What We Can Learn From Our Leaders

In this blog post, we generated our insights from the analysis of different adversity and responses to bad situations of our interviewees. We believe there are common factors that lead to the success of our leaders getting through hardships. By digesting each leader's specific situation and their ways to navigate through adversity, we present our findings on the effective strategies and leadership skills for handling adverse events.

Situational Leadership

The first factor to mention is Situational Leadership, which means adapting leadership style to a specific situation, rather than pushing one’s agenda onto them. We wrote about this a little bit at the end of Zerina’s adversity story; however, we wanted to expand on it some more. As a leader, you may be in charge of task behaviors, related to explaining how to do a task and all the logistics associated with it, as well as supportive behaviors, related to the why behind a task and involving relationships and emotions with your team. As we have seen in adverse situations, sometimes nobody knows the correct answer or what to do, so the supportive behaviors of promoting trust, positive values, and integrity can be important, so that frustration with the task doesn’t cause conflicts with the team. This method of leadership is known as collaborating, which makes a lot of sense actually. Laura also uses collaborating as her leadership style. As we mentioned in the blog post, Laura believes that everyone wants the best common result, and that openness and transparency are ways to lead.

Situational leadership appeared in a different way in Fiona’s story. Since Fiona faced the risk of closing down her restaurant (as the owner) while facing the initially negative attitudes of her employees, she used quite a different approach to influence people. Her situation required her to conduct both high directive and high supportive behaviors to ensure not only that the task would be completed, but also her people would be supported. By setting goals, identifying priorities, delegating tasks, planning actions, and monitoring performances, Fiona directed her team with specific instructions. On the other hand, she also realized the need for support from her employees in such bad situations, so she listened to her employees’ opinions patiently, facilitated problem-solving as a team, explained her decisions, shared information about self and the actual situation of the restaurant, and constantly gave encouragement and praise to increase morale in the team. As a leader, Fiona diagnosed the current situation and decided to adopt a coaching leadership style as there were new jobs needed to be instructed and employees were feeling insecure during Covid-19.

Although there is never one right answer of how to approach leadership, we have seen Zerina, Laura, and Fiona try to bond with their teams and employees, in order to build a support system they can turn to when they are stuck on a task. This encourages open communication and honesty, as well as occasional vulnerability, which is all extremely valuable in a chaotic situation. The coaching leadership style may be effective when there is adversity, where the path to take, is more clear, or if there is a specific person who is assigning tasks. As mentioned, since Fiona was the owner of the restaurant, although she built relationships with her employees, she was also the one who made the final decisions on issues and gave out tasks. However, what we have noticed overall, whether it is collaborating or coaching, both involve high supportive behavior, which is a vital aspect of overcoming adversity. It’s also important for leaders to diagnose the situation first in terms of the performance level of the individual and the complexity of the task so that they can decide which leadership approach can be the best to leverage to match the specific situation. Using the most appropriate leadership style, leaders can then communicate with the team strategically to ensure the success of overcoming adversity.

Conflict Resolution

Related to this are conflict resolution tactics. Once again, there are multiple categories: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. It is probably pretty clear by now that collaborating and compromising will be most effective in a challenging situation. A leader should work with others, rather than compete with them or run away from the conflict altogether. However, despite how obvious this may sound in theory, it is harder to execute, so we wanted to spend some time talking about conflict resolution and how to lead others through them. First off, there are two main types of conflict in the work environment: task conflict and relationship conflict. Task conflict is easier to solve, but relationship conflict can undermine productivity and outcomes. Don’t worry, it is still possible to solve, like how Zerina rebuilt relationships with the students at McCombs, but it may take more effort. Because of cognitive biases and different heuristics in our brains, it is easy to impair reasoning and explode emotionally when triggered. That is why the first step is to find out what is causing these feelings and reframe others’ actions in a way that reduces radical responses. Reflection and reframing issues help put them into perspective and are important in dealing with task conflict as well.

After this, focus on facilitating productive discussions with others. Manage your emotions and theirs by anticipating their comments, remain calm, and structure your conversation using strategic techniques (such as adding buffers when delivering bad news). As Zerina beautifully said in her interview, “You might not be the one that changes the way someone views an issue, but you could be the first person who plants the seed.” Don’t expect someone to change their opinions immediately but allow for collaborative discussions, rather than competitive ones. Lastly, foster the relationship by emphasizing the shared goal, which is usually the same when dealing with adversity. Remind others that it is not always about fighting for little things, but about achieving the big goal of transcending the challenge at hand. Although our interviewees were less affected by internal conflict, it can be very common to experience it, and these tactics are highly effective in solving it.

Empathy & Perspective-Getting

Empathy and perspective-getting are imperative when a leader tries to support his or her team as it becomes easier to build trust if two parties can understand each other’s situation and emotions. Fiona’s experience has shown that her empathy for her employees and ability to get her employees’ perspectives and emotions helped her build deeper trust with the team quickly, and thus fostered higher motivation and morale in the team. Laura also treats people with love and her role with passion. She leads with empathy and is able to make the team cohesive and united, as a family. A good leader should always listen to their people as they can thus understand their personalities, emotions, and standings. Based on these diagnoses, leaders can decide the specific connections to build with different perspectives, which help leaders be more effective in influencing the individual.

Ambiguity

Another important consideration is ambiguity. All three of our stories showed that ambiguity existed, especially for Laura and Fiona, in terms of not knowing when Covid-19 will be over. However, Zerina also experienced ambiguity because she did not have any guidance from the old team to help back up her decisions. Tolerance of ambiguity is a difficult skill to learn; however, adverse situations force us to make decisions without having all the information. Laura faced ambiguity by asking for help and clear communications with others. One person may not know the best answer, but together as a team, the community could find the best possible solution together. Being aware of the impact each decision could make and take everything in a holistic approach could help to lead with confidence, even if the leader is uncertain. Another tip for this would be to get out of your comfort zone more often and practice making inferences and recommendations based on limited data so that when an ambiguous situation does come around, you can use the information you can gather to decide on what to do. It takes practice, and every situation is different, but it is clear that all three of our leaders improved in this aspect and will now be more ready if another tough situation arises.

Emotion Management

Last but not least, perceiving emotions and managing self-emotions are always necessary for leaders to lead a team in difficulties, which is better known as leading with emotional intelligence. It’s important for leaders to obtain information from the team’s emotions to understand the situation. Leaders should also manage their own and others’ emotions to find the most appropriate fit for the task. In the story of Fiona, she indicated that decisions that incorporate emotion-based information tend to be more effective because her employees were willing to make the change and complete the task more. Laura also noted that being cautious with words and thinking before acting helps her to connect with others better. Additionally, Zerina was also affected by psychologically and emotionally by being thrown into something new and having to rebuild relationships within McCombs. However, reflection, vulnerability, and emotion management helped her communicate with her team without getting frustrated and find her strengths. Although you may feel not too confident in controlling the emotions of both yourself and others, you will get better at it by practicing and undergoing hardships.