Remember 2019? Our world was humming along with its everyday challenges. Sure, it grappled with economic unrest, climate change, governments, and general turbulence. But these were common, ordinary problems that everyone had managed before. Then in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and the world turned upside down. Everywhere, organizations and leadership teams were suddenly faced with enormous challenges on how to respond to an unprecedented and uncertain situation that affected not just the U.S., but the entire world.

Nothing has felt ordinary in 2020. Like a toddler wandering around in a lone wilderness, humanity has had to take a critical look at themselves. With this, leaders in all walks of life and especially businesses and organizations, have had to stop and say, “What now?” After all, with so much chaos, economic hardships, virus-related illnesses, and civil unrest, how in the world could you, as a leader, stay healthy, positive and focused on the task at hand and at the same time, nurture and help your organization and people achieve their best? How do you do it? Is there an answer?

We’re almost at the end of 2020, but extreme hardships in business and personal lives will likely prevail in 2021 from Covid-19’s effects, along with the civil unrest and a rocky economic forecast. But as we move forward, there are lessons from the pandemic that we can use to guide our responses to future crises when we’re leading our organizations and teams. Together, we can still overcome adversity and uncertainty and perform at a high level. We can still work towards achieving an extraordinary destiny no matter what’s happening now or in the future. Remember, as a leader, you cannot control everything that happens to you and this remains true for tomorrow, as well. But all of us can control how we show up and respond.

Stay Positive

Leaders set the tone. It’s imperative to keep your perspective and stay positive when everything around you seems to be falling apart. Remind yourself that “this, too, shall pass.” Focus on where you’re going and what’s possible. Ignore the outside noise that can confuse you, depress you, and make you believe the world will remain upside-down forever. Look to the future. Dream the dream.

Organizations that have been able to thrive in these challenging times are those that not only adapt to the rapidly changing times but come out of the crisis stronger than before. They never let go of their vision and the deep belief that the future will be bigger than the past.

Finding Your North Star; Being Purpose Driven

Being purpose driven is much deeper than reciting the company’s mission statement or briefly talking about it in meetings. As a leader, especially in the middle of a crisis, one of the most powerful things that you can do is unite the organization behind a common purpose. I have seen magical things happen when an organization has discovered its North Star. What does your company stand for? What do you want to be known for ten years from now? Remind your teams of these every day, at every meeting.

Provide clear cut examples of the personal and professional benefits of achieving the company’s purpose, and reward team members who exemplify excellence and embody the core purpose of the organization. I have seen incredible breakthroughs take place over the past couple months when leaders focus on being purpose driven instead of just going through the motions to hit numbers.

Vulnerability Equals Strength and Powerful Organizational Shifts

People will relate to you if you share your own vulnerability. A lot of leaders believe they have to have it all figured out and act strong in the face of adversity, without even realizing that this approach does more harm than good. No leader, regardless of experience or how successful they have been in the past, has faced challenges of this magnitude. No one expects you to know everything and not feel the impact of the crisis. Let your teams know that you understand what they are going through.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed a powerful moment in an organization when the leader of the company was vulnerable with his people and shared some personal hardships during the past few months. He shared with employees that he didn’t have all the answers on when they can expect some normalcy and fully return to the office. He further expressed his own difficulty of helping his children through the crisis while devoting everything he had to the job.

He humanized himself as the leader, and this created a massive shift in trust and enthusiasm to get through the challenges ahead together as a team. Don’t be afraid to let your people know that you are still trying to figure everything out. Open up about a personal experience that is relevant to the team and the message that you hope to get across to them. Vulnerability is strength, not weakness, and can contribute to an organizational shift in mindset and tone.

Overdeliver on Employee Care

Always give more than expected. Surpass all expectations and overdeliver when it comes to employee care. Organizations that deeply care about the personal and professional wellbeing of their employees in the middle of a crisis rise to the top. The companies that “talk the talk” but don’t “walk the walk” shift gears in an instant when unprecedented challenges arise. They cut back on a lot of the initiatives that took place before the chaos erupted, perform massive budget cuts, and instill even more uncertainty and fear for their employees.

I have witnessed how organizations handle a crisis and how they treat their employees. I have seen how this affects everyone in the long term, both positively and negatively. A company can literally make or break itself with how they treat their people in these turbulent times. You may have to make some changes in the organizational structure, deviate from short-term goals, and make some difficult decisions. But don’t change your desire to create an exceptional employee experience and provide resources to help your people cope with these troubling times.

