How to be Tough During Tough Times
Sinking inward drags down during tough times. Weak leaders focus on themselves; tough leaders focus on others. Sinking inward indicates weakness. Moving forward with tenderness is tough.
Weak leaders act tough during tough times but tough leaders remain focused, calm, and steady.
First, remain focused on others:
- Ask about their world and forget yours. Their world is your world.
- Honor effort even during failure and correction.
- Lift into the future. Reject falling into the past.
Second, remain calm:
- Slow down and shut up. Frantic leaders create frantic environments. Your tone filters through your organization.
- Listen. Calmness powerfully indicates listening and validates others.
- Decide. Even if you decide to hunker down and ride it out, let everyone know.
Every decision creates a future.
Third, remain steady:
- Seek solutions.
- Trust team mates. Trust means most during tough times.
- Stay on course. Make decisions that express forward movement.
Bonus: Over communicate during tough times.
Tough leaders remain tender during tough times, even when making tough decisions. Weak leaders act tough, grow inflexible, sink inward, and eventually break.
What enables leaders to succeed through tough times?
“Slow down and shut up” is one I need to get better at. I feel I must act, I must do something, forgetting that slowing down and shutting is doing something. Action for the sake of action very often leads to the wrong, or at least not the best, action being taken. Thanks for the reminder!
Hi Laurie, this point is touchy because decision-making needs to continue during tough times. Slowing down isn’t stopping. For me, calm expresses confidence. Frantic expresses fear. Thanks…cheers.
I love “ask about their world and forget yours.” It’s so true and can be so hard to do – as a leader and even simply as a person relating to another person. To bring myself to that point I ask myself, “what would love do here?” and offer my clients the opportunity to replace “love” with the word that works for them – leadership, compassion, results driven, etc. This pause of Thoughtful reflection and leadership allows us to truly focus on them and their world.
Powerful Lisa, thank you.
I’m with you…when tough times come I naturally focus on ME! Shifting from me to them is intentional.
It is easy to lead when things are going well. True leaders shine during tough times.
Leadershipjones
Thank you Brian. Cheers
Great topic Dan, top of the morning to you. I do what everyone else does for starters. I think I may have a bit of a more honest grasp than most cause I am getting older and been through the drill a thousand times. You know you go to a haunted house enough times the creepy dude who always jumps out at you once you walk in does not scare you as much. Great thing about enjoying the disease of addiction, gotta be honest. For starters like everyone else I am gripped, frozen with absolute terror! Then I begin the unraveling of the thoughts I weaved in my pea brain that got me all upset in the first place. Take everything to the end and see if it is really that bad.
When I do this it helps cause I see I made a mountain out of molehills, mostly. Then I reflect back on past mountains of fearful thoughts I mangled together with chicken-wire and see MOSTLY, the things I have feared the most never actually came to pass, mostly.
Then I think to myself, “you know Scott you and everyone else in this human condition only are aware of 7 to 10% of the information of what is actually going on. That is clearly not enough information to make a quality decision of absolute doom and gloom and utter defeat and failure and PAIN! Ease up Sparky, yeah I call myself Sparky when I am unweaving my tales of terror.
Then I remember Anthony Robbins taught me motion creates emotion so I gotta get moving! Do something besides sitting in the terror. Then before I know it I am concentrating on the task at hand and just for me I have found I cannot concentrate on terror and doing my best at working out the task at hand at the same time. Being a simpleton has its advantages, mostly. Terror usually loses out and I get lost in what is right in front of me.
I also spend time reflecting on my mortality. If I was to die at midnight how would I choose to spend my last few precisous hours on earth? In terror or aware of wonder? I also remember what a duck looks like above water, all nice and calm. Under water, frantic motion to create movement.
Ok so there are a few thoughts, I also often think of The Dude from The Big Lebowski, he said once, “uh it is like, just like, your opinion man”. Opinions like the recipe for my beef stew once I found out I got celiacs disease can change! Gluten is really some kind of awful stuff let me tell ya!
I Concur!
Scott(shifterp) OUT!
KaPow! Your experience shines though. Thanks for bringing your story and insights to the conversation.
I love the frivolity and humor of “Sparky.” Tough times make us get serious. A little levity – as long as it doesn’t appear you aren’t taking things seriously – opens minds and hearts.
Cheers
Dear Dan,
Over communicate during tough times- great concept. It works and keep everyone around aligned. I agree when you say- their world is your world. I would like to extend it more. For the last two to three days, I am trying to understand what makes people outdated, obsolete and isolated. And I arrived at the conclusion that it is nothing but skill and knowledge. This makes you remain tough and tender during the most challenging situations. So, for me, it is the learn ability and adaptability that makes you to succeed during the toughest times. And knowledge and skill determines how much you can be tender and balanced during tough times.
One way to be tough during times with others is to emotional balance. Leaders should control their emotions that influence decisions. They should avoid following intuition. Instead, they should analyze the context and use logic and reasoning more along with trends .
