3 imperatives for leaders during COVID-19 | Linda Hill | Big Think Edge

Good afternoon everyone. Victoria Montgomery, brother co-founder and CEO of Big City. Welcome! Today is Big Thing Webinar, and today’s webinar is free and focuses on leadership narrative in a time of the coronavirus. Linda held a business school. She is a renowned book author, correlating the art and practice of leadership and being the boss in Paris, becoming a great leader.

Today’s webinar follows their money usually format, which is a discussion with our expert, followed by a portion where we open it up to your questions. So, you can join in on our comment section with whatever clever points you have. At the end of this portion, I'll drop our Edge subscriber. So stay tuned for that! If you're not an Edge subscriber, please go to bigthingedge.com and check it out.

So welcome so much! We’re so glad to have you here. I'm very pleased to be with you; I appreciate the privilege to speak with all of you during these very difficult times. Thank you, Linda.

So, the way to start is with some of your key teachings. I remember the three you talked about: management as a journey rather than a destination. Can you explain a little bit about what that means and how you would explain it to managers?

Victoria, I must apologize. I keep forgetting the first part of your classes. So, I said management as a journey rather than a destination, and I'm just wondering what you mean by that and how managers can retain thinking about it.

Linda: What I mean by that is that we know that really learning to lead is something that you have to give yourself. No one can teach you how to lead. It’s a process of self-development, and it's one that really requires lifelong learning. You never know what kind of challenge you're going to have to face while helping people get through, as we see today with COVID-19.

Three imperative leadership aspects I need to briefly describe. As I said, we’re going to dive much deeper into them during the course of the webinar, but if I just highlight them, I can discuss how I came up with them and why I think they're so important.

Paradigm leadership: One of the things that my co-author and I wanted to do was to provide a framework that was simple but robust enough to help leaders figure out how they should focus their time and attention. We never knew, of course, that your time and attention would have to be focused in circumstances like we face today, but I think it’s still relevant.

So, the three imperatives are: First, you have to manage yourself. Leadership is always about using yourself as an instrument and trying to match your intent with your impact. It’s always about how do you create the kind of experience you want people to have of you, and you want them to have it themselves when they are with you.

The second imperative is managing your network. This is about managing relationships with individuals and groups over whom you have no formal authority but are deeply dependent on to get your job done. These can be people inside your organization or people outside of your organization.

The final imperative is managing your team. This is about managing and building relationships with those people over whom you do have formal authority. Now, we only made that one last because I think if I asked any of you to define leadership, you would certainly think, look down, and think of the people who report to you.

I don’t know how many of you would look up and out because we know that many people don’t think about managing your network as being about leadership; instead, they think about it as being about politics. Many people actually hate politics.

And then the final one, managing yourself. I think more and more we’re doing that because we all know the importance of emotional intelligence if you will, and also being able to be authentic. But these are three very interrelated capabilities or things you need to think about as a leader. If you don’t think about all three of them, there’s no way for you to be successful.

Well, what's a good life thinking for you and your co-author? Were there experiences that led you to these three imperatives?

Linda: It’s hard for me to say this, but I’ve been a professor at Harvard Business School for over 30 years. I’ve had the opportunity to work with people who are high potentials, either MBAs or executives, not only at the school but all around the world. As you know, my work focuses on leadership, globalization, and innovation.

What I really paid attention to while developing this with my colleague was really… And I say my colleague as an executive, so I want to be clear about that. I always try to do my research with executives. What we found was these are the things that are the most common missteps that people who have potential don’t fulfill. They don’t do it.

So when I began to look back on my experience of why high potentials derailed, I found there were certain common missteps. One whole set had to do with managing your network, frankly, and the way people thought about that. So that’s why we wanted to make that the second one.

I will tell you that Michael Arthur wasn’t my favorite person, and he never liked, if you will, the politics of organizational life. The other one was, again, that people didn’t think enough about how the connection between the network and the team piece. As we begin to understand what it takes to build innovative organizations or agile organizations, again, it's really clear that you have to think about all three of these because they are so deeply interconnected.

So, that’s what willing that it was with my research on innovation and agility, and then the work and experience and research, frankly, on how people learn to lead, and just really looking at what went wrong for people who had lots of potential and didn’t get to fulfill it plays into those three imperatives.

Really, COVID highlights context broadly different for leaders, whether they be business or political leaders. How are you seeing it?

Linda: This morning, I had a conversation with a leader in Abu Dhabi, a leader in South Africa, and a leader here in the U.S. So, I’ve tried to look at this globally, and they were all at different places in our countries with what’s going on with COVID-19. But when I hear from all of these leaders, it’s like leading through a fog, as one of them said.

