The exceptional situation that has held Switzerland's population and its companies in a firm grip since March has demanded a lot from leaders and employees. The good part of the crisis: Digitalisation has made a big leap forward, at least for some. Leaders have probably learned more about leadership in a crisis than in any leadership seminar. And bad habits and dysfunctional processes have hopefully been recognised and corrected. I wrote this in June 2020. It reads today like a field guide to crisis leadership.
A crisis shows whether engagement and alignment can emerge under pressure. In some companies a tangible leadership crisis became visible, while in others the managing directors and owners at the top led positively and set the example. Whether you lead in a crisis or out of it, both take top leadership. Three aspects show how well you are set up as a leadership team:
Vision: Create orientation, sharpen priorities, have the courage to focus. Do you share a common vision? Alignment shows here above all.
Power: How is it distributed, and which power structures prevail? What makes sense in future?
Attitude and values: The inner attitude of the leaders and employees involved, and their values, play a central role, especially in restless times. Engagement for the shared vision starts here, with the inner stance. With self-leadership. What served as a guideline during the crisis will apply in similar form on the way out of it, and adjust to a new normal.
Heike Bruch and Jochen Menges described the acceleration trap in 2010 (Harvard Business Review). In their sample, some 35% of firms overloaded their employees, 35% suffered from multiloading and 30% from perpetual loading. Crisis leadership on the way out means stepping on the gas with the right amount of energy for the acceleration. Accelerating performance yes, but in the right dose and with clear focus. An acceleration of your team's performance through alignment. Give the right impulses now and use the power of your leadership team to steer in the direction that leads to effectiveness and top results.
Daily, or at least weekly, the starting position changes. In such unsteady times it matters that you, as a top leader, give orientation, set the frame and lead by example. Nobody expects you as an executive to have an answer to every question or to see the positive side of the situation at all times. You should radiate security and calm, even if you fear negative effects on your company. That calm is the core of crisis leadership.
Shared leadership is an advantage here. Distribute leadership responsibility. Demand full engagement from your leadership team and make sure decisions are taken effectively. That produces one team voice.
Shared leadership requires the ability to let go, the willingness and ability to take risks, and the active involvement of employees. It takes courage to allow shared leadership. Through targeted leadership coaching and agile leadership, you and your leadership team become able to respond to the unforeseen adequately and with agility. Empowerment keeps your back free.
Transparency, clear goals that serve a strategy worked out from the current situation. Don't work towards outdated goals, and don't take too many priorities onto the list. When you decide, decide fast and communicate it directly and clearly afterwards.
What the crisis taught us is one thing above all: We have to be ready at all times to question processes, revise them and set ourselves up anew. If something doesn't work, we change it. Flexibility is vital right now. The way out of the crisis will have to be a very flexible one too. Resistance to change is the last thing a company can afford. Since then, crisis leadership has quietly become the normal operating mode of many leadership teams.
Agile leadership teams look ahead, seek and see new opportunities, and welcome challenges and change. In an acceleration phase that approach becomes the direct advantage of agile leadership. It allows the organisation to adapt its strategy quickly to changed conditions.
Through critical questioning, scepticism and curiosity, teams learn from the past and the present. Agile teams implement the insights quickly. They ask for feedback and evaluate their performance from many angles. Real, constant, intensive learning takes place. Real collaboration in a safe environment, established and lived in a cultural change.
Employees should be involved in decision processes so that they can and want to implement decisions self-organised, as a team or individually. Empowerment requires trust. Empowerment also keeps your back free, because your team is able to decide without you.
Adaptability is a combination of looking ahead and learning. The learnings get implemented, even if that means the status quo starts to wobble. When teams adjust priorities too late, they lose punch, lose speed in the acceleration and finally become ineffective.
Resilience means getting up again after a setback and seizing the opportunities that appear. Like a tumbler toy, a team comes back and overcomes setbacks. In crisis leadership, the focus lies on opportunities that mean growth and bring positive results, and less on problems that cannot be solved.
Some companies are already loosening their home office policies, and part of the workforce is being called back. How do we as leaders lead back into normal daily work? Again, alignment in the leadership circle matters. Make successes visible with regular pit stops, accompanied by an experienced facilitator or a professional business coach who guides you through a reflection of the past weeks and months.
The point is to become aware of what worked well in the last weeks and what didn't. Which leadership practices were successful before the crisis? Which ones could be carried on? Which had to be adapted? And what do I take with me as a leader into the new normal? The same approach shows which business processes worked for the teams and which had to be adapted. Reflections can be run remotely as well. Best to find today the business coach or executive coach who will accompany you in the acceleration on the way out of the crisis, with results you can measure.
Crisis leadership and leading change in calm times differ in one point only: The excuse. In 2020 nobody could say the timing was wrong. The leadership teams that kept the 2020 habits, short cycles, visible priorities, pit stops, handled every change since with less drama. The ones that returned to the old mode in 2021 are the ones who call me when the next change arrives.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Change management: How to make change a success · Stable leadership in an agile organisation · Shared leadership · Executive Coaching Zurich
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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