Are your leaders ready for the next disruption?
The speed and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic took most leaders and organizations by surprise. While this disruption is a dramatic outlier, leaders need to recognize that disruptions happen all the time. Some are unexpected, like COVID-19, while others are not. Businesses often disrupt themselves to innovate or react to new market demands. The bottom line: planned or not, disruption is here to stay. So how will you prepare your leaders for the next one?
When does disruption occur?
Understanding when disruption happens is a critical first step in preparing for it. Most disruptions are smaller than COVID-19, yet still have a significant impact on the business. Often self-initiated, disruptions occur when the business sets a new vision and goals or makes changes in strategy and operating models to adapt to marketplace forces. Culture transformations, acquisitions, mergers or other organizational change efforts also create disruptions. Frequently, more than one of these changes is happening at a time.
Why is disruption occurring more frequently now than ever?
In today’s environment, change is the new constant. Since the end of the twentieth century, the advent of the Internet and rapid advancements in technology have dramatically increased globalization and connectivity, accelerating the rate of change beyond anything seen before. In turn, this has shifted how leaders must approach change.
What did change look like before?
In the past, change was viewed as a straightforward process – a controllable event with a beginning, middle and an end. To prepare for change, leaders would plan for it, manage it and course correct to get to the end and be done with it.
Leaders embraced the mindset that with change comes risk. They believed change must be controlled to mitigate the various risks involved. This mindset allowed leaders to create the illusion of steadiness and calmness – something that historically came after change. This is called the stability mindset.
Change is uncomfortable for most people, so leaders often try to use the stability mindset to make their teams feel safe and secure, which enables them to perform at their best. However, in today’s business environment, this natural reaction is misguided. Persistent change means that treating change like a fixed set of events doesn’t align with reality.
Leading in today’s world
To be successful, leaders are now required to embrace the new belief that change is good fortune. Leaders must hold an opportunity mindset, embracing change as ongoing and necessary for growth and cultivating the belief that opportunity only comes with change. This new mindset turns on its head how leaders of the past perceived risk. Instead of associating risk with change, today’s leaders must understand that risk actually comes from NOT changing and remaining with status quo. Inertia causes organizations to lose ground and fall behind. Thus, change is not only necessary, but advantageous for businesses to adapt. Leaders who embrace an opportunity mindset can navigate change with a sense of confidence rather than hesitation or doubt.
Mindsets matter
The way leaders think about change is one of the biggest determinants of how successful change will be1 . Therefore, it is critical to examine preexisting organizational and individual mindsets about change. Typically ignored, these can provide critical information to help unlock transformation.
To help identify your individual and your organization’s mindset towards change, below are four different types of executives and organizations. Each example profiles an organization’s underlying relationship with change and identifies whether it embraces a stability or opportunity mindset.
Change Receivers:
Leaders who perceive change as pushed upon them feel a lack of control, resulting in a flight response. When leaders are in the habit of being a receiver of change, they are passive in their reaction and feel out of control, as if there is nothing they can do to prevent what is happening. Leaders with this response to change abdicate their own authority. The change receiver holds a stability mindset.
For example, a high-tech manufacturer set in motion a significant go-to-market global transformation. The changes brought by its new strategy shifted expectations for sellers, but these changes also touched product development, supply chain, customer support and finance. Senior leaders just below the c-suite reported that the “decisions are made by HQ” and even referenced “looking up” for direction as a behavioral norm in the company. These leaders tended to:
- Wait for direction or decisions from others before moving forward
- Refrain from taking action in new situations to avoid conflict
- Escalate decisions, assuming such judgements are “above my pay grade”
- Accept decisions or direction even when they don’t think they will work
Change Resistors:
Leaders who try to maintain their power and authority by pushing back against change. These leaders strive to protect the past by resisting the change with the belief that it will go away in the near future. Leaders will freeze, choose inaction or only take actions that they can control. Resistance can take many forms, such as questioning the authority of the change leaders, seemingly agreeing and then doing nothing, and citing reasons why the change does not apply to them. These leaders hope to wait out change. The change resistor holds a stability mindset.
For example, a global manufacturing company would routinely rotate high-level senior leaders as part of their development plan. During the rotation process, these senior leaders sometimes faced resistance, skepticism and inaction from their new team of leaders. The local leaders knew from their past experience that they could passively resist the new direction and continue doing what they were doing because their new senior leader would change again soon – as would the direction. In this case, resisting change was the leaders’ best path to stability. This led them to:
- Refrain from speaking up, even when holding an alternative perspective that would provide needed insight
- Bring up reasons that something could not be done based on precedent or history
- Agree, and then find reasons not to execute on the stated commitment
- Poke holes in the plan as a means to avoid taking action
- Criticize change efforts without offering alternative ideas or help
Change Controllers:
Leaders who believe that they can control change and its effect around them. These leaders create detailed plans, launch initiatives, manage events, or do anything that gives them a sense of control. Why is this a fight response? Taking action feels good, but even when executing the most well-crafted plan, a leader will encounter unexpected circumstances.