I’ve never had to lead through a fog. I’ve led through all kinds of crises, but one that has this scope and scale and really the amount of uncertainty associated, that is a new kind of crisis that many leaders are finding pretty overwhelming. Some admit that they feel quite overwhelmed, or that they find members on their team – people who are very experienced – are really struggling. None of us can stand it when we can’t see.

So I’ve been reading about pilots and flights, and it turns out that pilots apparently preferred to fly through turbulence as opposed to flying through sort of foggy conditions. None of us are comfortable when we can’t figure out what’s ahead of us.

So how do you think in a business context this is leaving people who are bosses to rethink what it means to be a boss?

Linda: Well, if they want to really build organizations that have the kind of agility and resilience we need, what we see is a number of the leaders I spoke with think about vision. The leader is supposed to set direction, have a vision, communicate that, and inspire people to go in that direction.

But if you can’t see, then you find it difficult to know what is the vision you actually need to be clear about what you know and don’t know in this circumstance. So what is leadership really about?

One of the leaders said to me, "My instinct is to really try to take charge and steer this ship, but I can’t see." So I began to realize that actually, I need to step back and do it differently. It’s about setting the stage for the people in my organization to be able to do what they need to do in their particular roles and sets of responsibilities.

How do I do that? Set that stage so that they can be agile. When we talk about being agile, what we really mean is you cannot plan your way out of COVID-19. You cannot plan your way; you have to act your way out of it.

What you need to do is act, learn as quickly as you can, and then adapt. That process of acting, learning, and adapting is not the same as planning what we’re used to. In fact, what I’m hearing from lots of leaders is the business plan is gone; the budget is gone. No way! If you look ahead, we don’t even think we’re going back to where we were.

So again, it’s about agility and how do I set the stage for my people to be able to act? That’s what my conversations with leaders have been about.

The greatest aim of a business has been a short period so far, but have you heard from any of the people that you work with ways that they have become more agile or things that they've changed suddenly in the last few weeks or months?

Linda: Yes, I have seen a couple of things. There are a couple of leaders that I’ve been talking to almost on a daily basis to try to understand how they are going through this.

So, I want to first give you a quick framework that I, to be perfectly honest, used this week in our service. But he told us, “Meet this article,” and I will tell you instead of the frog analogy; he used the following: We're now in the blizzard, and we’ve got to get through the blizzard. But we’re going to go through the winter, and in the winter, it may be mild, but we may have many more blizzards.

Finally, he thinks we’re going to go through a little ice age, as he put it. So when we go through that ice age, it will be different on the other side. You need to be preparing your organization to deal with all three of those conditions: the blizzard, now that winter, and then of course, the mini ice age.

What I see leaders telling me they’re doing differently is the following: One leader said, “I am NOT following my instinct. I’m not going to step in,” which would be my inclination. “I’m going to step back, and my role is to clarify our purpose to make sure people understand who we are and who we serve.”

That’s what we need to know because we’ve got to keep that in mind as we're making all the tough decisions we’re going to have to make. So that’s the first thing – make sure I’m really clear about that and tell people to focus on that. We have to have a shared sense of that purpose.

The second thing they’re doing is they’re coming up with new operating paradigms or models. As one leader put it, “We need to have a different cadence in how we’re working, and we must delegate a lot more than we have been delegating because we can’t do it all as the senior team.”

So I’m saying that many organizations are putting in place at least one, if not two, task forces. One that I would say is focusing, if you will, on the blizzard, and the other that is focusing more on, if you will, the winter and what’s coming next after the ice age.

So having these groups that are really digging in, working, and centralizing not only decision-making but also communication, so there’s a simple, consistent message that everyone is getting because people want clarity when they can have that clarity.

Now, the other thing I see they’re doing is one of the leaders described to me in great detail that he thought very carefully about who should be on these task forces. At first, they put the most senior people or the most experienced people on them, and then he realized, “You know what? This is a new problem; it’s unprecedented.”

So we need to have people on that team who haven’t seen this before, who actually don’t have legacy thinking, who will really think outside the box because they don’t have a box to know. So what we see is deep leadership is putting on these teams different mixes of people than they might have otherwise.

One leader said he’s really paying a lot of attention to the ambition of the people he’s putting there. Are these people who are extremely ambitious, not only for the company but very clear about this for the community?

I couldn’t… So I say a little bit more about what I’m saying with… can you hear me?

Oh, now, suddenly frozen for some reason. Can you hear me?

Yes! Okay, so I'm just going to say: Austin comes in times of crisis. So what are the opportunities you think leaders may experience despite all of that that is going on at this time, and how might they capitalize on it?

Linda: So the one I have seen, going back to what I was just saying about the task forces and who they’re putting on them, not all companies are doing this. Some have very senior leaders, etc. If you don’t have one, you need one, because what I am also hearing is there’s a lot of burnout happening.

