We’re certainly in a time of rapid and constant change. The business landscape is shifting so quickly it can feel overwhelming, reminiscent of the uncertainty we faced during the early days of COVID. As leaders, we’re again called upon to make critical decisions with limited information. But here’s the good news: we’ve navigated these waters before. The lessons learned then are incredibly relevant now.
On this episode of Life + Leadership, I want to explore how we, as executives, can anchor ourselves and our teams in calm, create clarity amidst the chaos, communicate effectively, and prioritize our own well-being.
Three Core Pillars to Leading Through Change:
- Maintaining composure under pressure: This is foundational. While we’re all human and will have moments of imperfection, our primary role is to be a calming force within the organization.
- Communicating clearly with your team and key stakeholders: Ambiguity breeds anxiety. Clear, consistent communication is the antidote.
- Making decisions despite ambiguity and lack of information: This is the art of executive leadership, taking calculated strategic risks and trusting our judgment.
But how do we build these pillars when the ground beneath us feels unstable? It starts with an internal focus, what I call the “invisible work.”
Mastering Your Internal Response: The Unseen Work of Leadership
Before we can lead others through change, we must first manage our own internal experience.
- Build Your Support System: As executives, we need a confidential space to unpack the pressures we face. This could be a partner, friends, mentors, a therapist, or an executive coach. Ideally, it’s a combination. This “personal board of directors” is crucial for maintaining perspective and providing support, especially in times of uncertainty.
- Create Stillness: In the midst of chaos, find moments of stillness. Even five minutes of quiet reflection can be incredibly powerful. I often guide my CEO clients through an exercise called “Visiting Your Future Wise Self.” Imagine yourself 30 years from now. What advice would your wiser, more experienced self offer you today? You might be surprised by the clarity that emerges when you take the time to reflect.
- Prioritize Regular Reflection and Adaptation: Dedicate time to analyze the data you do have. Scour trustworthy news sources for economic predictions and expert insights. Look for themes and trends. But also recognize that conclusions drawn this week might need to be revisited next. Additionally, don’t forget to draw on your past experiences. What did you learn leading through previous crises? What worked well and what wouldn’t you repeat? Our history is a rich source of wisdom.
- Protect Your Mental Energy and Focus: Be intentional about your information diet. Turn off relentless news notifications. More importantly, be disciplined about the “what if” scenarios and fear states you allow yourself to indulge in. Acknowledge them, yes, but don’t dwell there. Focus on the current reality and the facts at hand.
Externalizing Your Leadership: Communicating Clarity in Chaos
Once we’ve anchored ourselves internally, we can more effectively lead externally.
- Align Your Executive Team: This is non-negotiable. Your leadership team must be in lockstep. Convene behind closed doors to acknowledge the unpredictable landscape and map out what you need to solve for, what needs to be clarified for the organization, and your communication cadence. A unified executive front is essential for stability. If this alignment falters, clarity and calm are lost.
- Create and Communicate a Hopeful, Realistic Vision: Acknowledge the unknowns. If you don’t fill in the information gaps, your employees will, and often with fear-driven narratives. Be upfront about challenges, listen to employee concerns, and foster open dialogue. Validate their fears during uncertain times by listening. While you can’t promise certainty, you can promise proactive communication and a commitment to listen.
- Don’t Abandon Your Rhythms: It’s tempting to cancel one-on-ones and team meetings when things get hectic but these touch points are critical for maintaining connection and ensuring clarity on priorities. Skipping them can quickly lead to a disconnect from what’s truly happening within the business. You can adapt the agenda, but maintain the rhythm to stay connected to your team.
- Double Down on Integrity: Make personal commitments to the leadership qualities you will embody. This is the time to be a person of your word, to avoid gossip, to maintain a united front with your executive peers, and to make people feel safe and heard. Why did you step into leadership? Reconnect with those core values.
- Identify Your True Peers: Know who you can be truly vulnerable and share information with. Explicitly ask for their commitment to confidentiality and their willingness to challenge you when needed and be prepared to reciprocate. Now, more than ever, is the time to lead with kindness and courage.
Making Decisions in the Fog: Embracing Ambiguity
The trickiest part of leading through change is often making decisions with incomplete information and no guarantees.
- Embrace Scenario Planning: Map out your worst-case scenarios. What if you lose key clients or a critical team member? What’s your Plan B? Do the uncomfortable financial projections. But here’s the crucial step: look the scary stuff in the face, and then put it away. Don’t let fear-based scenarios become your default reality. Cascade this practice to your teams as well.
- Add an “Unknowns” Column: The classic pros and cons list is still valuable. I recently added a third column: “Unknowns.” Acknowledging what is truly ambiguous is key to building credibility, especially with your executive team and board.
