5 Essential Skills to Lead Through Disruption

Empower teams to stay focused, aligned, and accountable amid uncertaintyDeck

His job is to sell meat. Millions of pounds of it every month. The division he leads inside a Fortune 500 company was having a great year. But then an invisible virus started to spread. In a matter of days, his entire world turned upside down.

His team of sales reps works primarily with hotels, universities, and restaurants – industries that have been severely impacted by COVID-19.

“In our business of selling meat we have a saying that if you don’t sell it you smell it,” he told us.

Food production companies like this one are experiencing something most businesses are going through: a massive shift in demand. How do businesses keep up, and how do you manage through this disruption?

We’ve identified five skills that leaders need today to enable their teams to adapt at the required speed: clarity, visibility, accountability, agility, and empathy.

Clarity

For most teams and organizations, there’s little value to leaning too much into long-term goals or planning right now. What’s most needed is clarity around two-to-three Key Deliverables or Key Expectations for the next 60 to 90 days.

To create clarity, follow three simple steps: make sure deliverables or expectations are measurable, meaningful, and memorable. If you can’t measure the deliverables or expectations, you won’t move them or meet them. Identify things everyone can directly or indirectly connect with. Keep them memorable by sticking to three or four at most.

Visibility

Most leaders have increased their visibility during recent weeks. That increased visibility should be aimed, in part, at clarifying Key Expectations. And because greater visibility loses its impact without greater accessibility, ensure those closest to the customer and those making critical decisions have access to leaders.

Some leaders are demonstrating visibility and accessibility but still aren’t seeing enough acceleration. They’re likely missing transparency. Transparent leaders don’t get any satisfaction from having the most information in the room. Transparency is radical candor delivered in a way that accelerates collaboration.

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