So you need to distribute the leadership. The thing that I think we’re finding that people are thinking about in terms of opportunities is people are rising to the occasion. They’re having very pleasant surprises about individuals who they may never really saw as having leadership skills or doing innovative problem-solving so much who are actually stepping up because it’s clear that the context is set.

This is what we're about; this is our operating parent, and how decisions, the decision-making rights are clear, etc. People are just saying, “I see that that needs to be solved over there, that opportunity,” or “I’ll take care of this relationship with this set of individuals.”

So one leader described to us that one of the things that makes a huge difference, of course, is if your suppliers stay in business because if your suppliers don’t stay in business, you're not going to have anything, if you will, to sell.

One of the young leaders said, “You know, I’ll go out and work with our vendors and see if we have some technical expertise we can share with them to help prop them up so that they’ll survive so that we can survive because if they don’t, as I said, we won’t be able to.”

So people are stepping up and looking for opportunities and ways to contribute. There’s been a lot of surprises.

The other part of it, and one of my colleagues who is, I guess, she’s a historian, was reminding us that "apocalypse," which is what some people experience this as, means the Greek route really is to reveal. So there’s all kinds of stuff being revealed, both sort of weaknesses, if you will, or things that need to be fixed over time, but also these strengths of the organization.

Like the culture of one organization, I didn't realize how collaborative we truly have become, and this leader had been working for a long time on getting them to be more collaborative and less siloed, but you really saw it operating in people. People pointed it out and said, “We’re really in a different position than we were a year and a half ago, and that's why we're able to take this on the way we are.”

So please make sure you capitalize on the strengths that you see in the organization itself, some capabilities you have, or even in individuals who you never may have thought of as a person who could play a leadership role. Another leader described an individual who, I guess, came from the strategy group, who came in and suddenly said, “You know what? I’m really good at project management. I’ll be the project manager. I’ll be the one who really checks whether we’re accountable to get done what we’re supposed to get done.”

Because what is important to get through this crisis is we’re finding that teams, senior teams, boards, etc., they’re having to meet really on a daily basis to keep up with things. Again, that may or may not be necessary as we move forward, but now to be able to, as this one leader said, “We have to act; we have to learn; we have to deploy all in a day.”

Really, we need to create the conditions that will allow for that, so much more speed; that velocity gets speed with purpose.

So now I’m going to get into the three leadership imperatives, especially in this time of great change. The first one that you mentioned is managing yourself. How is managing ourselves different in this time of crisis?

Linda: Well, one is, as I said, managing yourself is about making sure you’re creating the kind of experience you want people to have when they're with you and how you want them to feel about themselves.

We all know that at the heart of all effective leadership is trust, and trust is based on the perception of two qualities that you have as an individual. One is the perception of your character, and the other is the perception of your competence.

Well, on some level, they know you’re not particularly competent now. You know some things, but you simply don’t know all that you need to know; you don’t have all the control you need. But they want to know about your character; they want to know that you’re really well-intended and that you care about them and care about something larger than the organization, about the community, whatever that community is.

That becomes ever more important. So what we see about managing yourself is how do you send that message of trust and caring and give people hope when fundamentally it’s not looking so good in many situations? It’s not such a positive story, but you do need to share in the reality with them if you want to be perceived as trustworthy.

But you also need to give them that sense of caring and hope. Now, what leaders are finding in a very basic way is they’re often having to do this virtually. We’re all having to do this, you know, whatever technology you use to do it.

Now, this is really hard to do when you’re in the presence of people, but we aren’t trying to be TV anchor people, right? That’s not what we were. And I actually have seen some leaders who have hired coaches to come in and coach them, videotape them, members of the senior team, have them see themselves, and get some coaching on how to carry themselves.

One leader described to me, when I want to be when I really want to say it’s important, should I lean forward like this? Do I lean back? How do I use my body to help people understand what’s really going on? Since we rely on that.

Another one described, “You know what? I’ve discovered, and someone told me this once too, that the difference between my thinking face and my happy face is very different. So when I stare at people and I’m just thinking, it’s actually intense and makes people uncomfortable.”

So, leaders learned back up a bit from the camera. We have to over-communicate. We have to communicate this trust, this character piece, this caring, and I think that leaders are discovering this is a very different medium to be working in, and you really do need to get some practice.

The other part of it that is tricky, I would say, is that how do you run a meeting to talk about really gut-wrenching decisions when you’re doing it this way? When this isn’t human, it can be quite overwhelming for leaders.

What leaders are finding is that they need to make sure that people don’t sense-censor themselves. They actually say what they're thinking. So they're coming up with very simple tactics to encourage that. One might be to start off by saying, "Okay, this is the problem," or whatever they frame out whatever they're working on and then literally, he said he's going around if you build the room, the gallery, and calling on each and every person, saying, "What do you think? Red, yellow, green," making a very simple choice.

