You still have a job. Today.
Your company still has customers. This week.
You still have a team to lead. For now.
Butt how do you stay focused in the present when you're so worried about future that you can't sleep at night? And how do you motivate your people to perform today when you can't make them any promises about tomorrow?
The secret is learning to sit with uncertainty. It's something we humans struggle with. The human mind isn’t comfortable with ambiguity. We like everything to be settled before we can put our heads down and get to work.
Managers are reluctant to start projects until they’re certain the criteria won't ever change. Sales people don't want to prospect until everything at the home office is organized in the way that it will be for all time. And the rest of us can get so worked up over the mere hint of potential change or bad news that it's all we can do to show up for work and surf the Internet all day.
However, as challenging as it may be, one of the cornerstones of great leadership - or being a great parent or a top performer in any field - is the ability to stay focused in the face of uncertainty.
We’ve got to make peace with ambiguity, and it’s never been more of a challenge than right now.
Intellectually, we know that doing your best work today increases the likelihood that you'll still have a job tomorrow. Making prospect calls improves the chances that your business will remain afloat. Keeping your team in alignment with the goals increases the odds of achieving them. And keeping your home running smoothly can give you and your family stability in a world gone mad.
However, emotionally, it’s hard to stay focused when the future feels like a big, scary unknown.
The rules of business, and for that matter, the rules of life, seem to have changed. Unless you own a string of pawn shops or you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, everything's not exactly hunky-dory.
We’ve being forced to learn the hard lesson that there's no such thing as a sure thing any more. (Technically there never was, but many of us just got the memo, so we're continuing to treat this like new information.)
Fear of the unknown creates a vicious cycle: we get anxious, we can't focus, our performance suffers, our results are bad, and then we have even more to worry about. And if you’re the boss, your worries radiate out to your whole team.
It doesn't matter whether you're a CEO, a stay-at-home parent or the night manager at Waffle House, when you're afraid and anxious, everyone suffers. Worrying about the future keeps you from being fully present with the people around you, and it hampers productivity at every level.
So what's a CEO, entrepreneur, or still-employed worker bee supposed to do?
Bury your head under the covers and tell your mommy not to wake you up until your 401K bounces back?
Or do you just level with people and admit that things are a mess?
You might not want to use the word "mess," but good leadership means being willing to face up to problems, no matter how scary and confusing.
As a leader, you owe it to your team to be honest. And the truth is, you don't know what's going to happen next. Nobody does.
But a real leader also knows how to provide their team with hope. Meaningful work gives people a reason to exist, and if you’re the boss, it’s your job to show people that their work still has some meaning, even if you don’t know exactly what the payoff will be down the road.
True leaders must master the duality of both being brutally honest about the current situation AND providing people with a hopeful vision of the future. Originally cited by Jim Collins in his classic best-seller Good to Great, the ability to simultaneously face the brutal facts of today AND hold onto your faith in the end game is one of the hallmarks of people who achieve greatness in work and life.
But you can't hold these two seemingly competing ideas (facts AND faith) in your mind at the same time if you're afraid. Because when you’re afraid, your mind descends into either/or thinking. Either things are good, or they’re awful.
Our fear-based need to have everything settled makes us feel like we have to make an immediate and forever judgment about our situation. So we either take the optimistic view, deluding ourselves into believing that everything is fine, or we descend into doom and gloom pessimism, feeling hopeless and discourgaed. Discomfort with ambiguity and uncertainty is what prompts people to err on one side or the other of the optimism vs. pessimism debate.
Yet as anyone who’s ever had to work for an Eeyore or a Pollyanna can attest, neither of these mindsets serve us. Because while one is depressing, the other can cause us to gloss over criticial facts.
Optimism vs. pessimism is actually a false choice, the real duality we need to embrace is facts AND faith. People do need hope, AND they also need a boss who’s in touch with reality. It’s not an either/or choice.
In researching my new book, The Triangle of Truth, I discovered that the ability hold two seemingly competing ideas in your mind at the same time is one of the secrets to surviving adversity, and it’s also one of the cornerstones of success.
The only way you can embrace the duality of facts AND faith, is to get off the fear track and make a conscious decision to calm yourself down with love. We often think that courage is the opposite of fear. But it’s not. The opposite of fear is love. Love is what fuels courage. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone serving in Iraq. The best way to lead people through an awful situation is to ground yourself in love.
