Three Professional Choices
First, I believe leaders, managers, and front line supervisors need to get better at coaching and checking in with people. In particular, I believe they need to focus on helping people prioritize and make better decisions. I point this out, because so many new employees are joining companies during this time of disorder and turbulence. They have no idea or experience of what is “normal operations.” I also believe that more and more, current employees have lost the memory of how “normal operations” ran. All involved, new and old employees, are hoping for some level of order and predictability at work, but we have not experienced this in a very long time. As we all remember, it was challenging before the arrival of COVID in March of 2020. Since then, it has just been one overwhelming crisis or adaptive challenge after another. And so we arrive at this time period, struggling with how to prioritize when everything feels urgent and important.
When this happens, I encourage leaders, managers, and front line supervisors to read or reread the following article called “Making Judgment Calls: The Ultimate Act of Leadership” by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis in the October 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review. I also encourage them to read or reread the following book by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman called First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. (Simon & Schuster, 1999). The suggested article creates common language around decision-making, and a framework for thoughtful rather than reactive decision-making. It creates a place where all involved can discuss the important steps that need to be made that lead to a productive outcome. On the other hand, for experienced leaders, managers, and front line supervisors, the suggested book reviews the research about managing people, focusing on clarifying expectations and building on individual strengths. For people who are new to leadership, management, and supervision, the suggested book introduces them to core concepts that have yielded positive outcomes and successful results for over 25 years. The combination of these two resources can be extremely helpful during challenging time periods.
Second, I believe leaders, managers, and front line supervisors need to get better at building and maintaining healthy teams. One of the most difficult elements that has happened as a result of current events is that many teams have broken down into sub-groups where an us vs them mentality has overtaken teamwork and team spirit. While there are no quick and easy fixes that can solve this problem, there are two wonderful resources that can assist in the development of betters teams. The first is a classic now, and is a wonderful place to start. Even if you have read it in the past, I would encourage leaders, managers, and front line supervisors to reread the following book: Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass, 2002). It is always good to review the fundamentals. The second resource is a superb article by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen called “The Secrets of Great Teamwork” which can be found in the June 2016 issue of the Harvard Business Review. This is my go-to coaching article when helping people who are struggling with their current team, because it gives practical advice and counsel on how to deal with many current and emerging problems related to teamwork. I consider it a must read for anyone who is new to leadership, management, and supervision. I also consider it a must review in order for experienced leaders to be better prepared for the coming 12-18 months.
Third, I believe leaders, managers, and front line supervisors need to get better at making sure that strategic and operational collaboration continues. The current combination of technical problems and adaptive challenges are not going away. A matter of fact many of them are actually becoming more and more intertwined, where some certain elements are technical and other elements are extremely adaptive. This makes teamwork more difficult, and collaboration nearly impossible. The outcome of this difficult combination is that shared planning and execution, especially in the areas of sharing of resources and key information, to be both complicated and complex.
Therefore, I have recommend one article and one book to help all involved figure out how to move forward through this situation. The article is called “8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams” by Linda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson in the November 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review. I have used this in the past and had good success in helping leaders, managers, and supervisors figure out how to build and maintain relationships during such times, and, in particular, how to role model collaborative behaviors. I also recommend reading or rereading the following book: Sutton, Robert I and Huggy Rao. Scaling Up Excellence: Getting To More Without Settling For Less (Crown Business, 2014.). One unique element that is common during times of this nature is that when solutions are created, all involved attempt to scale them up so that they become a company wide solution. The difficulty is that the solution may be elegant, but the scaling process is turbulent. This is not the result of a bad solution. Instead, it reflects a lack of understanding of how successful scaling works, and what needs to be in place in order for it to be sustainable. This book is the best one I have found to date on this subject and I routinely recommend it to leaders, managers, and front line supervisors who are struggling during complex and complicated times.
The combination of all three of the aforementioned choices are important. However, they will not generate instant success. Instead, when done consistently over time, they will generate perspective, new insights, and capacity. For when we seek to lower the temperature around change, and when we seek to create progress in the midst of complexity, sometimes the convergence of small, but important choices can be the turning point that helps people come together and stay together in spite of what is happening all around them.
Three Personal Choices
During the last seven months, people have shared with me on multiple occasions that they have woken up in the morning, looked at what was happening in the world, and then they have wanted to pull up the covers, roll over, and go back to sleep. They just want to skip the entire day and move on to another day. This is because they feel hopeless about what is happening, and they feel tremendous frustration about the choices various people are making. For them, the world feels like a place where people have lost perspective and clarity. They also feel, on one level, like life has become meaningless.
