How GovCon Leaders Can Survive Through Chaos & Uncertainty
Keeping it real, you probably feel like the rug was pulled out from under you at best. Maybe more like life punched your business in the face. So now what?
You can fight, you can freeze, you can flee, you can “fawn”...Or you can respond strategically and turn that stress into a strategic advantage. That’s what I help my clients do. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Here’s What’s Happening
The surest way to lose everything you worked for when leading through change and chaos is to make decisions from a stressed-out, emotional state.
What happens is your amygdala detects a threat, kicking off a chain reaction. Your body is flooded with stress hormones that essentially overpower your prefrontal cortex, which is your emotional regulator.
Put very simply, stress shuts down your ability to think clearly, leaving you in a reactive state. Enter the Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn stress responses you’ve likely heard of.
This is not where leadership should be. If you lead from a stressed, reactive state, you can take your business, and of course, then your people, down with you. Here’s how.
Impacts to You, the Leader
Impaired Judgment: Decisions are often based on immediate emotional responses rather than careful consideration.
Reduced Creativity: Stress can limit the ability to think outside the box and explore innovative solutions.
Increased Risk-Taking: Leaders might take unnecessary risks due to heightened emotional arousal.
Decreased Risk-Taking: On the flip side, leaders might be so paralyzed by fear and uncertainty that they take no risks at all.
Decreased Empathy: Stress can make leaders less understanding and less able to connect with their team members.
Poor Communication: Messages may become unclear or aggressive or absent altogether, leading to misunderstanding, fear, mistrust, and doubt. Remember, "negativity fills the void”.
Lack of Strategic Thinking: Long-term goals and strategies may be overlooked in favor of short-term fixes.
Increased Defensiveness: Leaders may become overly protective of their decisions and less open to feedback.
Decreased Adaptability: Stress can make it harder for leaders to adjust to changing circumstances.
Burnout: Chronic stress can lead to physical and mental exhaustion, reducing overall effectiveness and leading to burnout, which causes even further mental, physical, emotional, and financial problems.
The stress response has its place. But it’s not conducive to thought leadership. When you are in stress response mode, your brain prioritizes immediate survival over strategic thinking and interpersonal relationships.
Your brain doesn’t know the difference between the stress of someone chasing you with a knife, the jerk who cut you off in traffic, or the fear of a funding freeze. It senses “threat,” and off the chemical response goes.
This can lead to a cascade of negative consequences for the organization, including decreased employee morale, reduced productivity, increased unnecessary turnover, and poor decision-making that can harm business performance.
Impacts on Your Team
Leaders' stress states can have significant ripple effects throughout their organizations:
Affect contagion: Leaders' emotional states can automatically transfer to followers, influencing the overall organizational climate. This leads to reduced morale and motivation, disengagement, and lower productivity.
Increased Conflict and Tension: Stressed leaders may be more prone to negative behaviors, exacerbating conflicts and increasing tension within the team. Or the team members themselves may not cope well with the stress they feel under, and increase incivility.
Lack of Creativity: A tense work environment can stifle creativity and innovation, as employees may feel hesitant to take risks or think outside the box.
Reduced Well-Being: The negative behaviors exhibited by stressed leaders can impact employees' physical and mental health, leading to burnout, depression, and other stress-related issues.
Increased Turnover: Prolonged exposure to a stressful work environment may lead to increased absenteeism and turnover as employees seek better work conditions.
Reduced employee performance: Destructive leadership behaviors resulting from stress can lead to negative consequences for employee productivity with employees not knowing what to prioritize or no longer having the capacity to put forth effort.
Here’s What to Do
Crisis leadership research has shown the following to hold true:
Adaptability and Strategic Flexibility: Demonstrate proactive adaptability by strategically adjusting plans and resources in response to changing circumstances. This involves anticipating needs, making informed decisions, and avoiding reactive stress responses.
Effective Communication: Practice clear and transparent communication, even when information is incomplete. Be open about what is known and what is not, and commit to finding and sharing information as it becomes available. This helps maintain trust and ensures stakeholders are aligned.
Strategic Problem-Solving: Distinguish between complicated problems, which are intricate but can be solved using existing knowledge and processes, and complex problems, which involve uncertain or dynamic elements that require innovative solutions, collaboration, and adaptability. Recognizing this difference is crucial because it helps leaders choose the right approach: applying established protocols for complicated problems versus fostering a culture of experimentation and learning for complex ones. Avoid perfectionism, seek peer support, and take a broader view by "zooming out" to see the bigger picture.
Proactive Leadership: Operate in multiple dimensions—leading down (supporting the team), up (influencing superiors), across (collaborating with peers), and beyond (engaging external partners and the community). Ensure that all actions align with long-term business strategies and objectives, even as you navigate short-term challenges.
Trust and Integrity: Prioritize trust, transparency, and empathy. Demonstrate genuine concern for employees, engage actively with the community, focus on a greater mission, and maintain a sense of opportunity even in adversity.
Values-Driven Leadership: Adhere to core values, maintain transparency, and model ethical behavior to guide organizations through turmoil. Ensure all voices are heard and ideas can flourish.
Accountability and Hope: Take personal accountability, use compassionate actions to prevent further harm, and create psychological protections for employees by providing hope and purpose.
Leader's Personal Well-being: Invest in your own health and well-being by prioritizing sleep, exercise, nutrition, and mental health practices. Recognize that your ability to make sound decisions and lead effectively is directly tied to your physical and mental resilience. By taking care of yourself, you ensure you can support your team and guide the organization through challenging times.
I know. Easier said than done. The first step is focusing on what you can and cannot control. Even that can be challenging. But by doing so, by limiting your reactive, stress-driven responses, you can improve decision-making, reduce destructive leadership behaviors, garner trust from your team, and motivate them to do their best work with what you’ve all got.
What help figuring out how to start? Schedule a commitment-free consult (15 minutes).