So what does love have to do with helping people function in the face of uncertainty?
Everything. Because while fear prompts our minds descend into either/or thinking, love enables us to embrace the ambiguity of AND.
Yes, the facts are pretty awful, AND we’re going to ultimately be OK, even if we don’t know exactly what OK is going to look like.
Love enables you to sit with uncertainty.
You don’t have to love your co-workers, your company, or even your job. It would be nice if you did, and I can certainly make the case that it’s completely within your power to choose to do so. But sometimes all it takes is reminding people how much they love their families to move them out of fear and into action.
We don’t like to talk about love in the workplace, at least in terms of our own emotions. We want our customers to love us, and we want our employees to love their job. But in times like these, it's the leader’s ability to infuse love into an uncertain environment that can make the difference between success and failure.
Think about it: would you rather work for a boss whose mind is a like a frantic gerbil running on an endless treadmill of worry and angst, or one who is so petrified of reality that they substitute meaningless platitudes and promises for actual plans?
Or would you rather work for someone who is willing to look the facts in the face and say, “We’re facing a difficult time, AND I have faith that we will survive. I love you people, I love this organization, and I love my family. I can’t predict what the future holds, but if we show up and do our best today, I know that together, eventually, we’re all going to be OK.”
Who wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth for a boss like that? And who wouldn’t want that person as part of their team or family?
The way to keep other people from becoming paralyzed with fear is to choose your thoughts carefully so that YOU don’t become paralyzed with fear. Grounding yourself in love gives you the courage to lead other people through challenging and uncertain times.
Here are three things you as a leader can do today to quell the fear monster and keep people functioning:
1. Schedule Angst
Allow everyone (including yourself) 15 minutes of worry time each day; claim it, and be done with it. This lets your team know that you’re not a moron who’s immune to the problems, but it also limits the amount of time you’re willing to devote to angst. Establish a policy that if anyone catches themselves dithering or worrying during other times, they’ll write down the worry and tell themselves, "I'll think about that during my scheduled worry time."
Unlike Scarlett O’Hara who said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” and tomorrow never came, you’ll probably find that when you allow people an opportunity to voice their angst, it dissipates more quickly than when you’re constantly trying to squelch it.
Set a timer for fifteen minutes, and tell the team, “We’re going to whine, dither and worry for the next fifteen minutes, and then we’re going to get back to work.”
When the buzzer goes off, worry time is over.
2. Choose Planning Over Cheerleading
Fear is a reactionary emotion. People find it hard to stop thinking fear-based thoughts unless you provide them another line of thinking to replace it. That's where planning comes in. Unlike meaningless rah-rahs, a good plan includes timelines and realistic goals. Now might not be the best moment to start crafting a thirty-seven point, ten-year strategy, but even something as simple as a daily or weekly plan gives your team something to focus on besides the great, scary unknown.
At times, it might feel like you’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but planning is always more productive than panic. Tape the goals to the fridge or bulletin board, and repeat them every time the fear monster comes calling.
3. Refuse the Ripple
Don't allow work worries to permeate personal time. You and your people need time away from all the challenges to give your brains a chance to rest. Even if you're facing potentially catastrophic outcomes, it needn’t ruin every aspect of your life.
My husband and I lost a family business earlier this year, and one of the things that helped us stay sane while it was tanking was the knowledge that our children were watching. We didn't want them to think that falling apart was an appropriate response to a crisis. Nor did we want financial issues to be the dominant theme of household.
It’s not easy to stay calm when you feel like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. But the leaders who decide that they love their people, their families, and their organizations too much to let fear get the best of them will be the leaders who are standing tall when all the dust settles.
And I think you have it in you to become one of them.
We all do.
The time for fear and hand-wringing is over. It’s time for us to have the courage to choose love and show up as best selves.
So start working, start loving and start leading. I know it’s scary, but the world needs you right now.
Lisa Earle McLeod is a syndcated columnist, author, keynote speaker and business consultant. Her newest book The Triangle of Truth (Penguin, USA) reveals the perils and prevalence of either/or thinking and how leaders can create success by harnessing the power of AND.