The best option for Leaders when things are bad
What do you do as a leader when it actually sucks?
Team Leaders, small department leads, let’s call it middle management, have two simple options when they need to explain to their team why something sucks in the company:
Follow the official company line: “there’s a reason for it”, “it’s not so bad”, “it will get better”. Try to put a positive spin on it.
Stop “representing” the company in front of the team, and join the critics: “yeah team, you’re right, company is run by a bunch of baboons, we got to stick together cause they don’t know what they’re doing”.
I’m simplifying and exaggerating a bit, but these are the two most obvious options. I’m talking about big companies here, multi nationals, C-Level somewhere in the clouds you see them once a year on an all hands call. It’s different in small companies.
And in current times, with layoffs and uncertainty, option 1 starts to become difficult for many and option 2 starts to look more and more attractive to more and more members of the “middle management”. And it’s understandable. It may even be the truth. But I don’t think it helps you, as a leader. Neither would option 1 for that matter.
Fortunately, there’s a third way.
The Stockdale Paradox
“The Stockdale Paradox is a technique to navigate challenging and ambiguous times by combining the ability to confront the brutal facts of your current reality, even as you maintain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, no matter how distant that is. Persisting through pain and uncertainty.”
— Jim Collins describing the Stockdale Paradox
This simple concept can be eye opening. People sometimes get stuck in a paradigm of having to choose: Am I optimistic or am I pessimistic? Do I believe in something, or don’t I?
And a lot of times people are 100% on one side, until they move 100% to the other. Like you “support” the company in front of your team as much as you can, until one day, when you can’t anymore, and jump to the other extreme.
The idea to grasp is that two things can be true at the same time. You can be pessimistic in some aspects, and optimistic in others. You can support some things, but not others.
As a leader you can’t afford to “gather your toys and go home”, that’s not what leaders do, but, neither do you have to act like an overexcited salesman for anything the company does.
It’s a question of emotional maturity as well, yours and the team’s, to understand that you sometimes have to do thing you don’t like, and you do them well, maybe not enthusiastically, but well, because that’s what professionals do.
At the jobs I had, I did the things I did for others, because they paid me to do them and that’s what they needed from me. But I did them wellfor me. I did them well, as well as I could, because I needed that from myself.
I’m not trying to convince you to be a good solider for the company, nor the opposite, I’m just highlighting a way to deal with a difficult situation and retain your professional pride in your own work, and your team, even if you’ve lost confidence in the ones running the company. One step at a time, one day at a time, we do the best we can.