall. So I yelled out "Stand" to him as he passed me. He immediately kicked it back up while in motion, and waved a thanks to me as he went on his way.

This got me thinking - what aspect of our habits and behaviours, similarly stick out (like the bike stand) without our knowledge and cause us to fall, or create problems in our relationships or get in our way of doing things.

There have been occasions where I have been making my point logically during a discussion (my view) when I am informed by a friend or my spouse that I'm shouting. I was unaware of the increase in volume in my voice, and immediately rejected their statement and went on to further explain my point, at a higher volume. Not my finest moment, to say the least, But we can't depend on signals like these always, since we may sometimes get caught up in the moment.

We know that our Talents and Strengths manifest through our behaviours. In Strengths Strategy language, we say that this behaviour is either an overuse of a Strength / Talent or a blind spot - because of the lack of control and awareness of how the strength is actually manifesting. This is important because our strengths (in the right proportion) serve a particular purpose, but an excess use of a strength can lead to a weakness.

This was the revelation of a participant at my recent Decode Your Strengths Workshop - "I'm surprised to learn that my weaknesses are actually my strengths in overuse".

Now here's the key thing - this overuse or blind spot is also a part of who we are. We cannot reject it or ignore it - too risky. Hiding it also doesn't help - it can pop out during the oddest occasion.

Please read the rest here.

This article first appeared on Linkedin on 09 January 2017.