So once they look, they talk about red, yellow, and green, then they go back and prioritize because he needs it. There’s a fog in people’s minds, and he needs to focus them.

So I do see that people are realizing they have to use some simple tactics that help people focus and focus on us in a collective way to address whatever it is because there’s so much stress.

I was talking to an executive at the United Nations, a series of leaders, and this executive was saying that normally, when there are war conditions or something, if you have someone working in a particular country, you, in person, can send their family home.

But this is a crisis in which people are not only worrying not so much about their own physical safety and well-being but actually of their families because their families are with them or they're with their families in their homes or wherever they might be and then trying to lead these really difficult meetings, you know, in this way that’s not so human can be quite overwhelming.

So the thing that I do hear leaders telling me, one leader is taking up making sourdough bread but figuring out ways to really take care of themselves and, you know, get some space to manage themselves is so critical so that they can be present in the way they need to be in these very unnatural circumstances.

So, no matter the level in an organization or what anybody does professionally, we’re all responsible for managing ourselves. And especially in this time, we all might be suffering from psychological issues, stress and anxiety, even depression, and I’m just wondering if you could advise for us emotionally how we can be managing ourselves during this time and potentially long after.

One of the things the first book I wrote was called "Becoming a Manager," and in that book, I talked about the key challenges new managers face. One of the challenges they face is learning to cope with the negative emotions and the burdens of leadership.

There are burdens because you not only have rights and privileges, but you have duties and obligations, and you're very aware of them at times like this. So in that learning how to cope with those emotions, many of you may be new or relatively new at what you’re doing, and that is that there’s all that set of lessons to be learned about how you deal with that.

Because you do need to say, as one of the leaders said, “I am scared.” She told people, “Look, I'm scared. We’re all scared, but we still have to move through this.” So being able to express your own vulnerability, as opposed to thinking that you need to be the stoic one all the time, that’s one piece of it.

It actually makes people comfortable to know that you’re also human. Remind them, “I am human. I am also feeling this, but we need to do these things for the company and the community.”

The other thing is you do need it’s very… I’m hearing to have a sounding board or a sparring partner – someone who has a different point of view that you can just be chatting with. It can be more formal or informal, frankly.

One man was telling me that he has a virtual, I don’t know if you drink, but this is what he said. He has a virtual glass of wine every other day with one of his colleagues, another executive because they just sit back and talk about what’s on their minds, and not so much on their minds but what they’re feeling, frankly, to kind of get that, you know, have a place to talk about that and get that out and be prepared and get some advice about how to move forward.

As you said, it’s good essential, in fact, as a leader to show some vulnerability.

Let’s say I’m struggling quite a lot. To what extent is it appropriate that I share that and what is the sort of borderline when it becomes oversharing and unproductive?

Linda: You know, it's hard for me to draw that line. I think that people do need to know that the leader is trying and that the leader is capable of getting done what needs to get done. So I think that who you share with, which is why I think having a sounding board or a sparring partner is important.

I once wrote an article years ago for HBR about a leader who took his organization through a time of much corruption and he talked about feeling very alone. Now he felt he had to be alone because there was this corruption all around; he didn’t know who was corrupt, etc.

In this instance, what we’re really reminded of is how interdependent we all are, that we’re really deeply connected all around the world. So, I would say in terms of that, how far can you go? You want to show caring. I think every meeting should probably start with some checking in with people to see where they are, and actually, one leader said, “If you get the sense that someone is not checked in, that they can’t be because of something going on in their lives, then you either take a break or let them take a break.”

So, to make space for people, don’t make them always be as equally engaged for you. I think there’s a similar thing: if you’re not ready and up for a conversation, then I think probably you shouldn’t have it. I think you should wait, give yourself some time, take a breath, and figure out how to have that conversation a little later because you do need to be in control of yourself, not of the circumstances, but control of your own emotions.

So when you can say to people, “You know, I’m feeling this. I’m feeling that.” I don't know that I would ever suggest you would say to your team broadly, “You know, I’m really feeling depressed.” I don’t think I would do that. But to say that you don’t know, you feel vulnerable, you’re stressed, and this is what you’re doing about it, that I think is perfectly fine to say.

And actually, probably helps people say, “Yeah, I’m feeling a little stressed too,” and you know, “I’m not at my best;” anybody put off this more difficult thing to a little bit later, let me take a half an hour break or whatever it might be.

And I think that people are, we’re human, and we’re being reminded of that.

But I do think if you know, there obviously are times when we’ve seen when people have been crying or starting to cry or whatever, you don’t want to be out of control about it. But if someone on your team, you know, horrible things are happening; people are dying, losing family members, etc., for you not to express human emotion is also not the right thing either.

