In a crisis, be with the team

Every leader worth his salt would have gone through a number of critical situations, each one seemingly bigger than the previous.

To me, crisis presented a new opportunity to learn. It gave me an important lesson. I had talked about trusting people in one of my earlier posts. But as a leader, when crisis hits, the first thing they tend to forget is the trust in their teams.

The lead tends to jump in to take control of things, starting from trying to understand the issue to communicating the updates to stakeholders. It does not stop there - the lead gets into the way of everything - the problem resolution, suggesting solutions, getting back to original state of affairs. In the whole process forgetting that there are / might be competent people in the team to do all this and more. 

To top it all, the worst thing the leader can do is to add to the pressure that the team is already facing and showing in his / her behaviour the tendencies to put people in extreme pressure.

I did all this and more... :). In my initial days, I used to sit with people at their desks trying to understand  the problem, trying to give resolutions. I used to ask people frequently for a status update on the issue, the resolution progress and so on. After a period of time, I started to realise that by doing so, I was just getting in the way. 

In due course, I started to change my behaviour under a crisis. I would take time to understand the situation, the resolution methods but after that I would leave my team to get on with their work. I would keep updating all stakeholders and never left my teams to do that - their task in hand was to solve things and not be bothered about external pressures. I never let the team feel the pressure of the situation, so that they can concentrate on the job at hand. But I would still stay with team, near their desks, just providing a moral support. Making them understand that there is someone to take care of things, if went bad. My physical presence was more of gesture to my teams not to worry about anything, and this helped when people gave me feedback that it helped them in several ways.

Over a period of time, I understood, that during a crisis the team needs the leader to be with them, but they can take control of the situation.

Until next week...

ps: when i was a consultant, i was always irritated about people asking me on the status frequently when i would have clearly stated that it would take some time. But after I became a lead, the situation reversed and I asked for status updates. I realised that the other side of the coin was as tough as well. :)

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