- Leverage Data (When You Have It): Utilize any solid data available such as financial forecasts, customer analytics, market trends. Understand how markets have performed under similar conditions.
- Trust Your Intuition: When data is scarce, trust your gut. But also, be transparent about the ambiguities and work to get stakeholder buy-in on the path forward, explaining what you know and what you don’t.
Leading through change is an inside-out job. As someone who has guided organizations through turbulent times and coached countless CEOs through their own, I can’t stress enough the importance of your internal state. That support system, that commitment to self-care, is what allows you to stay clear-headed and resilient. Treat your workdays like game days. Train like an elite athlete, mind and body, so you can show up, play your best, and have the strength to get back up when you stumble. And remember, rest is not a luxury; it’s a necessity to sustain that high level of performance.
People in this Episode
Tegan Trovato, Founder and CEO of Bright Arrow Coaching
LinkedIn
Transcript
Tegan Trovato: I’m coming to you today to record a bitisode, a short episode on a topic that has emerged as being super important right now. It is top of mind for everyone and that is navigating change and uncertainty.
We are facing a time right now where there’s so much shifting and changing in our business landscape that it is feeling nearly impossible to keep up. What I will remind you on the outset, though, is that for those of us leading through COVID, through the early time, the first year of COVID, the conditions we’re in now are somewhat similar in terms of the amount of ambiguity, volatility, unpredictability, uncertainty, the need for us to make sound decisions without a lot of information and data.
I want to run through some of the lessons learned from that chapter, how they apply today, and really help anchor our executives into a bit of calm, creating clarity, thinking about how we communicate externally and how we take care of ourselves.
It’s of utmost importance to take care of ourselves in the process. So there are three essential elements in leading through change. None of these will surprise you.
This is what executive leadership is all about all the time. So I’m going to give you those three things, but then we’re going to go way deep into, okay, well, how do you arrive at those three things? So the first essential element of leading through change, maintaining composure under pressure, (easier said than done).
We are imperfect, we will slip up, but most of the time, we want to bring the calm into the organization. The second is being able to communicate clearly with your team and key stakeholders. And the third is making decisions despite ambiguity and the lack of information.
So I will say that change first is an inside job and mastering our response to change begins internally. And so I call this the invisible or the unseen work. And when things are extremely crazy, or feel out of control, or feel like it’s going faster than we can keep up, the first thing we need to have as execs is a safe place for us, for ourselves, a place where we can unpack safely and confidentially, so that we can then go out and help lead people through the uncertainty and to bring a sense of calm.
Sometimes that personal support structure is at home with a partner. Sometimes it’s with friends. Most often it is with peers who really understand what we’re going through and the uniqueness of our role.
But the key is to have ideally more than one place, whether that’s a therapist, your coach, your friends, your peers, your boss, your partner at home. Ideally, a mix of those things, you build your own team as part of your response to change. The second is that we really have to create stillness.
And I’m going to say this, but I’m also going to say I know how hard that is. I am also a CEO. I know the crushing weight of the ambiguity and the not knowing what’s going to happen and not being able to predict the future, even in the nearest term.
So I say this, understanding how difficult it can be to create the stillness. So when things get just really wild for me, and I’m feeling crushed under expectation, I will often just try to grab five minutes to sit and be still. So I may not have the calmness all the time, like I would like to go into some meditation and to really be with myself.
But if I can grab five minutes, there’s a really simple exercise I like to do. And I will often lead my personal CEO clients through something like this, when times are fast and extreme. And that is visiting with your future wise self.
So it’s as simple as imagining yourself 30 years into the future. You sit down today, your present self sits down on a bench with your future self, go ahead and ask all your questions. You can ask things like, what do I need to know right now?
What am I here to learn? What decisions should I make related to a particular issue? And just see what answer you get back.
Our answers are already in here, we are expected to have the answers. And so when we’re highly into our intellectual space, we overexert really, and we lose the clarity because there is so much going on in our internal world and in our mind. So if we can sit down for five minutes and just visit with this imaginary future self, it may sound silly as you’re hearing this for the first time, I promise you, you will get something from it.
A lot of times people are moved to tears by asking our future selves, this kind of question of like, what am I here to learn right now? Or what do I need to remember or know during this chapter I’m in? So give that a try.
The third thing I’d recommend when it comes to mastering our internal response to change is having regular reflection and adaptation. So this is your time to sit with any data you do have access to. This is your time to look at trustworthy news sources, where we can understand predictions from economists, other business experts. We should be looking for themes. We should be thinking about trends.