And so, so many of us, in-person meetings and direct communication, managing virtually is the norm at least for now, and I’m just wondering, how can we measure the impact or effect we’re having, whether it be on our colleagues or our employees remotely?

I just wanted to add one piece to it: so one other thing I’m seeing that some companies are doing is they’re recognizing that because we’re going to be in the winter for a long time, the senior teams cannot meet together for a while. Even when we have the right to, if you will, when you’re let out, they’re not going to be in the same room together.

One organization I have looked at has said they’ve come up with a reserve list of people who can never be together for the next number of months because it’s just too dangerous. It may be the leadership there may be someone who’s in a critical IT role or whatever it might be.

So they’re assuming they’re going to have to learn how to have these meetings virtually because this is the way it’s going to be. I think in that instance, this is why this is one of the leaders who said, “We’re getting a coach because we need to learn about this.”

And then they’re also having very explicit conversations about what we refer to as rules of engagement. How are we going to actually work together? What’s appropriate to send by email or Slack or whatever? What must be done, you know, if you will be on video? Because we need at least a little bit of the nonverbal communication we all rely on to figure out things.

When are we going to CC people? Whenever we go to CC people, like so that what what are the rules, and what are the rules we’re going to have? Again, really to encourage debate.

So, you know, maybe we’re going to try to avoid voting; that doesn’t usually work very well, but we’re going to go around the room and ask who knows about this problem. We’re going to just get into the habit of going around so everyone’s voice; you hear from everyone.

We’re never going to assume that silence means consent, so we’re going to come back to you if you’ve been silent and we’re going to actually monitor much more closely the dominant voices because we need to hear from everyone. And it can get even worse if you will, you know, virtually while doing that.

So I see that these… these leaders are saying, “Let’s have a conversation about our process now that we’re going to be operating this way,” and I think that’s probably a key thing to do also if you’re going to be effective.

And again, going back to this issue of agility, what I do see as leaders are finding they need to figure out how to empower others more. But that means being very clear about the decision-making rights: who has what rights to do what? Do some groups have emergency powers? Other groups not? Or how’s that going to work?

Again, making sure that there’s a common framework that this is the shared purpose; these are our priorities that come from that purpose because we’re all making decisions. We can have different opinions about how to, you know, achieve what we want to achieve, but at least we’re all moving towards the same goal because we have the same sense of purpose.

The other point I would like to say that I do see leaders doing more of… so we all know that emotional intelligence is important to be an effective leader. There’s also something called contextual intelligence, and that is really critical during COVID-19. It’s always critical, but contextual intelligence is about your capacity to gain intelligence about a new context.

It was developed really to understand why it is when you go into new markets, whether they’re geographies or new product services, that you can plan part of the way, but again, you have to get into that market and act and learn as quickly as you can.

So what we see is that contextual intelligence matters, and leaders are understanding that everybody in the organization has representative diverse sets of networks that they can scan and sense what’s actually happening because they’re going to have to continually update their understanding of where we are in the weather conditions, right? And that’s not just about you and your leadership team.

So for instance, I’m seeing that really interestingly; global companies, for instance, aren’t taking advantage of their global footprint or regional companies. Some of the companies that responded the fastest in the earliest, if you will, to COVID-19 were doing that because they actually either had a global workforce.

One person said a lot of the middle managers were from China and they came to me in December and said, “There’s something going on online that we need to pay attention to.” So this is an instance in which, again, distributed leadership, understanding that pooling what you’re learning across the organization, bringing that information in so then you can interpret that for your organization’s team and share that with them and this is our understanding;

Making sure people are not operating on rumor, but rather pooling it, beginning to figure out how you’re going to validate that sense of that reality for today as compared to tomorrow or the next day, what we’re going to be dealing with. I think that’s something that we see that’s also different: really thinking about that contextual intelligence, using all the various paths you have to try to figure out what’s happening.

So we’re going on to the second imperative, which is your network. Why do you say that managing your network is the second most important imperative?

Linda: I think I actually spilled over just now, and I apologize for that, but these are three interrelated imperatives that are your team can’t be working on the right things unless they know what’s happening. One of the most important things about managing your network is how you figure out what your priorities should be: figuring out what’s actually happening in your organization and matching that up with what the reality is out there that you’re trying to operate in.

Now, because there is so much uncertainty and when you can get clarity, you want to get it. You do need to sense and scan and you want to make sure you’re looking out and doing this, you know, getting diverse points of view, not simply, you know, one set of understanding or relying on one set of sort of data.

Because the thing we know about COVID-19 is that it’s both a global phenomenon but it’s also a local one. It’s quite local! So you need to have that, know the global and compare something in your circumstance against what’s happening globally. It’s very useful for figuring out where you are, but it also, you need to know both to know what’s going on.

