Each week, I’m featuring excerpts from a chapter of my leadership book When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World to provide insights that can help all leaders adjust to these times of unrelenting uncertainty.
Last week, we outlined some of the ripple effects of uncertainty, including how your team may feel threatened by your response to unending curveballs.
This week, we’ll look at Chapter Four, titled “The Three Big Shifts Every Leader Needs to Make,” and consider how success in an uncertain world looks very different in the world in which we’ve been accustomed to leading.
And that’s because the definition of risk, our models for decision-making, the timelines that define how we operate, and the confidence and competence that inform the dozens of choices we make every day, are all very different now.
In my Ironman racing career, I have learned that real confidence comes not just from experience, but from the knowledge that you will always have a response to the challenges you face. That response will set the stage for how you create your conditions for success down the road.
So, how do you get there? In our leadership framework, success today requires three major shifts that all leaders must make—NOW. The first shift involves a new model of decision-making: from operating on autopilot to a state of strategic awareness that enables you to evaluate risk and make no-regret decisions in an accelerated timeframe.
Leaders must now face the reality of needing to make decisions when there is no clear path forward. And with the pace of change today, the cost of delay is much greater now than it ever has been.
That can be a scary place from which to operate. So, how do you get there?
You start by creating a reasonable expectation about what you need to decide and when; to balance between not knowing what to do and leaping to something that feels easy, known and comfortable. This requires the discipline to get off autopilot; to stop and think about what you are facing; to shift your focus from what to fix, which limits your choices, and to gain perspective and guide your team’s focus toward the best available option at that time.
And it also means acknowledging that increased risk-taking is more acceptable now. That is what no-regret decision-making is all about: every decision is a good one—until it is not.
You will see this first shift in action in the “Curveball” at the end of Chapter Four. Erin Baudo Felter, Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainability at Okta, shares how she learned during the events of 2020 that leadership during uncertainty requires vulnerability to admit when you don’t have the answers.
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Hope you’ve enjoyed this little peek into Chapter 4 of my leadership book When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World. Next week we’ll move on to Chapter Five, “Your Journey to Readiness.”
What you see here is just a “bite-size” sample of the leadership lessons and practical tips that I outline in my book. Buy your copy now at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or go to bobbielaporte.com/curveballs for more information about corporate bulk discounts.
#readyforcurveballs