How can we now lead in a way that allows fear and uncertainty to sit at the table?

This is a time of awakening – we now have a world where we need to work and move forward together. We need to get stuck back in and become clear on our business, people, society, environment and suppliers.

Leading remotely presents a paradox : as you need to keep the full overview but you cannot lead everything all at once. Instead you will have to build trust with and empower your teams to take action and initiative to keep the wheels turning.

So how do we move forward as leaders in this new and uncharted territory….

One approach from CEO Sigve Brekke of Telenor has really resonated with me. He calls it the “Tight Loose Tight” approach.
Compassion will be key here. Trust is a core factor of this.

Feeling part of something

What does inclusion mean? It is the state of being included or being made a part of something. When multiple people are all invited to be part of a group, this is an example of the inclusion of many different people.

The coming together of the people in whatever form that takes is only part of the journey, how they interact and feel about each other is the more challenging and all essential part to achieve:

• Trust is a feeling
• Trust is not an instruction
• Trust comes from the environment we are in
• Trust emerges in safe environments, where we feel that our own personal growth and wellbeing are supported.

Cynicism, paranoia, self-interest and mistrust emerge in unsafe environments. Resignations rage. We need to create and role model a safe environment as leaders.

How we communicate this as leaders is key

If there is one thing that will make your personal leadership approach more impactful and meaningful, it is that the message being conveyed is coming from a trusted source. How we communicate as leaders is essential.

Human being are a social species and relationships are a primary driver. Relationships provide context for our communication – they give meaning to our words. Good relationships allow for complex interactions, it has more depth to it. Whereas if the relationship is weak it is brittle, it is fraught with misunderstandings and miscommunication.

We live in a complex world, relationships need to be strong. Leadership communication is difficult on a good day and our relationships need to be up to it.

How can we role model this as Leaders?

• Make them feel safe
• Live out our own commitment – the bolder and more vulnerable we are the more likely this will be mirrored by your people.
• People want reliable and authentic leaders that we can challenge.

If our people are lying, hiding and faking our culture and performance will be weak and our output will be less.
The irony is that when we act like we have all the answers and present ourselves as un-failable, our people mistrust us.

Model vulnerability for others by admitting your mistakes and exposing your weaknesses. Vulnerability is about honesty, it means saying…

• I don’t know how to do that
• I made a mistake
• I don’t know how the future of work translates yet

Create a culture of learning. Start with building real trust into your teams.

Call to action

So what steps as leaders in this new VUCA world can we now take to help reach this place of inclusion and safety, whilst bolstering our performance and productivity levels?

The Performance & Productivity theme is the idea of three levels of leadership practice to be role modelling for our teams and people:

• Foundations/fundamentals i.e. trust, connection and psychological safety
• Principles of team performance agreed with the team to ensure clarity, self-ownership and true accountability.
• Practices i.e. team charter but also rituals and routines to create a performance infrastructure rather than expecting it to “just happen”.

We need to be more deliberate about some of these practices and behaviours given the fragmentation of the team from a location perspective, risk of isolation etc:

Embrace failure and learn from it – see virtual ways of working as taking agile principles to the extreme – fail forward and learn.

Build trust to drive innovation – by trusting your team, you give a green light to act fast and try out new things. As a result, you will see innovation emerge from new and perhaps unexpected places and people in your team.

Promote a strong culture of accountability from the top down and across your teams – role model a See it, Own it, Solve it, Do it way of performing.