Hi, I’m Ian McLean, founder of Flow Group and GreenLine Conversations. This podcast has grown out of the chaos that’s been thrust upon us. And in it, I share the best of 25 years of helping leaders in business organizations deal and cope with change. So, as you’re out there, busy making sense of it all, trying to cope, and repurposing your organisations, I’m hoping that some of this will provide some help, some of the time.
I’ll keep it deliberately short because I know you’re busy. Let’s dive in.
Against the backdrop of Trump’s inauguration speech. Depending on which commentator you read, in anticipation and on the lead-up, there’s an expectation, or a trepidation, probably more accurately, about what is likely to ensue.
Anything from irregularity and uncertainty to chaos to, as the Russell Crowe character announced in the film Gladiator: Unleash Hell.
As leaders, we have to lead in spite of the circumstances and in spite of the uncertainty that might surround us in any situation, particularly one as acute as this. I thought this might be a good episode to dedicate or devote to the ability of leaders to stay and remain calm under pressure. You see, the ability to remain calm in the teeth of the gale of uncertainty is one of those silent characteristics that rarely gets really applauded in leadership journals.
But in my experience is the thing that is most critical when it comes to establishing and building a leader’s reputation. In the first instance, I’m reminded of, an episode which took place when I was growing up in my childhood, I can remember the whole idea of a refugee crisis, which was a relatively novel thing at the time, even though it isn’t today.
And it was about a displaced population in Vietnam at the time, after the Vietnamese war. Whilst it’s not unusual today, it was very unusual back then. And there was a story of the people who were fleeing a war torn country in Vietnam to try to get away and they were taking any means or method that they could, often in very unseaworthy vessels to, sail away and find themselves some new land somewhere in an effort to build a new life.
The collective grouping was called or became known as the Vietnamese Boat People. And, over a period of time, the boats that left the country would sail and begin to turn up in various states in other countries outside of Vietnam.
What the rescuers discovered is entirely predictable. They found a lot of disease, death, mortality, distress, inevitably, but they began to realize that not all boats were equal. They turned up on the shores, and they discovered that there were a very small minority of boats that seemed to have a disproportionately higher level of wellness, not in the modern-day sense, of course. Amongst some of the boats, and they were mystified by this because on the surface it all seemed equal, but they were finding that there were certain boats that were different to the others.
So they tried to investigate what was it amongst these boats that made for a relatively better outcome. And the only thing they could discover that was common to each one of these boats is that there was somebody on board who emerged as a leader figure who demonstrated a sense of and brought with them a calm to those that they connected with and those who were on board the boat.
They themselves were calm. They projected calm. And the one thing that we know subsequently about emotions is that they are a real thing and they are a dominant force. These people became known as the calmest person in the boat. You see, as soon as we encounter turbulence in our lives in the real world, just like on an aircraft, all eyes go to the cabin staff or the pilot.
And nobody needs a nervous pilot.
There’s plenty of research that shows that emotions are contagious and the only rule is that the dominant emotion wins. They have done multiple experiments, which show how people’s autonomic load changes and adapts itself, so our stress levels adjust upwards or downwards as soon as somebody walks into a room.
It only takes a matter of seconds before the dominant emotion gets caught by everybody within the room, and we all feel it. The change of temperature as the mood changes.
You see, your leadership reputation is made not in the quotidian, everyday moments, but it’s actually made or broken in the moments that matter. The high stakes, high complexity, highly challenging moments where you as a leader either step up to the plate for the gold medal or you retire in a retreat and you end up with a wooden spoon.
Because you’re the leader, how you show up in the moments of uncertainty or complexity or tension matters more than anything else. And the impact that you can have in those moments is absolute. I can remember a situation very clearly where I was working with a function and the function’s leadership team and we were working on a strategic piece.
We positioned a session in the diary and the leader of the function, let’s call her Florence, in the financial service sector, She led by introducing the session at my invitation before we got underway with the work. Her check-in or opening remarks were something like this. She was obviously extremely stressed and she said to the audience:
“You know what?
I’m really stressed. In fact, we all are. We have too much on. We don’t have time to do this work. And we really should have postponed it.”
With this. As the leader, she set the mood and the whole atmosphere for the rest of the session, and the session never really recovered. Now, Florence is not a bad person, and she was genuinely overwhelmed, and she’s not badly intended, but the impact she had on the rest of the people in the room, and the stress levels that they had and their ability to engage, was incredible.
Especially on the few who had labored very intensely to try to organize and get the session on in the first place. More broadly, this is how Florence turns up in many moments where there is difference, difficulty, and challenge in those moments that matter. And therefore, it’s hardly surprising that the function is characterized by indecisiveness, low morale, high stress levels.
Things never been good enough and people constantly feeling under pressure and overwhelmed. Fair or not, like it or not, but our leadership reputation is forged on the moments that matter, forged in the headwinds, never in the tailwinds.
And we’re judged, not by our good intentions, because people are by and large very well intended. But by the impact that we have in those moments. In this instance, Florence was the least calm person in the boat. And those aboard were paying the price in terms of dis ease. So, in reflection, what’s your impact?
Particularly in those moments of high tension, high stakes and pressure. What do you default to? Do you light up a room when you walk into it or when you walk out of it? There are two main things that characterize high-performance leaders connected to self-awareness. The first thing is that they are self-aware and they’re self-aware about two things particularly.
The first is what their strengths are, and they play to those strengths as opposed to trying to compensate for weaknesses. So they maximize those. And the second thing is. They understand what their default is when they’re under pressure. They understand what their routines are. And by being aware, they’re then able to take action to try to mitigate or to try to get better.
So, as you set the course for your boat into the seas of uncertainty of 2025, I have two questions. What is the impact that you typically have when you encounter stormy seas with those around you? What’s your default? Where do you go? And how does it influence or impact others?
And secondly, insofar as you can judge it or measure it, what can you see on the horizon that might be the events, the circumstances, the people or the places projects, systems, anything else that might be in danger of putting you on high alert and creating those conditions.
Until next time, stay safe, stay sane, stay connected.
