Ever walked into a meeting expecting high-fives for the good work your team has done—only to find out that the project you’ve been working on for months has been cancelled because the CEO wants to “go in a different direction”? Shifting priorities are all too common, especially these days. So how do you as a leader navigate these kinds of continuing curveballs? Watch Bobbie LaPorte’s February 14 “Your Best Next Move” video to learn how to approach even a frustrating scenario like this one with a mindset of possibilities.
Your Best Next Move: How to Lead When Priorities Keep Changing
Hi everyone, Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly leadership tip for your Best Next Move, where I help you see continuing curveballs as an opportunity.
We’re done reacting to them, or pausing, waiting for a new kind of certainty to return. This year I will help you actively use your personal agency to accelerate what you want to accomplish in 2022.
There are many “curveballs” that leaders face every day, but one of the ones I hear often from my clients is “shifting priorities from the top.” I am guessing that may sound familiar to you; maybe you’ve even done that with your team.
Let’s look at an example of how this might look in your organization.
You’ve been working on a strategic initiative with your team that has high visibility in your organization. Your team is energized and excited about their work on this important project; it has been their focus for several months now and your peers are taking note of the exposure this has given you and your team.
Your boss calls you to a meeting – which you think is to compliment you and your team for their hard work and the progress they have made. You walk into the office, ready for the high fives – and instead, he throws you a curveball. The project is now off the table…the CEO has a new focus and wants to take a different direction.
You are stunned. You know your team will be demoralized and demotivated, and you worry that the impact of this will reflect on your stature in the organization.
So now what do you do?
We all have to be prepared for curveballs like this. It is easy for something like this to happen when you are focused on this major project, keeping your team on track, executing on your plan. When things change – and they will – It’s normal to get thrown off, disappointed and discouraged. But this is just the opposite of what your team needs from you right now.
There are two ways you can respond.
- You can look at this as a loss: “All that work for nothing,” fall back on your habitual reactions that create an “Oh well, business as usual; too bad for the team” kind of response.
- Or you can take a different approach, one that comes from a mindset of possibilities.
What if you make this turn of events an opportunity to take the work your team has done to create a project that is really unique, something that stands out and will be appreciated?
What if you make this something that your team would feel proud of and would continue to give them visibility in the company? And instead of looking at the problem and wondering where the solution will come from, ask what are your strengths?…what are the best tools you have at your disposal that you can draw on to develop the best path forward?
I like to think of approaching situations like this as “stripping them for parts” — finding what is good and useful to help move you and your team forward.
These questions sound time-consuming but they aren’t… they just make us think differently, to balance loss with opportunity.
When we stop to think, to question whether our automatic responses might be the best way to go, we are able to develop a broader portfolio of options.
Whether it’s changing priorities from the top, or other curveballs that hit every day, it’s important NOT to default to what you might have done in the past; to be resigned to this and other changes; to give up your personal agency and think you can’t make a difference.
You can.
By just stopping to think about how you can respond differently; to give yourself time to think about how to make this a positive experience; to see it as a way to amplify the assets and contribution your team can make.
So, that’s my tip. I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, use your personal agency to make uncertainty a part of your success strategy for 2022.