We should, when we don’t have data, be prepared to make some smart bets and trust ourselves as we have to. But know that what you reflect on this week may not lead you to the same conclusion again next week. And so the ability to adapt quickly is essential during times like this.
I would also encourage you to learn from your successes and your failures of the past. So we got a lot of calls over the last couple of weeks from our CEO clients, a bit in a panic, we’re the place for them to come have that private moment of panic as executive coaches. And I challenged each one of my personal clients to say, yes, this is crazy.
And no, we don’t have the answers. But what did you learn by leading through COVID? Think about another time when things were ambiguous and urgent, and highly visible and high pressure and you had payroll at risk or you had funding at risk?
What did you do before? What are the things that kept you calm? What are the decisions you made that were right?
Which things would you not repeat or do again? And how do they apply today? We have lived enough life that we probably have a lot of great context and previous experience to draw on if we can just slow down and ask ourselves the question of like, what do I already know from my previous experience?
There are formal exercises you can do with your team around this as well. So bring your executive team into the room, have them think back on lessons learned from previous experiences before you move into the next chapter or create your next strategy or interim plan.
And the last thing I’d recommend when it comes to mastering your response to change in this internal process is what I have coined psychological hygiene. So turn off news notifications, be measured about what you read and how much. And it’s not just about what we take in through the media. It’s also about what you allow yourself to indulge in thinking about what we might talk more about this here in a minute.
But we really have to operate with a different level of discipline when it comes to indulging in our fear states and our worries in the what if scenarios. And be measured about how long we’ll stay in those and when we need to put them back in the box and step back out into what we know is current reality into the facts that we have to work with today and really take care of ourselves from that mental health perspective. So that’s the invisible and unseen work when it comes to change.
Creating Clarity and Communicating in Chaos
The external manifestation of mastering your response to change is in being able to communicate effectively and creating clarity through times of chaos. That is no doubt an art, but it is rooted in some science and in some really great practices. So naturally, creating clarity and chaos starts with making sure that the exec team is aligned.
So every executive team should be pulling meetings behind closed doors right away to acknowledge first and foremost, that the business landscape has become further unpredictable, further volatile, further throwing in variables we aren’t accustomed to seeing and really mapping out what it is the executive team needs to solve for, what they do need to make clear for the organization and who they need to be communicating with and on what cadence.
So it is healthy for every executive team to do a reset periodically. Your executive team, depending on how your industry is being disrupted, may need to reset quite regularly and at a particular cadence. So creating that executive team alignment is step one.
If that doesn’t happen, there is no clarity, there is no calm in the business. The wheels fall off the bus when teams aren’t clear on the changing priorities, if they’re not sure who plays what role and who’s responsible for what or who has decision making authority. So knowing what you have to solve for, what you’re going to deprioritize while things seem to be escalating and what you’re going to do when new urgent initiatives arise, all part of the executive team’s agenda.
As a team, create that vision and speak to it. Be hopeful, but realistic and acknowledge the unknowns. So if you do not fill in the gaps of information, your employees will do that for you.
And you do not want people who are afraid, naturally and understandably afraid, to be making up the narrative in your organization. That doesn’t mean you get to control everything, but you have to think and speak first. And then the executive team has to stay aligned and unified in what that story is for the organization.
So when you’re facing outward, you’re trying to create clarity to your stakeholders and employees. Be upfront about the challenges and uncertainties. Listen to the employee concerns and foster open dialogue as much as you can and as much as is appropriate.
When I say to listen to employee concerns, it is important that we acknowledge and validate that people are scared or uncertain, that they may be fearful for their jobs, they may be fearful for their families. That’s pretty big stuff. And so we may not be able to make a ton of promise as executives, but we can find that balance between acknowledging where we are today that we’ll always communicate with them as proactively as possible and welcome their feedback and try to answer as many questions as we can.
Here’s two really tactical things that I see execs overlook when things get intense and busy inside the organization. We skip our one-on-ones and we skip our team meetings. And those are two big misses.
We create security by being in relationship with our stakeholders. If we start neglecting our private time with people, they will start to tell stories to themselves about why. We know how this works.
You’re off busy solving the business problems that seem so emergent and urgent, but they’re not going to go away for a while. So you should keep those one-on-ones and make sure that the people reporting to you are super clear about where they’re headed. They understand how their work connects with the solution you’re trying to create in your industry or in your organization.
And likewise, don’t skip your team meetings. I promise you after a week or two of missing your one-on-one or team meetings, you have lost sight of what is really going on in the business. You can change the agenda of these meetings if you need to, but you create safety and consistency and continuity of the organization by keeping those meeting rhythms going. And they’re the first things to go when times get crazy. So highly encourage you to keep those in place.
