Intentional Leadership: 15 Ways to be a Better Leader in Times of Fear and Uncertainty
Intentional leadership is critical when navigating your organization or team through tumultuous times of fear, uncertainty, change and instability. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
As a leader, now is your time to stand tall. Use these intentional leadership tips to bring strength, stability and empathy to your team during a hard time.
1. Decide to Lead
When I think about intentional leadership during challenging times, I think of this quote from Andy Stanley: “Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk.”
You cannot ignore the present but you also can’t ignore long-term purpose, keeping projects, strategies and goals in perspective, despite the uncertainty. The quicker you can lean forward, rather than looking back at the past with longing, the better you have at keeping your team strong, productive and positive.
You get to choose not only to weather the storm but to thrive.
2. Prioritize Employee Health and Well-Being
Showing genuine care and concern is paramount to intentional leadership during uncertain times. Fear and anxiety can be crippling; it’s normal for us to let fear and doubt get in the way of productivity. It’s normal for them to have questions and worry. Acknowledging their fears with empathy and then moving into action by providing support with an open-door policy or temporary flexible work arrangement helps them navigate while you continue leading them forward.
Bottom line: don’t assume your experience mirrors theirs. Instead, engage with them & learn from them. This is the perfect opportunity to put all your leadership skills to the test.
3. Know Your Purpose and Values
During uncertain times, culture and values will be in the spotlight—employees are looking to you for honest answers and an active and empathetic response to their needs. Authenticity is crucial, so you need to continually ask yourself: How does each decision affect the core of who our company is and our company values?
More importantly, now is the time to lead from your values. As Roy E. Disney said: “It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” If your values are truly centered around people-first, the profits will follow.
4. Customer Experience (CX) Lip Service is WORTHLESS
If your values are actually profits first, you’re probably already thinking where you can cut to maintain profit targets. That strategy can damage not only the experience you provide but the relationships you have with employees and customers—and those won’t mend overnight when you’re ready to re-shift into growth mode
Bring intentional leadership to every area of your business during these times, including CX. Remind your team of your people-first values and provide support on how they can best live those values in serving customers.
5. Communicate with Kindness, Candor and Awareness
Now is not the time to be tone deaf. Communicating early and often is the best cadence—if you leave things unsaid, people will fill in the gaps with their own stories and scenarios, which only leads to rumors and a toxic company culture.
Communicate as openly as you can, with kindness, while staying aware. What are people talking about? What issues need to be addressed? What questions are still left unanswered?
6. Actively Prioritize Customer Retention With Great Customer Experience (CX)
Now is the time to double-down on your commitment to customer experience as a strategic differentiator and strategic discipline. This means you need to remind yourself and your team who your best (ideal) customers are and what they value right now—and then provide that.
Ask yourself: How can we use our CX to make us indispensable to that client?
7. Measure Every Touchpoint That Matters
For companies in a lull as customers pull back to help their teams shift to remote work or pivot—use this time to drill down into detailed analytics and identify actionable insights to inform your decision-making with data. Monitor all the important touchpoints and moments to uncover opportunities to improve. Focus on serving better and delivering value consistently to keep clients, regardless of an uncertain climate.
8. Deploy Employees to Deliver Max Customer Value
Dig into data and customer feedback. Where are the customer pain points, where could you be providing better experiences when and where customers need it most. Ask yourself:
Where can employees add value by humanizing a digital experience?
Which digital touch points could use a human touch?
Which human touchpoints are causing customer pain (friction) due to error, inefficiency, lack of clarity or process ownership?
These questions can also help you find clarity around customer jobs-to-be-done and harness employee creativity and innovation around those customer goals.
9. Understand Change Fatigue is Real
As a leader, it’s your job to acknowledge the rate of change and how that’s affecting overall morale, productivity and potentially resulting in some demoralization. If employees are struggling with change fatigue, use your position as a leader to provide perspective, while being patient and maintaining a spirit of perseverance.
Look ahead during these times and foster a growth mindset and nimble-thinking amongst your team. Highlight the need for short-term flexibility plus long-term adaptability, which equate to organizational agility. Those 3 capabilities create stronger companies, more efficient teams and the ability to deliver great experiences.
10. Reduce Internal Inefficiencies and Redundant Processes
Far too often internal inefficiencies and redundant processes are the source of friction in either the employee and/or the customer experiences. There’s no time for drains on productivity during a time of uncertainty, crisis or recession. Use this as a time to reevaluate where those inefficiencies are and how you can fix them.
11. Stay on the Lookout For Emerging Leaders
During challenging times, people around you will step up in unexpected ways. Look-out for those leaders—engage them, incorporate them into your brainstorming, planning, change communication.
On the other hand, be aware that people in existing leadership roles may not be in a position to spearhead initiatives or drive as fiercely as before. Check-in with them. Between kids home from school, immunosuppressed family members, and caretaking for elderly relatives, circumstances at home may be changing quickly, and it can be hard to balance that and the needs of the workplace.
12. Seize the Opportunity to Help, Serve and Add Value
As the saying goes, you need an ear to hear and now is the time to tune in and engage with employees, listen to customers, and look at the data insights. Don’t forget to be using this time to look for opportunity as well, to improve, to incubate innovation, to come out stronger than you were before.
13. Be Proactive Versus Reactive—Aim to Be Predictive
Data driven insights are worth their weight in gold. Predictive analytics are worth 10x that. Think big, start small, and take on your biggest business challenges with AI-driven insights that allow you to predict customer needs ahead of time.
This type of data allows you to understand investments that will drive sales growth. In fact, in Predictive Analytics Made Practical, Alteryx explains: “AI adopters could potentially double their cash flow by 2030, while nonadopters might experience a 20% decline.” If you don’t think your budget allows for this technology, think again; AI apps bring the power of Artificial Intelligence to small and mid-sized companies.
14. Be Decisive: Bold With Decisions and Clear With Action
To be an intentional leader, it’s your job to encourage innovation and incubate ideas for the alignment using clear direction, even if you’re making small, steady steps rather than big, risky ones. You need to make the decision and get the team moving forward because, ultimately, creativity thrives under constraints. Use this time to engage your team in problem solving and brainstorming opportunities to add value for customers. This is about giving teams direction—where do we want them to focus their creativity?
Right this minute, in crisis, you might need ideas around how to deliver faster (I.E. Grocery delivery during COVID-19) or how to pivot production (I.E. Gin distilleries now making hand sanitizer during COVID-19). For other businesses in a lull, you may be looking to brainstorm innovative new opportunities that add value relevant for the circumstance.
15. Alignment is Your Kryptonite or the Key to Success
Now, more than ever, you need your leadership team on the same page—and your employees.
To understand the intersection of what your customers want and need and what your competitive advantages are—I.E. what would be the hardest for another company to replicate—you need everyone speaking the same language, sharing fluidly, and communicating consistently.
Use this as an opportunity to get crystal clear on how you provide value and what outcomes you deliver customers. As you connect better as a team, you may be able to deliver better outcomes and deliver them sooner.
To maintain this alignment, enable employees with the training and tools and get your processes, policies, procedure and technology aligned to support your employees to deliver that value and deliver those outcomes. Everyone should all be working together, in harmony to deliver and now is the time to make that happen.
Intentional Leadership During Uncertain Times
Now, more than ever, you need to bring an intentional leadership mindset to the work you’re doing. Employees need your empathy and communication and the business needs your direction. Use this time as a chance to connect, plan and reevaluate what you can do for your customers and your community.
