How to lead with courage

While business leaders are not typically shot at and mortared, or flying combat helicopters through Afghanistan and Iraq, knowing how to lead under extreme pressure and uncertainty has become an essential transferable skill.

Here were just some of her top tips from the recent National Manufacturing Summit.

On dealing with pressure

Our attention can only be in one place at a time. Many of us think that to be able to do our job, to be able to solve complex problems, you’ve got to be everywhere at once. You’ve got to be able to multitask. But it’s actually not true because our attention can only be in one place at a time. When you’re multitasking, what you’re actually doing is task switching. And you’re probably very good at that, but studies have shown this decreases our performance by up to 40%. Or to put it another way, it increases our errors by up to 40%.

We feel stressed when we’re running around doing everything at once. But also that stress response bypasses that rational part of the brain. This survival part of the brain starts to run the show and this is where stuff like problem solving happens. So right when you need it most, in the heat of the moment, you won’t be able to see a solution that’s staring right at you.

And it’s not your fault. Your brain is doing what it’s designed to do with that stress response activated. So hopefully for all of these reasons, you can see that multitasking isn’t helping us as much as we think.

A much more effective strategy is to focus on one thing at a time. It’s just that in this complex, technologically advanced world, we’ve forgotten this basic truth. If you want to do your best work, you’re better off focusing on one thing at a time. And to do that, we’ve got to choose one thing. So try it. From tomorrow until forever, start the day by asking, what is my priority today?

On managing high-performing teams

The starting point for great teamwork, which often gets overlooked, is to enable people to do what they’re good at to the best of their ability.
And if you do your best work when you’re unitasking, so does everyone else. So the question you need to ask yourself is how do I enable the people in my teams to unitask on their high value tasks?

Unitasking might sound quite solitary, a bit siloed, but it’s a team sport. Think of it as flying in formation. So you’re there shoulder to shoulder all pointing in the same direction towards a shared common goal. But it doesn’t work if you try to jump into the other person’s cockpit. Everybody has got to be trusted and empowered to fly their own aircraft. And as the formation leader, you can enable that.

First of all, you need to articulate a clear vision. It’s a lot easier for people to prioritise their own high-value task if they know what the end goal is. So articulate that clear vision. Don’t leave it to chance. Make it loud and clear – that’s the first thing.

The second thing is that your people need to be able to work on their high-value task and do it to the best of their ability without constant and unnecessary interruption. Yes, we want to have a shared end goal, but it is perfectly acceptable that you’ll all have slightly different flight paths to get there because you’re navigating different challenges, working on different parts of the problem. And that’s why high-performing teams will have aligned but different priorities. So they can work on complementary work strands simultaneously and multiply their output. And the only way that’s possible is if everyone’s empowered to do what they’re good at to the best of their ability, with a degree of self-sufficiency. And that might sound a bit hard-nosed, but I promise you it’s a really crucial element of teamwork. And it’s a really great opportunity for people to show how capable they really are.

On giving autonomy and new ways of working

If you can see someone is deep in flow doing an important task, consider your impact before you interrupt them. That might be uncomfortable for you, but you’re allowing them to unitask with all of the benefits that brings. And equally, if someone comes to you and says, have you got a minute? It might be uncomfortable for both of you but it would also be entirely fair to say right now is not the perfect moment actually. But could I get back to you later this afternoon? Because what do you think might happen in the intervening time? They will figure it out themselves. Because people are brilliant. A lot more brilliant than they realise. And the reason they’re asking for your judgment is because they haven’t learned to trust their own yet.

I’m not saying we should leave people to flounder. I know we want to help each other out. But if you can resist the temptation to always dive in and rescue people, then not only can you focus on what you’re doing and do it better, but you’re giving someone a chance to realise they can do something they didn’t think they could do. That’s an amazing thing for someone to learn about themselves. And actually, we can do this proactively by delegating into discomfort.

A great way to do this is just to give a bit more autonomy than feels comfortable for that person. Rather than micromanaging and saying this is the task, please do it exactly as I say, just give them the information they need. Let them decide how they want to do the task. And that might be uncomfortable for people because you’re giving them agency, and agency is scary. But keep the faith because people perform at their best when they are in stretch. And that means they’re proving to themselves they’re good at what they do when they are uncomfortable. And that’s another great thing for someone to learn about themselves.

Relinquishing a bit of control can be uncomfortable, or maybe even a bit irresponsible. We feel like we have to have all the answers, but it is well worth stepping back.

You have great people and teams who all have different ways of seeing emerging threats and solutions. So let them solve the problem their way. They might come up with a brilliant way of doing it that you wouldn’t have thought of. But also you’re demonstrating to them that you trust them to make their own choices. And that’s a huge mark of respect. And actually, the easiest way to do this is just to replace instructions with information.

On courage and making mistakes

Make one single act of courage – share your mistakes because you will make them and be brave enough to suck at something new.

You’ll make less mistakes when you’re unitasking, but ultimately we live in turbulent, unpredictable times so we’re going to be encountering scenarios we haven’t encountered before. And if you drive in growth, you’ll be actively trying things you haven’t tried before. You are not going to get everything perfectly right the first time. You will make some mistakes but mistakes are where the treasure is because they are full of data that you can leverage to refine your processes and deliver even better results every time, next time. If you share that mistake – you multiply the learning and increase trust and collaboration.

We often default to looking for negatives, looking for threats. That’s brilliant for keeping us alive. But it also means we tend to read more into negative outcomes and we tend to disregard the positive ones. So if you make a mistake, you might feel ashamed. You might want to cover it up. Or if it’s someone in your team, you might feel irritated because we assume it’s a sign that we’re not learning. But it’s the opposite, failure is an essential part of the learning journey and the best learning is not a straight trajectory.

All Images courtesy of MAKE UK