How to Lead in a Crisis – Lessons from a Mediator

The focus of the mediation and wider dispute resolution community, with the Coronavirus pandemic having taken hold is quite rightly, moving traditional processes online ensuring clients still have an opportunity to resolve their disputes.

However, I wanted to take this opportunity to look at how what I have learned as a mediator and psychologist can help you lead your business, large or small, through the crisis we all face.

Here are my 6 lessons on leadership in a crisis.

1. Break Through Initial ‘Denial and Avoidance’

Mental avoidance is a major path adopted by human beings when dilemmas or challenges appear just too tough and too disruptive of our normal patterns of life.

The first stage is usually denial of the problem, an inherent refusal psychologically to accept an unusual and uncomfortable reality. It is triggered by our instinctive unwillingness to see a fracturing of the comfort of existing patterns and perceptions that guide our lives.

The phenomenon is similar to what regularly happens when organisations or communities have to react to serious whistleblowers, for example making revelations about toxic emissions or personal injury from corporate products, or exposing financial irregularities.

Good leadership needs to be open and patient in considering suggestions of a different perspective, and open to messengers who may flag up the uncomfortable insights requiring action.

 

And patience needs to extend not just to the issues, but to the character of the messenger. Often such messages are communicated by unusual or ‘uncomfortable’ characters who have become alert to the realities in their own unusual way.

Leaders need the objectivity to think past appearances to possible realities that need attention by the organisation. Arrogance, complacency, defensiveness and personal prejudice are common leadership fault lines in whether leadership teams come to terms with emerging realities.

Leaders will help others avoid denial by modelling patience, resilience and openness to new perspectives in working through difficult scenarios.

2. Give Clarity on the Problem and the Potential Tracks Forward

In times of confusion, we hunger for explanations that help chart a path forward and seem manageable and direct.

Confident ownership of the need for change is called for, and leadership that can powerfully paint a picture that is compelling about the realities to face.

However, this human need can also divert sometimes into ‘populist’ movements – when leaders major on the need for simplicity and our emotional urge for solutions, but then direct it at targets that are illusory, fuelling a focus on false solutions rather than on ways forward that better reflect underlying realities or the true capabilities reflecting our humanity.

Getting past confusion needs intensive review, dialogue and action learning for real clarity about a problem to emerge.

3. Empathy, Empathy, Empathy

We are only too conscious in times of threat, that we may not find it easy to escape our current difficulties.

Leaders who can articulate those challenges well but frame the challenge from a stance of optimism and empathy, will receive better appreciation for their honesty and admissions of the difficulties.

 

Most of the time, our social intelligence can identify, even if only subconsciously, where a ‘line’ is being fed to us that is artificial and out of synch with the obvious realities we are facing. ‘You can fool all of the people some of the time…’ etc.

Leaders need to convince that they ‘get’ what is disturbing everyone, and highlight how they are attempting to use all resources to ensure a better future even through difficulties. People respond best when they feel heard and understood in their anxieties, even if not entirely ‘safe’.

4. Take strength from Diversity – Diversity of Experience and of Talent

It is a well-known finding from research that more successful organisations tap into diversity – not just diversity of gender etc, but also of perceptions and of talents.

Using the full range of resource brings a more holistic understanding of situations, injects greater subtlety and effectiveness to messages, and offers more creative solutions to path-finding.

This is particularly the case in dealing with complex social problems that have indeterminate solutions (‘wicked problems’ in the social planning literature). A good test of leadership is to ask whether it is drawing on a wide array of expertise and a variety of opinions for its deliberations, rather than hunkering down with a closed team of ‘believers’ who want to hold on to a simple vision.

Good leaders need to draw on their resources to help clarify the type and scale of the problem, and the emerging thinking on how to handle it well.

5. Be Decisive – About Iterative Decision-Making

When a challenge is of a magnitude and/or complexity that we rarely face, start with the expectation that decisions will often fail to be right first time, or even second or third.

Be prepared to adjust and change course. Build that assumption into the values and protocols we use for decision-making.

Encourage experimentation and diversity, not only in the talent we draw on, but the solutions that we want to test. Refine and re-test, and where practicable create a variety of approaches and pilot schemes so that we learn from experience and do not lead people into a cul-de-sac.

Decisiveness about taking action of some kind, is still key, however. First, it engenders confidence rather than leaves others in a state of anxiety from inaction. And in complex problems, there will often not be a right answer but every practical step of attempted action we attempt helps deepen our knowledge base and our intelligence and capability for finding a path to a better place.

6. Be Especially Focused on Implementation Competence

Leadership requires not just finding ideas, solutions, policies for going forward.

As in normal corporate life, effective implementation of corporate strategy can contribute 80%+ of the battle for success.

So be especially focused on implementation effectiveness as equally requiring diversity of talent, good process, and excellent judgement.

To Sum Up

It is notable that most of the tips for operating effectively in a crisis are about drawing on others’ talents and experience.

The ‘great leader’ focus is misplaced in the sense of looking to one person as a saviour in terms of solutions or implementation. What a leader has to do in a complex situation is to be a master of tone and of compelling vision, yet able to facilitate great process, including openness to, and engagement of, diverse voices and talents.

The acid test of leadership ultimately of course, is decision-making – to recognise that after all the discussion and action reviews, someone still needs, because of formal role or otherwise, to exercise the ultimate authority over decision choices or allocation of resources, even if many other decision-making stages can be delegated to the diverse talents that are engaged.

 

If decisions have to be taken by a group or committee, leadership is exercised through influencing such judgement and by the group’s collective intelligence. Such moments of decision point choices need profound judgement capability.

In that sense, of course, we have to diverge from comparing mediators to leaders.

Mediators should set the tone for crisis negotiations, help develop effective process for dialogue and decision-making, model really productive interventions and problem-solving behaviours including incremental step-taking, make the most of the diversity and talent that can be identified across the parties.

But ultimately, it is the parties who have to decide their future and take leadership of themselves, because they own the resources for success or otherwise.