The vaccine may come from, we don’t know where it's going to come from, whether it’s the RNA body test, but you’ve got to know about it. But you also need to have knowledge of what’s happening in your local community.

So managing your network in this instance, this is a systemic problem or challenge, so it requires a systemic solution. What we’re seeing is companies are actually working with so-called traditional competitors to agree to collect data that they might need about what’s actually happening, about government policies, whatever it might be, or what’s happening with, you know, what’s going on with the healthcare system in their particular area.

Do they need to help prop it up or speak to the government about the governor in the ways that they might be able to say this is going to be a problem for all businesses? So we’re seeing collaboration across, so one is to know what’s happening, but the other is more collective action on the part of different players.

Because we need all three sectors, you know, we need government, we need the private sector, and we need the nonprofit sector all to be operating to solve this problem, because it’s a help in an economic crisis. So again, you’ll discover, do I have these kinds of relationships in the first place? And if I don’t, I better proactively go out and build them. I’m going to need to get things done.

The other thing I would say about the network piece, clearly your customers are in your network but they probably don’t think that they’re external. I talked about the vendors before, but this is a time to be reaching out to your customers and showing them, again, that you care.

It’s not going to be a time you’re going to get a lot of new customers; it’s going to be about really making sure you hold on to the ones you have and so to build those connections. This is a time to really build that sense of ownership between your customers and yourselves.

I also see going back to the team part a little bit is that we’re going and stepping forward is that a lot of times what I’m seeing is that companies are, if you have a task force in dealing with COVID-19, they’re actually creating subcommittees who focus on each of the key stakeholders.

Because again, because we’re busy and there’s lots going on, you might need one of those important stakeholders, so they’re actually putting, you know, someone's responsible and to some extent, what I’m seeing is, and I haven't talked to, I'm going to talk to a fair number of leaders but not everyone.

One leader’s actually… they ended up deciding, “You know what? We might need to have some temporary or interim metrics to assess whether we’re taking care of these different stakeholders so that we just know.”

Again, have a very simple dashboard that tells us are we where we need to be? Effective networking is the same no matter your position in an organization.

What does effective networking look like?

Linda: Networking is really about stepping into the shoes of the other and seeing the world from their point of view. So in all of these, as we know with all relationships, we’d like for some to be reciprocal in some ways. There’s a give and a get.

So I think that we want to, we’re trying to build relationships and have conversations with people. Conversations, by definition, are two-way. One of my colleagues wrote an article called "Leadership as a Conversation." I think it’s a brilliant article, and it’s in its two-way.

So one thing that we want to know on the whole network that you’re dealing with? So, I’ve been talking to a fair number of very senior executives, but I’ve also been talking to people or more middle managers.

But I will say more systematically with the more senior ones. So if you’re a more middle manager, you need to know what’s really going on above the organization to guide you. If you’re not getting the guidance you need, again, you understand that it’s not going to be real clear because it’s a fog or a blizzard, but you need to be talking to your peers.

You need to be talking to your superiors to again to understand what they see as important, and then you’re going to have to work through that to figure out for your team, then this is what our agenda needs to be for right now. That’s your role as the manager.

But you don’t do that in a, you know, you need information to do that. You don’t do that in a vacuum. And then of course, if you’re more senior, I’ve been having some very interesting conversations with CEOs and board members about how that relationship needs to work.

It’s so critical that you have alignment, so that’s the first reason why you’ve got to manage your network. So you’re aligned with those other stakeholders and what you’re doing. And again, it goes back to your sense of purpose, what you’re really about, and what you stand for as an organization.

The second part is you’re going to need assistance. You’re going to need aid, so you may be the vendor, frankly, if you will, and you need to help. You may be reaching out to the company that you are your largest customer and say, “You know, can we help you, and how can we work with you? How can we get through this next period of time?”

What really, which supplies do you most need from us or what information, or how can we be more connected? I do see more, you know, companies that have done digital transformation are in somewhat better place, but I do see companies very quickly trying to put in place more, I guess their temporary ways to connect their IT systems, you know, more closely so that they can do what they need to do as we go through the winter and go to the next phase.

So taking advantage of the crisis, if you will, to do something that, frankly, some of them have said we should have been doing a long time ago, and they know they need to be more connected.

So before we get to audience questions because there are loads and they’re very keen to ask you them, I’d just love to hear about the third imperative about managing your team.

So let’s just say the culture pre-COVID isn’t working now. How should I be thinking that and addressing it?

Linda: Well, so I have to talk a little bit about the team throughout the whole talking about the other two pieces because as I said, they’re interconnected.

