Feeling blindsided? That gut punch of “preserve what we have at all costs” kicking in? This article unveils the surprisingly potent antidote to leadership paralysis in crisis: the intentional pause. Forget knee-jerk reactions that only amplify the chaos. Learn how to cut through the emotional fog, objectively size up the real threat, and tap into the hidden strengths you’ve already built.
Discover why your growth strategy isn’t just for good times — it’s your secret weapon in the storm. And, unlock the collective brainpower of your team instead of facing the abyss alone. This isn’t about waiting; it’s about strategically stopping to finally move forward with clarity and decisive action.
Ready to lead with intention, even when the unexpected hits hardest? Then dive in.
Key takeaways:
Take an Intentional Pause for Objective Assessment. When faced with a situation that triggers a “preserve” response, resist the urge for immediate reaction. Instead, deliberately step back to gain clarity.
- Action: Implement a Pause Protocol. In the first hour (or timeframe appropriate to the urgency) of recognizing a high-stakes situation, mandate a period of individual reflection for every person on the leadership team.
Tap into the Diversity of Thought-Through Collaborative Problem-Solving. You don’t have to make high-stakes decisions in isolation. Leverage the collective intelligence and perspectives of your leadership team.
- Action: Institute a Critical Thinking & Creative Problem-Solving Session. Following the individual Pause Protocol, convene a focused meeting with your leadership team. The explicit goal of this session is not to find immediate solutions but to engage in critical thinking to understand the core problem from multiple angles.
Embrace the Reality of Your Current Baseline. Your ability to effectively navigate unexpected uncertainty is directly tied to the health and preparedness of your organization before the crisis hits.
- Action: Commit to consciously saying “no.” Don’t underestimate the importance of your everyday operations and strategic engagement. Be clear and share refinements to priorities week to week in order to stay focused on your primary growth initiatives.
Unstuck Your Leadership: The Power of the Pause in High-Stakes Chaos
Don’t panic in a crisis; pause first. This article reveals how an intentional pause, not frantic action, is key to overcoming leadership paralysis in high-stakes situations. It guides you to objectively assess the real threat, leverage your existing growth strategy, and tap into your team’s collective intelligence for clear and decisive action rather than facing challenges alone. Stop reacting. Start leading with intention.
When an immediate need to preserve kicks in, you have a very clear clue that stress is unrelenting or maybe even a spiking of uncertainty. As soon as you accept there is a situation happening, even if you don’t feel ready, you are ready.
Yet, it is common to get stuck. Maybe it’s from unpreparedness. Or fear. Maybe even it’s from overwhelm.
To overcome that, the only next step is to pause.
Take as much time as you need to let emotion settle and see what really is happening — i.e., stopping to be able to objectively (as possible) look at the situation where preservation mode kicked in. Skipping this step will always lead to knee-jerk reactions when making decisions.
Step into an intentional pause to assess what you have to work with.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Teddy Roosevelt led with this attitude and instilled it in the people he worked with. This is the time to use the traits, strengths, infrastructure, and diversified thinking that you have been cultivating before the spike in uncertainty happened.
To determine what is real, space is necessary. In a pause, you create space for yourself to ask:
- Is this an immediate problem or a looming business threat, or are reactions due to what’s reported in your go-to news sources?
- What kind of stressful situation is this?
- What strengths do we have as a company, and what specific knowledge, skills, and experience do our people have to face the situation actively?
Is this an immediate problem or a looming business threat, or are reactions due to what’s reported in your go-to information sources?
Your ability to pull information to answer this question directly correlates to the amount of time you spend engaging your growth strategy. The more tuned into the pulse of your company (trajectory of current initiatives, threats, weaknesses, and opportunities), the quicker you can assess the situation.
Did you know that only 22% of employees feel that leaders have a clear direction for the organization? (Gallup)
On typical days, there is a tension between productivity and priorities. The less alignment there is, the less employees will believe they understand what the right work is. Regardless of skill level or achievement, the more unclear things seem to be, the more likely risk tolerance is decreased.
