My personal takeaways from: Leading Through Crisis: A Virtual Leadership Summit by John C. Maxwell

Leaders show up into the crisis and crisis shows the leader up. When difficulties arise, I want to lead. I was born for this. I help people to add value to people.

How we view things determines how we do things. How do we become good leaders in a bad difficult crisis?

1. Put the people first. With virus, it’s about safety. It’s all about how can I help you, serve you. Educate yourself. Know what this issue really is. Go to WHO or CDC. Have a healthy knowledge.
2. Be flexible. Crisis has a lot of change. Be adaptable, adjustable, flexible.
3. Leverage and utilize your team. All of us together are smarter than anyone of us. Bring your team together. You have one vision, one mission. But you need a team around you to get all these different perspectives. Ken Blanchard has said: “All of us are smarter than one of us.”
4. Communicate judiciously more than continuously. Use good judgment. Less talking, more thinking. People always don’t need more communication, but they need wise communication.
5. Be authentic. People want authenticity more than perfection. Always tell the truth, put people first, stay visually close. Uncertainty is OK. No leader has all the answers. Do the right thing. Keep your head above the crowd. You wanna be in the crowd, but above the crowd. If your head is not above the crowd, you don’t see a big picture. Encourage others by example. Manage yourself. The most hard leadership challenge is leading me.

5 comments about crisis:

1. A crisis is quite common. This is not the first crisis on Earth. There’s a tendency to think that it’s never been that bad before. It’s common to exaggerate our place in history. There are no two good consecutive days in leader’s life. Crisis means that there are more than two bad days in leaders life. They just keep coming and pile up sometimes. Leaders always give a right perspective to their people, giving hope, security and encouragement to the people. Crisis is a time of intense difficulty, requiring a decision that will be a turning point. The first responsibility of the leader is to find reality. Every crisis in history had passed. Good times will pass as well.
2. A crisis is distracting. The word traction is the opposite of a distraction. So when the crisis comes it starts to distract us, to pull us away, confuse our priorities. Distractions are the things that pull us away from what we want in life. You want to get distracted — just watch the TV news. As a leader, I hope you have no other agenda than to put the people first. When we have no other agenda then, serve people, lift people, add value to people, it helps us to keep some sort of attraction in a time of distraction. Fear is spreading faster than the virus. Nothing will cause you more anxiety than trying to control something you can’t control. Leaders help people to get traction during distraction. And the first step of getting traction is getting rid of negative emotions. they may break our bodies, but they may not dominate our minds.
3. A crisis reveals what is inside of us. Crisis don’t make us, crisis reveals us. When the human is squeezed, then what’s inside — good or bad — will come out. Choices make us, crisis reveals us. We have control over our choices. We don’t have control over our conditions. You can’t moan and lead at the same time. Moaning doesn’t get people help. The whole world is not against you, the whole world doesn’t know you. Relax. Most people find Strank’s in things that are outside of them. That’s a problem. Money, power, titles, wardrobes, cars. But most of the things that make a leader are on the inside. Integrity, wisdom, confidence, vulnerability, joy, passion, compassion. These things come from life experience, from life trials, the deepest part of the human soul. You can’t fake them, you can’t buy them, they are not for sale. The best route to the authentic life is through your scars. As you earn them, you will learn to drop the bias in your life and you attach yourself to the substance in your life. Leaders are forged through loss. It’s a scientific fact, you cannot have a rainbow without the storm. Loss is a wisdom acquired early. Wisdom comes from dealing with your mess. All of it. But few people want to deal with that because it’s too much. Too much work, too much acknowledgment, too much pain. I made a mistake, but I am not a mistake. Transformation is impossible without people learning and living out good values. Through the crisis, we are striving to become bigger from the inside that we are from the outside.
4. A crisis requires adaptability. A crisis usually is a case study in uncertainty. Good coaches have a good pre-game plan. But great coaches separate themselves at the half-time. Because now they have reality. Now they go to the locker-room and they adjust. It’s their ability to be flexible, adaptable and create an environment that allows the new gameplan. Most successful leaders have a Plan B and during the crisis, maybe even the plan C. Conformity is a weakness based on fear and rejection. Adjustability is an ability to adjust according to the situation to make an outcome better.
5. A crisis is the time when real leaders show up. Leadership is a visible presence. In war, the soldiers have always see the officers back. The leaders in the times of crisis are always clear, honest. They stand out, they stand up. We have prepared, we have learned, we are taking actions. During the crisis, that’s when leadership is needed more than ever. Leaders don’t only show up early, they show up with clarity. Uncertainty in a crisis is a fact of life. Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership, it’s an indication that there’s a need for leadership. People will not follow fuzzy leadership. We should be able to say: “I don’t know all the answers, I don’t see all the answers, but I know the direction I think we should be going.” Clarity helps people prioritize.

Optimism is a belief that things will get better, hope is the faith that together we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is an active virtue. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. We offer hope.

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