I think about the team part, going back to how you then do the decision-making and act with some speed. How are you going to delegate? How are you going to actually think about moving forward for the next phase, the next phase of things?

I think about the team piece. What’s also important, when we talked about the virtual part, is you need to, you will, going back to the idea of apocalypse, it is being revealed how the company works.

And to some extent, when you have a crisis, people usually behave at their best on average, right? It pulls us together. We’re already beginning to see in the U.S., anyway, you know, as time goes on, those fault lines that exist in your organization will begin to show.

You’ll begin to see where those silos are as people really are dealing with the fact that the budgets are off. I was talking to someone now; it’s cash flow in survival, right? So that can lead people to think, how do I keep mine as opposed to how do we keep ours?

You will discover that these tensions, that, you know, as this goes on, we can all hang out for a while, but these will show up. So you, as a leader, need to be able to be prepared to really address behavior that is not consistent with what you need, and you need to think about: “Okay, you know, that’s not acceptable.”

So what we do see is people are going to make missteps. They’re going to be stressed, etc. You don’t want a negative environment; you want to have a more positive environment.

One thing that I always remind those of us who have a really high need for achievement, we tend not to do as much positive and give recognition like we should, so you want to be doing lots of that.

Now, on the other hand, when people are not behaving the way you need them to behave or thinking the way they need to think together about a problem, you, as a leader, do need to be prepared to intervene and point it out and say that, “This isn’t gonna work; that’s not acceptable. Let’s again, when I see leaders doing mostly is if people normally behave properly, they take breaks.

Literally, I see lots of break-taking even when you’re doing this virtually, but if you’ve seen it, and again, you need to step up and say, “We just can’t operate that way. It will not work in the new, you know, the next normal where we’re headed; what do we need to do to fix this so that you all can be more collaborative?”

And sometimes, and as I said, going back to I have seen some organizations that have been at this for a few for a little while now say, “We may need to look at our metrics and create some metrics that keep us all focused on the right things and in particular don’t divide us but actually encourage collaborative behavior.”

So that’s one thing I see. The other thing is a lot of companies are discovering that they’ve been fairly short-term oriented, not long-term oriented; that shows up here too.

Again, you need to be very explicit. Don’t don’t, you know, people can’t read your minds, and they’re barely able to read their own minds right now, so you need to say this is what I think.

Again, mostly, I think you wouldn't be asking questions a lot to encourage people to speak up, etc., and not censor themselves. But when there's, when you need to, you also need to be able to step up and use that formal authority to say, “This does not work.”

And as you’re explaining it, tie it back to that purpose. This won’t work for us for these reasons because this is what we’re trying to do, and that I think being more explicit than maybe you’d usually be is important to do.

That's fabulous! And now I'm going to get to the audience questions because they are super keen.

The first one is: Is this crisis informing new definitions of good leadership, such as cheerleader-in-chief versus scientist of faith?

Linda: I think irrelevant, actually, the one we just talked about that cheerleader one. What the research tells us is people who are very hard drivers and have a high need for achievement, etc., tend to see the gaps, what hasn’t been done, but not what people have done.

So for sure, you want to be more positive, more recognition. One of the organizations I’m working with, they have a... if they don’t want to have "fail fast," they don’t like that language, they have "learn fast," okay? And they’re giving out learn fast prizes, actually, to just make sure people know that they’re recognizing.

Another company is actually giving small bonuses even though I think they’re going to probably be layoffs in that company from what they’ve described to me.

So, that’s the one piece: So being able to be the cheerleader, but you also have to be honest. People know it’s not good, right? So this is where that balance between truth and hope becomes important.

The second part of it: science in chief? Exactly.

So the other thing we found in our research on organizations that can innovate, I’m always shocked because people have been asking me to talk about does innovation matter when you're going through this crisis? It matters more now than ever! Innovative problem-solving is everybody doing it because these are new problems, new opportunities.

Yes, and so what I see there is that leaders are understanding that they need to make sure their organizations know how to think about problems right.

So one leader says, “Everything is a working hypothesis.” Everything! Not we don’t know; take nothing for granted. Collect the data, act on it, you learn more, you may have to move, we may stay the course.

So yes, a scientist is very important. You want everybody to use kind of the scientific method, the rigor. In fact, a board member just talked to me this morning about making sure that the senior management team is being very rigorous in thinking through whatever limited amount of data they have to make a decision because we have to decide and act well.

So this question is interesting to me. I’m not so sure you have an answer for, but it is a very interesting audience question to me. It said it’s so easy for everyone to just declare themselves self-isolating and do nothing. How do I motivate them to get their butts into gear and get stuff happening for their community?

Linda: Again, I just think you should ask that one because I've been asked: people have been saying, “How do we get people to be productive again?”