In my experience, management teams in high-stakes situations seeking to utilize the capabilities of their team find themselves alone in decision-making.
When you are feeling more stressed, every employee feels that, too. The quicker you understand and share what is really at stake, the quicker you can access all the energy and resources available in your company.
What kind of stressful situation is this?
Stressful everyday and high-stakes business situations fall into three categories: organizational, environmental, and personal. In addition to workload demands, organizational culture will influence how a company exists with its dynamics, support systems, and individual empowerment.
While it is easy to identify the most stressful situations in the workplace, there isn’t a clear single definition of “stressful situation” when it comes to the unexpected.
So, here are three indicators to help you identify the essence of stress to increase your understanding about what really is going on:
- Demands exceed resources. Over time, a situation has become unsustainable and requires a new way of doing things. For example, there are workforce reductions without a real restructuring of work output expectations.
- Threat to any portion of the business. The extent has ramifications that aren’t fully understood. For example, COVID shelter-in-place dictated physical businesses to close for an unknown period of time.
- Goal interruption. Perceived opportunity disrupts the momentum of projects in implementation. This happens when competing priorities with resource constraints delay deliverables.
Using only preplanned scenarios or detailed execution timelines during an unexpected situation is not enough, especially if they are part of the day-to-day operations. It can make the situation look worse than it really is, which amplifies the emotion and, in turn, drastically reduces the ability to make sound decisions.
What strengths do we have as a company, and what specific knowledge, skills, and experience do our people have to face the situation actively?
Even on the best of days, decisions are made with imperfect information. As a company, having a strategic growth focus provides a different thinking and sensing framework. One of the tools often overlooked is a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).
My work focuses on creating a dynamic SWOT, an active document for CEO deep-work sessions and leadership team strategic sessions.
It is part of that company pulse — so that you can rely on finding the right opportunity within the decision-making and know exactly the right work in order to navigate extreme or highly-sensitive unexpected situations.
Engaging your leadership team for a report on their perspective of the situation allows you to tap into the diversity of thinking to move quickly toward the right step, right now. You do the same exercise. Then, when everyone meets, the expectation is that critical thinking and creative problem-solving are the goal. To work with what you can control, to be able to triage, and to have an open mind about the next step emerging from this work session.
Leaning on past experience is important. Identifying what is different about the current situation will also provide knowledge about the reality of the situation so that the right direction is discovered.
Knowledge is cheap. Discernment is gold.
Your baseline for facing unexpected uncertainty is the way you have been doing your work. This includes how much time you’ve spent engaging with your growth strategy, the mental and physical capacity for the work already being done, and how many initiatives are in motion at the same time.
“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” This David Allen quote is something that Saul Cohen learned from his business coach and uses as part of his decision-making process. The real potential of your business isn’t in what you say you will do; it is in what you consciously refuse (and say “no”) to do.
In The Power of Pausing and Self Advocacy in Business Growth conversation on the BOLD Business Podcast with Saul Cohen, he said, “It’s just because they acted on that information, and I didn’t.” What you do with the information you seek out and engage with regularly is the baseline you can count on during times of high pressure.
Claim what you have. There is power in accepting the reality of what is happening and what you have to work with, and then the viable options will be uncovered. If you would like an outside set of eyes, please reach out.
Conclusion:
There is power of intentional action rooted in clear understanding and collective intelligence when facing unexpected, high-stakes situations.
These protocols and practices move beyond the initial instinct to simply preserve and highlight the necessity of a strategic pause to achieve that understanding. By objectively assessing the situation, leveraging existing strategic frameworks, and engaging the diverse perspectives of the leadership team, organizations can move from reactive paralysis to proactive problem-solving.
Use this information as the foundation for navigating uncertainty and to build a strong baseline to work from when the unexpected arrives, allowing for the discovery of viable paths forward and the unlocking of inherent organizational capabilities.
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Still feel like you need a bit of help with some business direction on this topic? Then ACT to Plan by contacting me for a Business Basecamp 30-min Consultation. We’ll discuss your aims, where you are struggling, and options for you to navigate through it!!
