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.
In last week’s Chapter Two preview, we outlined why leaders can no longer count on what they’ve known in the past. The role of leadership has evolved, and confidence and competence now need to be defined differently.
This week, we’ll look at Chapter Three, titled “The Ripple Effects of Uncertainty,” and consider how your own response to unending curveballs affects your team—and everyone around you.
In times of uncertainty, people want and need direction more than ever. They feel unsure about everything, whether it’s what’s happening today or what could happen tomorrow. As leaders, we are also experiencing this. We feel the additional stress of leading through these times, and often begin to doubt our own ability to lead.
Does this sound familiar? In response to this kind of stress, you might default to simply continuing to do what you’ve always done and hope for the best. But your team can feel your self-doubt and your inability to help them prepare for what’s next—and that can be a scary place for them to be. They begin to doubt you and to question much of what you do. Confidence killers start to show up and launch a negative spiral that can suspend everyone in a dangerous state of inactivity.
I have been down this road myself many times, not knowing how to respond and proceed. But my Ironman racing has taught me many lessons that have helped me see what is possible in times of doubt and distress. Experiences like getting kicked in the face and losing my goggles at the start of a race have taught me how to cut the time to respond and reduce potential derailment. And with the pace of change at which our world is moving and changing, we all need to recognize that the cost of delay is much greater now than it was in years past.
The importance of this response is demonstrated in the “Curveball” at the end of Chapter Three, where you will learn how April Oman, former Senior Vice President of Customer Success at D2L Learning (and now Chief Customer Officer at Sift Science) and her team didn’t skip a beat as they guided their organization to an award-winning journey through the pandemic.
—
Hope you’ve enjoyed this little peek into Chapter 3 of my leadership book When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World. Next week we’ll move on to Chapter 4: The Three Big Shifts Every Leader Needs to Make.
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