During a crisis, leadership describes itself: good, bad, timely, factual, creative, dynamic, dysfunctional, innovative, transparent, authentic, respected, chaotic, strategic, uncertain, humble, empathetic or some or all of these.
If we’re attuned, we know, see, hear and feel good leadership.
Whether in private industry, government, small business, non-profit, a manufacturing plant, home, office or school, effective leadership is a necessity.
It comes with an ultimate purpose: to manage a situation with focus and truth to get employee teams or families through a crisis with timely solutions, eliminating or lessening missteps, setbacks, physical casualties, mental stresses and providing a road map for recovery.
Speaking hope is a priority; false hope is easily detected. What must we do to remain safe?
At the top of the leadership arc is self-leadership: knowing our inner self, admitting what we know and don’t know, analyzing and speaking our feelings and making personal and professional decisions with focus, empathy and truth.
And, we must listen. What you may believe or fear is not what the next person may fear or believe.
With leadership as one pillar of humanity’s structural apex (truth being another), I’ll add more one-words for us to think about: love, loss and levity.
1. Finding greater love for others and self as we move forward.
2. A crisis brings loss — physical, mental, financial, emotional or spiritual. Right now, we’re all losing something. Yet we’re gaining much more if we wish to accept and understand today’s society and where we can be.
3. We must laugh and show positivity. The crisis engulfing our minds, eyes and ears will end. We will live again. Life, I believe, will be different, giving us opportunities — starting now — to reinvent, rebuild, restart or create new personal and professional priorities. We will find peace.
So, let’s all be good leaders in our space with focused self-leadership. What we think; what we do; how we feel; what we hear, read and speak; how we treat self and others and how we prepare — now and in the future — for life’s situations, seen and unseen, heard and unheard.