As I listen to the depths of this despair and anguish, I realize the truth of what theologian Rob Bell wrote when he defined despair as “the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.” And this is what people are feeling on a routine basis right now. So, what should we do when we feel lost in a sea of hurt?
First, we need to remember that grief is normal, and is made up of three elements, namely loss, longing, and a feeling of being lost. As David Kessler writes, “Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.” Whether we are caught in the stages of grief, i.e. denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance, Robert Neimeyer, a psychology professor at the University of Memphis and a clinician who is one of the world’s most prolific grief researchers, reminds us, “A central process in grieving is the attempt to reaffirm or reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss.”
Second, in order to rediscover a world of meaning and perspective, we need to expand our support network to include more allies and confidants. What most leaders do not realize is that as they move up into senior leadership positions within an organization, they often descend into larger periods of isolation where they feel separate and disconnected from others due to the pressures and expectations of the position. Making decisions as a leader in the midst of complexity is hard, draining, and anxiety producing. Therefore, we need people who can witness our grief, anguish, and despair, and not try to fix us in the process of their witnessing it. We also need people who can help us to process it, and provide perspective along the way. In short, we need allies and confidants who will not diminish our pain, but instead be completely present when we are hurting.
Third, we need to be kind to ourselves in the midst of our struggles. As Christopher Willard, PsyD explains, “Mindful self-compassion is the practice of recognizing and naming our experience of suffering. By connecting our suffering to the rest of humanity, we also recognize it as suffering and extend kindness to ourselves. Christopher Germer [clinical psychologist] says we practice self-compassion not to feel better, but simply because we feel bad.”
Recognizing the important of self-compassion and kindness, we start this work by creating healthy boundaries. “Boundaries empower us,” writes Willard. “Not as a power over others, in a power from others. We become empowered with the choice to decide how much power other people, places, and things hold in our lives. In turn, we can choose how much they influence and impact our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We begin to approach the world in a new way, with confidence and compassion, focusing on the potential, power, and relief it can bring.”
For as we approach the world in this new way, Willard notes that “Self-compassion helps us to be okay with the fact that growth and healing happen on different timelines.” During times of complexity and dramatic change, we must make important choices about hope to cope personally. This will include recognizing and working with our grief, choosing to build a larger support network of allies and confidants, and showing ourselves some kindness and self-compassion. All three of these personal choices will result in growth and healing, just not on the same timeline. And we need to be okay with that as we move step by step through each new day.
In The Shelter Of Each Other
We live in a world right now that is challenging and difficult. All around us, we are witnessing choices that are creating anger, grief, anxiety, and fear. As a result, people are struggling and hurting, wondering what to do, and where to go next.
In the beginning, we need to understand the differences between our problems and our challenges. Next, we need to build safe and respectful holding environments where feelings and facts can be shared and explored as we attempt to build realistic solutions. As we engage in adaptive leadership practices, we can get better at coaching and checking in with people, at building and maintaining healthy teams, and at supporting strategic and operational collaboration. At the same time on the personal front, we can remember that grief is normal, and we can expand our support network, plus choose kindness and mindful self-compassion.
But in the end, on the days that are most difficult, we must pause and recall an old Irish saying: “It is in the shelter of each other that people live.” We need each other if we are going to move through these times is a sane and healthy manner. We need to be shelter for each other on our best days and on our most difficult days. As the late Irish priest and poet John O’Donohue wrote, “In these times of greed and externality, there is such unusual beauty in having friends who practice profound faithfulness to us, praying for us each day without our ever knowing or remembering it. There are often lonesome frontiers we could never endure or cross without the inner sheltering of these friends. It is hard to live a true life that endeavors to be faithful to its own calling and not become haunted by the ghosts of negativity; therefore, it is not a luxury to have such friends; it is necessary.” And when we are a shelter for each other, we can move forward together and create a better world for all.
Resources For Further Study:
- Charan, Ram. Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times, McGraw Hill, 2009.
- Collins, Jim and Morten T. Hansen. Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, HarperCollins, 2011.
- Collins, Jim. How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, HarperCollins, 2009.
- Eurich, Tasha. Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And why resilience alone isn’t enough) (Little, Brown Spark, 2025).
- “Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Glasgow, and Marty Linsky. “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis”, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009.
- Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is The Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph, Penguin, 2014.
- Pascale, Richard T., Mark Millemann and Linda Gioja. Surfing The Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business, Three Rivers Press, 2000.
- Weick, Karl E., and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe. Managing The Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007.
© Geery Howe 2025
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