As we mentioned in January, we’re focusing this year’s articles on a singular theme: Recovery.
Over the past 12 months or more, you’ve worked hard to lead your business through crises - unrelenting, sudden, and evolving change. The crises you’ve experienced required you to think and act quickly, whether to keep your business firmly on the rails, or to shift it to a new track.
Your audience, customers, and clients have all been experiencing these swift changes with you. If you lead a team, that team has as well. Everyone is reeling from all that has occurred and continues to look to you to provide the vision, clarity, and communications that will help them understand where they fit in the world.
When we’re in the midst of recovering from a crisis - and this includes those small recoveries, between multiple crises - because honestly, we don’t know when the end date is on this - we have the opportunity to heal, create hope, and become even more resilient.
One of our most important learnings in running our own business has been that great leadership starts with (and frequently returns to) a ridiculous amount of self-reflection. We think leadership is all about other people - our customers, our clients, our strategic partners, our support teams - but in reality, there’s nothing you can do for those people if you are not constantly working on yourself.
That self-work is constant and relentless. After all the crises you’ve been through recently, you may be just a little too tired to stare into the mirror, but you know, as we do, that this is exactly what you need to do.
What Did You Learn About Yourself?
Set aside some time, at least once a month, and definitely once each quarter, to review some very specific crises and difficult moments you experienced.
Write it down. Try this:
Start with a brief description of the crisis or difficult moment.
What did you do in response?
What was the outcome?
What did you do well? (Don’t act like everything was garbage! You did something well!)
What do you think you could have improved? (Ask for feedback from people who were impacted.)
What would you do differently next time?
At this point, many people feel like the work is done, but it is definitely not.
How Will You Add to Your Leadership Toolkit?
You will experience a crisis again. It probably won’t be the same crisis. It’ll be shiny, new, and terrifying.
However, you aren’t new to this kind of stuff anymore. You’re a leader who has been through more than a few battles, in a very, very short period of time. You have the opportunity to either learn from your experiences or repeat errors over and over again. The leaders who don’t learn often find themselves… no longer leading.
You’re not that kind of leader. You’re the kind that is in a continuous state of growth.
Many people don’t take advantage of learning opportunities. They think they’re just going to remember everything and apply it at some point in the future. But one of the sucky things about being human is that we’re often more likely to rely on habit and emotion than we are to rely on new learnings.
New habits are HARD - but once we have built them, they stay with us for a very, very long time.
So how do we build them?
Set Intention
You’ve already started this part. By completing your review of specific events and identifying areas for you to grow and improve, you know what you want to do next.
Now, get specific about it.
What is the new habit?
Why do you want to develop it?
What makes this important for you?
Create Action - and Timelines
What, specifically, will you do to develop your new leadership habit, incorporating your learning from all the crises you have experienced?
Break it down into developmental chunks (this is where coaches can be very helpful, if you’re not sure how to do this) and set timelines around each of these.
Write. It. Down.
Link that written piece in your calendar for weekly review. Repetition might be boring… but it works.
Get Accountable
When we are accountable to someone else, we are often more motivated to get things done.
Who is holding you accountable? Is it a business partner, team member, coach, or peer?
How will you check in on this change? How will you prove to your accountability partner that you are making this habit stick?
Review, Review, Review
Keep checking in on what you are learning about yourself. Keep asking yourself those key questions:
Start with a brief description of the crisis or difficult moment.
What did you do in response?
What was the outcome?
What did you do well? (Don’t act like everything was garbage! You did something well!)
What do you think you could have improved? (Ask for feedback from people who were impacted.)
What would you do differently next time?
And start the cycle all over again. It’s not complicated, but we won’t kid you - it’s hard.
You’re worth it, though. You have built skills and resilience. Let’s put those to work.
Are you looking for a great team to support your great leadership? Get in touch with us, right here.