Envisioning, unlearning, analyzing, adapting and taking decisions when situations seems to be unfavorable are some key components that enable leaders to succeed through tough times.
Thanks for all your insights Ajay.
I enjoy the concepts of adapt and learn that you add. I completely left them out of this post but they definitely belong in this topic. Great add!
“Trust teammates. Trust means most during tough times.”
Dan, out of everything you wrote, these two sentences struck me the most. I think so many managers have difficulty trusting their teams, and it’s probably even harder for employees to trust their managers, in this world of “am I going to be the next one called into the office while security is locking down my computer?” From the management side, there ARE employees who don’t perform well, but some managers may consider whether they are projecting their belief that they can only trust themselves.
Hi Gary, Trust doesn’t come naturally to many of us, me included. Trust means letting go, even if you are monitoring, and letting go during tough times scares me big time… unless you have a team of competent people. Better get out and build that team!! Thanks for adding to the conversation.
I think leaders need the following:
1. Trust that they have earned.
2. Grace they are given
3. The wisdom of experience
4. The strength of God
Thank you Todd. I connect with the idea that being graceful during tough times is important. For me, it’s a real deliminator between average and great leaders. Good call!
Regarding your Bonus, Dan….in easy times Overcommunicate x5 in tough times, overcommunicate x 10….that means 5 or 10 different ways at different times.
Have yet to find an organization that overcommunicates. Many perceive that they do, but often do not ask those delivering the services if that is an accurate perception.
OUCH! “Have yet to find an organization that over communicates.”
To go one step more, communicate with optimism even during tough times. Believe in people… sure wish I did this stuff naturally. Cheers!
Hi Dan, great post and comments by all. Everyone not just leaders have tough times. Leaders though don’t have the luxury of waiting for someone else to come to the rescue. The expectation is that they are the “rescue” and as such have to portray calm, confidence, composure and conviction, the “tough “C”s as I call them. Remaining calm when action is called for requires skill, Faith and balance.. Having confidence reflects knowledge, experience, and wisdom. Showing composure involves having trust in your staff, your values and your vision. Resilience helps with the weak moments, we all have them. Conviction helps with endurance when we all need it the most. Forgiveness allows failure and we need to give it The tough times involves everyone, some directly in the “line of fire” and others within earshot but just as much responsible. Inspiring the entire team to own the “trouble” and accepting the entire community as owners leads to quicker responses whether successful or not and makes the outcome more acceptable. The concept of the “war room” is no longer viable and needs to be replaced with “foxhole” tactics which allows for better communication and morale. When trouble strikes run to the front lines; Inspiration does not travel well and needs to be up close. Credibility is sold face to face and trust needs to be handed not sent. Passion can be borne even in defeat and last beyond the leader’s role. The outcome makes us all tougher regardless what it may be. 🙂
Making the case for daily Gemba or more Al!
I hear you Doc. We arre 6 months into the ‘lean’ journey which is unfolding over the next three years. So far so good and the staff has been engaged more so than the physicians but that is not surprising to anyone. We need some physician champions which we are in the process of training. It is all about “Gemba.” Cheers Doc. 🙂
Two excellent books-Toyota Kata by Rother and Healthcare Kaizen by Graban. Rother’s nails how/why that guy behind the lean curtain does what he does and Graban gives a ton of ‘how to’ with rationale too.
thanks for the recommendations Doc. will definitely look into them. Best, Al
Hi Al, I read compassion, passion, and experience in your comment. It’s so rich…I think I’ll just go read it again..
Thanks to Doc for suggesting added resources… cheers
so hard to trust team mates during normal times, and so much the harder during the tough times!
I hear you Margaret. In my world trust is about building the team. I’ll be danged if the ball doesn’t fall back in my court!
This is great Dan. Something we can all remember. The part about “Remain Focused on Others” resonates with me. Thanks for this posting my friend!
I agree ¨remain focused on others¨ is one of the best advise a leader can ever get. As Jack Welch said : ¨Once you´re the boss, it´s all about them, not you¨.
Thank you, Dan!
Tough times are a true test of quality leadership.
When times are good leaders can operate with the illusion of being great. However, when times are tough and the challenges are great, the real leader emerges.
While a leader cannot devote all of his or her time and energy looking at oneself, it is important for a leader to take stock of what he believes in, and where his strength lies before addressing the challenges that await him.
It has been my experience when coaching executives that when times are tough they need to make sure they consider the big picture perspective. When stepping back and looking at the big picture, leaders are in a much better position to put the difficult situation in proper context so others are more motivated to rally around the challenge.
Leaders also, need to make sure that they “think before they speak”. When times are tough, people will hold onto everything the leader says and they will read into everything that is not said.
While the pressures are great, leaders need to always be “on” and give careful consideration to what it is they are saying to whom, and when. Think of the politicians who have been caught off guard and have uttered certain words on a live microphone.
Leaders during tough times need to be reminded that once they utter the words they lose the control and they may end up spending weeks on end picking up the pieces.
If you think about it, it’s only when times are tough do our true leaders emerge!