Don’t get stuck on “pause”! In her September 7 “Your Best Next Move” video, Bobbie LaPorte addresses the second of three mindset shifts that all leaders need to make to deal with unexpected situations and navigate through uncertainty. Instead of worrying about how to minimize risk or mourning what is lost, it’s time to see where the possibilities lie—and move forward.
TRANSCRIPT OF YOUR BEST NEXT MOVE: How can I approach unexpected situations from a possibilities perspective?
Hi everyone, Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly tip for your Best Next Move – where I help you have more agency in your work, acknowledge your capacity to act, and see what you can do right now.
Many of you know that I have been working on my leadership book on navigating uncertainty (which is coming out this fall). Last week, my tip addressed how decision-making has changed – one of the three mindset shifts that all leaders need to make to successfully navigate uncertainty.
This week – I want to cover the second shift: that leaders must deal with unexpected situations, that are so much more common now, from a possibilities perspective, not a loss perspective.
In a certain world, we were trained to approach challenges in a methodical, disciplined way, laying out the pros and cons, gathering data, creating options and scenarios for consideration.
Then came a prolonged decision-making process that involves all the appropriate stakeholders for input, then more data and validation, detailed risk analysis to narrow down the best options, and then and only then, or should I say “hopefully” – a decision.
Has that ever happened to you? My guess is that you are all too familiar with this approach. It seems like the analysis, box-checking, and deliberation goes on forever.
So, how do we move forward without making mistakes that could create negative consequences for the organization, risk your reputation and possibly risk your job?
When you are faced with an unexpected situation, you can’t afford to default to your natural reaction to pause, feel stuck and unsure. And you can no longer make minimizing risk your primary focus when developing solutions. In a world that is shifting and changing, evaluating risk must take a back seat to in-the-moment decisions based on confidence.
We have all been taught to minimize risk and avoid the potential consequences of making mistakes. But in this environment, risk-taking and making mistakes are more acceptable now. Consider a time you were faced with an unexpected situation: how long did it take you to move from loss avoidance and minimizing risk to maximizing what is possible?
If your response was more stuck on loss avoidance vs. using your intuition and personal agency to move forward, here’s my tip: the next time you are faced with an unexpected situation – to move past this sense of loss and see where the possibilities lie in this situation, draw on the confident, no-regret decision-making process we discussed in the first shift.
With that mindset in place, you can accept that mistakes are now part of the process of innovating, of trying new things. They are part of your evaluative and decision-making process. They have less impact now because you can change course quickly if needed, moving confidently beyond recognizing the loss to what is next, what is possible.
As always, I want 2021 to be a year of momentum for you, one of possibility thinking that takes advantage of the agency we sometimes forget we have.
That’s my tip for this week. My book: “When the Curveballs Keep Coming – A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World” will be out in the fall. Stay tuned for more information.
I’ll see you next week. Take care of yourselves.
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