I would also recommend that as part of creating clarity in communicating well in the organization, that we create personal commitments ourselves to the qualities we will demonstrate through our leadership and to make sure they are of high integrity.
Meaning things like don’t talk behind people’s backs. Don’t split from your executive team. Maintain that united front. Make people feel safe and heard. Acknowledge and validate them. Think about the values that drive you as a leader.
Why did you become a leader to begin with? Don’t lose sight of those right now. This is the time to double down on your integrity and being a person of your word into leading with qualities of leadership that are highly attractive to people and that you will feel proud of at the end of the day.
Lastly, be clear about who your peers are, who you can truly be vulnerable with and trust and share information with given your position. And you need to make sure that you overtly have asked your peers to sign up for that with you. That they’ll sign up for the confidentiality, that they’ll sign up to challenge you when you need it, and that you will reciprocate that.
When we become afraid, this is natural. This is not just for our employees. It doesn’t matter how senior you are in your role as an executive.
When we get afraid, we tend to relax some of our typical standards because we’re tired and we are exceptionally stressed. But it is not the time of all times to fall short on being kind, being courageous, those kinds of qualities that we really aspire to have when times are a little more balanced. So really double down, double down on those.
Decision-Making in Ambiguous Times
The trickiest part is making decisions in these ambiguous times. There are a lot of factors that go into being able to make decisions when we don’t have a lot of information. You know, great executive leadership is all about placing bets that we hope will pay off, and often having to wait quite a while to see if they do.
When things are volatile, we sometimes place bets and we’ll have a faster turnaround on understanding if those were the right bets or not, and really being agile and changing our direction if we need to. One of the best things I’ve seen, and I do myself in my own business, is scenario planning. So map out your worst case scenarios.
Imagine that your top two clients go away. Imagine that you lose this key executive leader or key board member during a time when you really can’t afford to. What’s your plan B in those scenarios?
Map them out. Do your worst case financial planning and projections. Do multiple versions, you know, sales stalls, you lose accounts. Also, you hit your targets. What does it all mean? But here’s the key.
Look the scary stuff in the face on your scenario planning, and then put it away until you really need it. Because it is not reality. It is only a scenario.
And I watch a lot of our execs do this scenario planning and then stay connected to one of the most fearful versions of the scenarios, because it’s natural that we do that. It’s part of how our brains are wired. As executives, we really have to have the discipline to look the thing in the face, put it in the box, and put it away until we need to call on it again.
Have your teams do scenario planning as well. Executive teams should certainly be doing scenario planning. The teams that report to you could afford to learn how to do scenario planning. So certainly think about how you cascade that from the executive suite into that next level of leadership.
I recently did a pros and cons list for one of the scenarios I was working with. So I giggled when I wrote pros, cons, two columns, and then it hit me that I needed a third column, and it is the unknown column.
So trust the old classic pros and cons tool, but add a third column, which is unknowns. The key to leading through ambiguity is to acknowledge the things that are ambiguous. And that’s particularly important with our executive teams and our boards to be able to say, I know this thing is out here.
None of us can guess what’s going to happen with this variable, but I want to acknowledge it’s here. That’s part of the credibility you’re going to build while you’re having to make decisions without a lot of information. Do leverage data when you can.
A lot of times we can do great solid financial forecasting. That’s great data. Any data-driven insights and analytics you have about your customers, their tendencies to buy, what leads to them not buying, looking at market data, different economic variables, and really understanding how markets have performed under the conditions we’re in are essential.
It’s part of what we do have access to. And again, acknowledging what we don’t have data for and getting to a place where we can trust our intuition and bring our stakeholders along in that ambiguity and get their buy-in along the way and gain their understanding of what you have to work with and what you don’t have to work with. So as you can hear, this is both an inside and an outside job.
But as someone who has led an organization through a couple of really tenuous chapters in the world, and also as someone who has sat side-by-side with many CEOs in their businesses as they’ve navigated these changes, I just want to impress upon you that leading change really starts with how we’re experiencing it within ourselves. Having that support system, one of the first things I mentioned, is really essential to us not burning out and to us being able to stay clear-headed. And frankly, in times like these, we really may have to treat most work days like game day.
And we should be training like we are WNBA players, taking care of our bodies that same way, taking care of our minds and the things we think about and indulge in the very same way. So we can go out there onto the court, play our best game, keep lacing up our shoes, dusting off our knees when we fall, getting back up and playing strong. And we must rest in order to keep going that hard.
So with that, I hope we’ve expanded your mind about what could be possible with executive coaching. I would always love to hear back from you. If you have challenges to this information, if you have more questions about how to find a great coach.
Otherwise, keep doing your great work out there and we’ll see you in the next episode.
