Post-Crisis Leadership: In the Aftermath of Crisis, Preparing Your Leadership Team for the Next One is Paramount
If you are like most leaders with your own company, the initial shock of what has occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic is still very fresh. For the most part, there are still extremely high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity in the business world with current impacts it is having on your company and your employees, as well as impacts we haven’t observed yet.
In the book, The Black Swan – The Impact of the highly Improbable, the author frames shares the black swan theory or theory of black swan events as a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. While as business owners, we naturally plan in our business strategies for things like new product failure, failed M&As and recession, it is highly unlikely anyone planned for a global pandemic forcing people to stay and work from home, businesses to close their doors and widespread unemployment when there was a tight labor market.
As a business leader, the unthinkable has now occurred. Time to prepare for the next Black Swan event by getting you and your leadership team ready.
Preparing You and Your Leadership Team Post-Crisis – Understanding the Leadership Gap
In any post-crisis review, a CEO or start-up founder must first determine where is team’s current-state leadership capabilities are. Then an honest determination of what leadership capabilities you need in your leaders helps identify your leadership future-state. With the current-state and future-state determined, you are best positioned to understand the gaps in yourself and on your team that can inhibit you from being prepared for the next crisis.
The added benefits of a post-crisis assessment initiative are the identification of you and your team’s individual and collective leadership strengths and weaknesses. These benefits include aligning your team’s strengths to crisis actions that have to occur. Inherently, leaders like using their strengths and are more productive and effective when they do use their strengths.
In my work with public and private sector organizations, I work with senior leadership teams to frame their strategic thinking and determine where they have individual and collective leadership strengths and gaps. My preferred method of doing this work, which is quite relevant to this article, are individual behavior-based interviews, use of Hogan Assessment instruments and executive coaching to help senior leadership teams build capability and capacity. The kind of capabilities and capacities you will need for the next crisis.
Let’s explore how my use of Hogan Assessments pertains to helping you and your leadership team for the next crisis.
Hogan Assessments on Leadership Personality Factors Important to Crisis Leadership – Leadership Future-State Factors
Hogan Assessments is a leading leadership assessment company focused on leadership personality factors. They utilize three main assessments to determine a wealth of information about leaders and have recently looked at what specific leadership personality factors that leaders and their teams should exhibit in crisis. The three assessments are the following:
Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI): The MVPI describes an individual’s core values – the goals and interests that determine satisfaction and drive careers.
Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI): The HPI describes how individuals manage stress, interact
with others, approach work tasks, and solve problems.
Hogan Development Survey (HDS): The HDS describes behaviors that emerge during times of
stress, damaging relationships and derailing careers.
In Hogan’s recent research, the MVPI factors most important in crisis are Affiliation and Security. Affiliation concerns valuing frequent and varied social interaction; interested in networking and feeling a sense of belonging to a group or organization. Security concerns valuing certainty, predictability and risk-free environments; interested in structure, order, predictability and planning for the future.
Higher scores in Affiliation indicates that leaders make people feel valued and create a unifying force to face crisis. Whereas, lower scores in Security indicates leaders can work in a fast-paced environment in which they have to quickly deal with & adapt to changes. These two personality factors have great bearing on leaders dealing with crisis effectively.
The HPI factors most important to leading in crisis are Adjustment and Ambition. Adjustment concerns the degree to which a person appears confident, self-accepting and stable under pressure. Whereas, Ambition measures the degree to which a person appears self-confident, leader-like competitive and energetic.
Higher scores in Adjustment indicate leaders are calm, consistent and predictable. Leaders are able to handle pressure and stressful situations with ease. Higher scores in Ambition indicate leaders are confident communicators, self-assured, takes initiative and is persistent.
The HDS, as mentioned, are about potential derailers under stress. The kind of stress that the COVID-19 pandemic has created. The most important HDS factors are Excitable, Cautious and Reserved. Excitable is a potential derailer indicates volatility; inability to remain resilient and productive in face of setbacks. Leaders with lower scores are intense and energetic. Cautious indicates a leader who is risk adverse, unwilling to take initiative and fearful of mistakes and failure. Leaders with lower scores are careful and thorough. Reserved is a potential derailer as high scores indicate an unwillingness to engage and communicate with others and may be overly tough or critical. Lower scores indicate leaders that are independent and business like.
The Hogan research indicates that leaders and their teams should have certain personality factors to help them prepare for the next crisis. Aligning you and your leadership teams effectively is important to next steps to consider.
Another useful report from Hogan is the Hogan Team Report. Taking results from individual assessments for each leader and creating a report that identifies team roles each leader can play from five Hogan identified team roles to include Results, Pragmatism, Innovation, Process and Relationships noted in graphic 1 at bottom of this article. Based on what was just shared about the individual Hogan assessments and leadership personality factors, the five team roles below play an important role in preparing your team post-crisis. For example, if you don’t have the Innovation and/or Relationships team roles on your team, your leadership team may not deal with the next crisis effectively.
Actionable Steps to Prepare You and Your Leadership Team Post-Crisis
Conduct a post-crisis review: Have you and your leadership team conduct a post-crisis review. Your goal is to do an honest assessment of how you and your team responded to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. If you believe you need help, hire someone to facilitate the discussion. It is more important to be frank and honest, vice taking the perspective to hide one’s actions and impacts.
Identify your SLT’s strengths and gaps in dealing with the crisis: Bring in a leadership assessment expert to conduct behavior-based leadership interviews of you and your leadership team based on their experience to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. This assessment approach is important to understanding individuals’ experiences to deal with crisis situations and how each leader responded.
Conduct individual and Hogan Team Assessments: Have you and your team take the Hogan Assessment suite and include the Hogan Team Report. The insights gained from this assessment, including the individual leadership interviews, will allow you to understand your leadership current-state post-crisis, leadership strengths and potential leadership gaps that need addressal.
Action plan as individuals and a team to improve crisis leadership capabilities: The final step is to action plan for you and your team. This includes developing individual leadership development plans and team leadership development plans. These leadership development plans should frame your strengths and how to use them in a crisis, as well as, actions to address identified leadership gaps and build new leadership skill areas that are needed.
Developmental activities will include teambuilding activities that are scenario-based to practice leadership in crisis, individual and executive team coaching, and leadership development programs aligned directly to you and your team’s developmental needs.
Positioning You and Your Leadership Team for Success
Positioning your company to weather the next major crisis it faces is dependent on having an effective leadership team. By using the post-crisis environment as the opportunity to determine what you need to do personally and with your leadership team, you will put yourself in a position to succeed in the next crisis. Remember, leadership preparation is the most important aspect when preparing you and your team for the next crisis.