An example of overdelivering on employee care during a chaotic, upside-down world, is the initiative one organization I work with implemented in 2020. They recognized that the mental health of their employees was a major problem, so they started providing weekly meditation and mindfulness training for all employees. They listened to what their people were struggling with and acted quickly to provide emotional support. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, but the best leaders listen to the needs of their people and then overdeliver in the best way available to them. Your people are your most important asset. Treat them like it.

Remember, your role as a leader is an extraordinary privilege because so many people count on you even when you don’t realize it. As a leader, especially in difficult and trying times, your gift is that you can potentially change someone’s life forever and give them hope for a bigger future, a bigger, more extraordinary destiny. That’s a privilege.

The post Leading Employees Through Hardships appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

Leaders who want to exemplify agile leadership have to be serious about making the transition from old protocols that have been rooted in bureaucracy for many years to an agile approach and mindset that’s progressive, flexible, innovative, open-minded, and courageous. Agile leadership is about learning to be uncomfortable while forging new territories.

Courage is the key to great leadership. To agile leadership. Time and time again, we have seen how courage has played an important role in many major turning points throughout history, from Martin Luther King, Jr., fighting for the equality of African-Americans during the Civil Rights movement in the mid-1950s to Malala Yousafzai advocating education for girls at the present time.  Likewise, those who step up and voice their opinions in organizations and communities today are the very ones who ignite change. Courage and self-confidence are interconnected, relying on one another to push us to achieve the results we want. Courage provides us with the confidence to pursue a goal and to lead others to manifest change, whereas confidence helps us believe we can bring about that change. It all takes courage. Courage to change. To innovate.

Most companies find it difficult to innovate and change, even when society and businesses are being forced to change. Agile leadership consists of visionaries who are courageous enough to liberate that innovative spirit at the core of a company’s heart: the employees and operational framework.

Everything starts at the top, with the leaders of an organization. In order for an organization to successfully execute a new initiative or total transformation, the leaders of the organization must lead the way. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated change like we have never seen before. In order to put your organization in a position to win and come out on the other side of this crisis, displaying the characteristics of agile leadership could pay huge dividends moving forward.

Displaying Agile Leadership

In the hopes of becoming a more agile leader, leaders can use the tenets of the letters of the word AGILE itself in its meaning to affect positive change.

A: Adapt— Stay nimble and flexible in your daily approach.

G: Grow—Continually seek growth and never-ending improvement.

I: Innovate—Encourage rapid experimentation and learning.

L: Lead—Leaders go first.

E: Evolve—Let go of the old ways of managing and working.

Agile leadership transitions are never-ending journeys. People need time to dream, to create, and to get accustomed to a new operating model. Predicting exactly how any given change will affect the organization is hard, so testing, learning, and experimenting are essential.

Agile methods, like all other management tools, have strengths and weaknesses. They are not perfect and do not always mean success. They do not eliminate problems, and there can be many obstacles in business, but when used properly in appropriate situations, agile leaders can trade potentially disastrous problems for lesser problems. Naturally, the best approach is not to choose agile methods over all other management approaches, but to learn when, where, and how to use them harmoniously in combination with other tools at hand. Aristotle called this “Finding the Golden Mean” more than 2,300 years ago.

Agile leadership is an element of “connected” leadership. Connected, agile leaders lead with a deep sense of purpose and clarity about their mission. Secondly, connected agile leaders are authentic, open, and driven by values that inspire confidence, loyalty, dedication, and commitment from others. They have open and transparent relationships with their colleagues, teams, and customers to build trust and a positive culture around them. These agile leaders believe in others and create cross-functional teams to create an empowered staff to deliver in line with the organization’s direction and purpose.

For example, Jeff Bezos created Amazon in 1994. Ever since then, he has stressed customer value as the primary goal of Amazon. Bezos stated in his 1997 letter to shareholders that long-term shareholder value “will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position.” At Amazon, shareholder value is the result and not the operational goal. At Amazon, the customer comes first, ahead of “short-term Wall Street reactions.”

Bezos could be described as a courageous leader who exemplified agile leadership. What he was illustrating through his agile leadership was the combination of customer value with a focus on the future and the continuation of creating new business models. It illustrates the Adapt, Grow, Innovate, Lead, and Evolve model of displaying agile leadership.

The result is that Jeff Bezos is now the revolutionary leader of a trillion-dollar company that, in 2020, announced its plans to spend all of its second quarter profit—some four billion dollars—on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including testing and protection for workers, strengthening delivery networks, and boosting wages, rather than return this money to shareholders.

To put it simply, agile leadership and agile management are all about the ability and courage to create and respond to change.

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