Inspiring Leadership for Uncertain Times

Karlin Sloan

• Editore: The Propeller Group, Inc. DBA Sloan Group Int
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781087882871
• Edizione: 2
• Argomento: Negocios y empresa
• Categoria: Ética empresarial

Revised for a new audience in a new era, I nspiring Leadership in Uncertain Times by Karlin Sloan shows you how to break through the fear to survive the long haul and create a fuller, richer, more sustainable organization. Packed with techniques and case studies, you' will learn:

• Why businesses must shift gears to social responsibility and collective right action.
• How corporate giants and small businesses alike bounced back from change and adversity.
• How to reduce fear-based behaviors, inspire performance, and align your companyaround a larger purpose.

Karlin Sloan is the founder and CEO of Sloan Group International, a boutique leadership development firm that provides organizational development consulting, team facilitation, and executive coaching across the globe.

Chapter 1
From Fear to Alignment

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

—Franklin D Roosevelt

When we operate in a state of fear, we shut down our best thinking and instead we operate from reactivity to immediate danger. If we stay in that state of fear, we are consistently training our brains out of our best thinking.

Think about your work environment.

Is it a place where people are concerned for their jobs? Are they uncomfortable with or distrustful of feedback? Is there a consistent background state of anxiety? OR, is it a place you are excited to go to, where new ideas are cultivated, where there is a sense of possibility and promise, and where you are unafraid to express yourself, to ask questions, or to come up with new ways of working?

Most of our organizations are a bit of both. During times of stress and challenge—and dare I say future shock—they can shift quickly toward fear based behavior and decisions. Fight, flight, and freeze are the hard-wired responses to fear that stop us from making good decisions and acting from the best part of ourselves. They are also what get organizations into trouble.

Remember, Alignment is confidence in our ability to create a positive outcome no matter what the circumstance, and it means getting ourselves out of survival mode.

You may remember from your Psychology 101 class the idea of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs¹. It’s pretty simple: The hierarchy starts at the bottom with survival. If we don’t have food, water and our other physical survival needs met, that becomes our complete focus.

As we move up the ladder, and we have shelter covered, we get to more sophisticated needs. We move to getting our emotional needs met through love and connection to others. Beyond that, we have the basic human need for respect—from others and from ourselves (self-esteem). At the top of the pyramid are two more areas. One is self-actualization. This is described by Maslow’s student, Dr. Wayne Dyer, as “to be free of the good opinion of others” and “to do things not simply for the outcomes but because it’s the reason you are here on earth”.² Self-actualization is the point at which we connect to purpose and meaning beyond our own physical and emotional needs.

The final category was created at the end of Maslow’s life, and that category is one he felt had been missing: transcendence. When we transcend, we give back to the world without the need for our own gain.

Why is this model useful when we look to create Alignment in our organizations? Because so many of us revert to survival-level behaviors in the face of fear, even when, in the moment, those needs are covered. When we are worried about survival, we don’t have the capacity to align with higher-level behaviors like searching for meaning, giving to others, and contributing our gifts and talents in a positive way. Instead, we become self-focused and fearful.

To create Alignment, leaders need to help move people up the ladder from the basics to the very top.

If you’re reading this book, chances are you have your survival needs taken care of. That doesn’t mean you don’t feel like you’re in survival mode. These sometimes-unconscious responses to our outside environment can shape our behavior, our beliefs, and our outcomes in unhelpful ways.

Fear is useful when you’re at that bottom level of the Maslow pyramid. Without fear, we couldn’t survive. We need to be able to activate that fight or flight instinct in times of immediate physical danger. It’s not as useful when we are beyond that immediate moment of life-or-death peril.

The Four Practices of Alignment

Fear of the future, fear of change, fear of the unknown and fear of overwhelm—what are we to do with these increasing fears?

Alignment practices allow leaders to interact with a rapidly changing environment successfully.

We need to bring out our amazing human capacity to be thoughtful and conscious before we act; we must cultivate our ability to operate from a state of Alignment. Leaders who succeed in an environment of rapid change use the four practices that create that Alignment:

1. Accept what is, and focus on the future

1. Build relationships and community

1. View challenges as opportunities

1. Practice physical and mental discipline

As you read the stories of leaders and their organizations overcoming obstacles, dealing with tough times, managing growth or expansion, coming out of a bad situation, or discovering exciting new ways to do things, you’ll see these same four practices over and over again.

One of my favorite examples of Alignment, in the face of seemingly unending adversity, is in the leadership of Ernest Shackleton. In December of 1914, Shackleton and his crew set out on the ship, Endurance, to Antarctica; one of the last frontiers of the golden age of exploration. One month later, his ship was frozen in pack ice, never to sail again.

Known to his men as “the boss,” Shackleton quickly engaged the men in constant activities, both work and play, as they camped on the ice, waiting for the coming thaw. He encouraged unity in his team and made everyone equal by removing all rank. And he gave them a new, shared mission: keeping every man alive.

The men of the Endurance were buoyed by Shackleton, who kept a focus on the future and looked for solutions at every turn. When the thaw came and the ice began to break up, the crew set out in three lifeboats to find dry land. After five days at sea in temperatures of minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit (-30ºC), they reached Elephant Island, a desolate place inhabited by penguins. It was soon clear that there was no chance of rescue.

The crew patched together one lifeboat, and Shackleton and five other men set out across the roughest ocean in the world to make it to South Georgia Island. For three days they walked, despite deep hunger and exhaustion, to reach the whaling station. Sea ice stopped Shackleton from rescuing his men, immediately. When he finally reached Elephant Island with a tug four months later, he rescued every single member of the Endurance crew³.

Shackleton’s ability to accept the real, focus on the positive future, build relationships and community, and view challenges as opportunities enabled his crew to survive. He understood the circumstances they were in but he never gave in to believing in a terrible future. He kept the faith, and helped his crew to develop constant physical and mental discipline that helped them stay alive no matter what happened.

Just as Shackleton led his team through difficult circumstances, our business leaders today face enormous challenge and unprecedented change, and when we’re in charge it’s up to us to keep ourselves and our teams rallied to meet whatever lies before us.

How do we develop these marvelous abilities required for Alignment? We must reorient ourselves to developing our strengths and to seeing possibilities in what’s before us, no matter how difficult.

The Strengths Revolution

There is a revolution happening in our organizations, and it is a revolution of strengths. Voices like those of Martin Seligman, Marcus Buckingham, David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, Fred Luthans, and Kim Cameron are publicly declaring a new worldview in organizational life. I am proud to say my organization has been a part of that strengths revolution for the last twenty years, and that every day that we help another leader to engage their best thinking, make clear decisions, communicate effectively, build their team’s capacity, or get out of reactive, fear-based behavior, I am satisfied we are helping to bring about the possibility of a positive future.

The strengths revolution is not about a “Pollyanna” worldview that looks only at the positive to the exclusion of all else; ...