I must confess, I’ve never worked as hard as I have in the last month or so. I really find myself… So it’s interesting, I guess I don’t know. There’s just so much to be done.

Being in an academic setting, we’re all trying to do online education, etc., I mean, Harvard Business School, we’ve had to turn on our heads as quickly as we possibly could. So I’m exhausted.

But if people are not productive, the question is can you help frame something, going back to your purpose, that they could be working on that will be meaningful to them?

And so it may not—actually, when I say you help frame them, it may be worth having is where you just really have people say, “How can you contribute?”

Because we know everyone wants to contribute. They don’t want to just sit, and if they didn’t, if they wanted to sit, they’d enjoy the first week or like a vacation.

I mean, my son is now sick, sorry that he’s not in school; obviously, this is going on too long. So I think that maybe, hey, the question, have you made an opportunity for them to contribute to these things or step up?

Because this is where people’s new roles, and this is where you need to move now. Because we’ve been at this for a while, this is the blizzard; you now need to say what are your roles and responsibilities, what are you going to be accountable for?

How are we going to define success going forward?

So one leader, again, the "Fog of success," given the hand we’ve been dealt, at the end of this, we want to be able to say we’ve done better than expected! That may sound vague to you, but that actually gave people a frame – given the hand we’ve been dealt, so we’re all beginning to define what that is.

We’ve done better than expected, and what has been your role in that? That's what, or what do you want your role to be in that? That’s the kind of framing you gate for people to figure out what they might want to work on.

And they could work on, if you will, from home. So one of the healthcare settings, a surgeon, a very senior surgeon, volunteered to go work in the emergency room and help with the testing because he also wanted to see what was going on down there.

They wanted to be a part of it. So again, you need to create the opportunity, but if people if you haven't set the stage, they don’t have that this is what the focus is, this is the way we’re operating now: working hypothesis; make decisions on the data we have; learn; pivot.

They don’t, and they don’t understand why you’re making certain choices as you're making changes; they don’t know how to slot themselves in.

So I think that’s what I would say: Most people don’t want to be – and if they really want to quote “stay on their butts,” then that tells you something about the long-term.

I have read actually an interesting article last week about a football player from a Super Bowl team, who is trained as a doctor. I don’t think he’s done his residency, but he’s gone back to Montreal and is working and helping alongside doctors there, which I think is pretty incredible!

So, he’s gotten off! But yes, audience question and we will… exclusive portion. So if you remember, Reg, please stick around for that! And if not, please go to bigthingedge.com and check it out!

So, Linda, this is the last audience question, which is: How do you maintain trust and engagement within the team in the blizzard when they all know there are likely to be continued job cuts as we go into winter and beyond?

You’ve touched on this before, but I know people are just so keen to learn about this.

Linda: I think we all know that there are going to be trade-offs, then there are going to be choices that are going to have to be made.

And so, you know, there are, I would really start reading up on articles and things about how you do layoffs with dignity. I mean, there is a way you can do that that makes the survivors feel okay.

And of course, you have to care about the people you’re laying off, because they didn’t create these circumstances. So I do think that that reality exists. And what you want to think about in terms of keeping people engaged is that, as I mean, I spoke to today said, “Look, the more we can get ourselves back on track, whatever that track means – we don’t know again, you say – but then the fewer of us will not be here with them, the more we’ll make, fewer cuts.”

So we need to think about what’s best for the whole, because that’s the only way we’re ever going to save any of us – save jobs for any of us.

So keeping people focused a bit on the fact that there will be, we don’t know when this will end. This is, these three horizons, we want to get to that place, and we need to be stronger.

So I think that again it’s about interdependence, i.e., if the whole company goes down, no one has a job. So I’d go back to what the meaning of the work is for the people that you’re talking to.

Why did you join this company? What’s it about for you? What attracted you to us? Why do we deserve to exist?

It’s in that space that you can get people to take the kinds of risks because there are going to be some bold moves you’re going to have to take to survive.

Even the companies I mentioned to you who were fast and kind of got to this early, they were very worried about being criticized for overreacting, over-preparing, even though they thought, “We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” which is what companies are doing.

It doesn’t pay to go for the average; you know, there’s no such thing as average.

So preparing for that and having people think it through, but then how do we mitigate that as much as possible and create, you know, as many jobs as we can or maintain as many jobs as we can, or how do we do this in a way that we can bring people back fast or as fast as we can?

But I think that's the reality we're living with. I wish you all the best and hope your families, your loved ones, and your colleagues are safe.

Thank you, Linda. This brings us to the end of the webinar. Thanks to our YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn followers. This will be archived on bigthing.com, so you can check it out there.

We’ll post it on all social media as well, and so we’ll finish with the public side and go on to the Edge-specific lessons. So wait for a few minutes. [Music]