If the leader believes they have controlled the change with their plan, then obstacles and missteps are failures. When this happens, there can be a tendency to ratchet up reporting and accountability, micromanage or even to seek to blame for mistakes or lack of progress. This behavior gives them a sense that they are managing change. They often believe that it is up to them to help get their team or organization “through” the change. The change controller holds a stability mindset.
For example, an Oil and Gas organization recently launched a new strategy. As part of identifying what was needed to move the strategy forward, they reviewed critical processes designed to aid strategy execution. During the review, the senior team realized that their approach to quarterly business reviews would hurt progress toward their strategy rather than moving it forward. The senior team determined that their detail-oriented questions were “backward looking” and provoked ineffective behaviors rather than learning and forward progress, so they completely changed it. These change controllers tended to:
- Make decisions independently with limited input from colleagues
- Seek information that supports their personal agenda
- Ask detailed questions about why progress is slow or results were less than planned
- Give detailed instructions on what to do rather than inquire about what has been tried
- Discount obstacles raised by others to keep to the original plan
Change-Ready LeadersTM
Leaders who see change as normal, constant and the source of new opportunities. Leading change from this perspective requires a new set of great behaviors from leaders. A leader can choose to lead change rather than avoid it, resist it or try to control it. To lead change means leaders are scanning the environment, anticipating what is coming, and seeing opportunities where others see challenges. In some cases, it means thinking through a Plan B (and Plan C) because they know that Plan A will not work perfectly. Leaders focus more on aligning their teams on direction and purpose rather than telling people what to do. They create an environment where people learn, adapt and change together. The change-ready leader holds an opportunity mindset.
Change-ready leaders also focus on gaining emotional agreement from teams around the change being implemented and the reasons for doing it. This is a departure from the common idea that leaders only need to focus around explaining the “why” behind the change when communicating to individuals. Alignment around the vision is more beneficial for teams so they become invested in changing rather than focused on the why behind the change. Great leaders understand that letting people find their own reason for change and developing that understanding is critical to building trust.
How do great change-ready leaders lead? They try new tactics and implement new leadership competencies that they may not have used before. These competencies are brought to life in the form of behaviors, which are a result of having a different mindset and response to change. A change-ready leader holds an opportunity mindset and believes that change is expected, normal and constant. In order to make that mindset come alive, great change-ready leaders:
- Rally others around the positive reasons for continual change
- Accept the conflicting views, assumptions and feelings of the team
- Promote the company’s purpose while simultaneously balancing the reality of today and future possibilities
- Engage diverse teams to work together on difficult challenges while holding them accountable
- Encourage the team to accept change, paradox and complexity as facts of life that yield new opportunities
While these change-ready leader behaviors may seem to be common across companies, they are actually represented uniquely in each organization. Mindsets are universal across organizations, yet their application is contextual. This means that great leadership is not a carbon copy across all companies – an organization’s culture plays a significant role in terms of what makes a leader great on the job.
To become change ready, it is critical for leaders to understand and codify both the “how” and “when” to lead change within the context of their own organization. This works best if leaders can define what great change leaders do differently relative to average leaders in the form of capabilities and behaviors. In tandem with change leader capabilities and behaviors, identifying the pivotal moments where leaders need to demonstrate the capabilities and behaviors is an excellent tool for development.
Identifying these pivotal moments allows leaders to immediately recognize the situations where, by changing their actions, they will have the largest impact..
To prepare for the next disruption, leaders need to uncover their current response to change, understand why and how it served them in the past, and then shift to seeing change as a new constant. Once this change in mindset happens, behaviors will shift consistent with being a change leader within the context of their organization. Adopting a more productive relationship to change during the COVID-19 crisis will help leaders navigate the current situation and come out of it more prepared and confident for the next disruption. With tools in hand, perhaps they will even seek opportunities and create disruptions of their own.
Related content
Last night I started reading a book by Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who has written several novels that I’ve loved. But right now I’m reading something different—a book of short lessons he’s learned from many years of working with patients.
Early in his career, Yalom was inspired by something he read. The gist of it was that all people have a natural tendency to want to grow and become fulfilled—just an acorn will grow up to become an oak—as long as there are no obstacles in the way. So the job of the psychotherapist was to eliminate the obstacles to growth.
This was a eureka moment for Yalom. At the time, he was treating a young widow. Suffering through grief for a long while, she wanted help because she had a “failed heart”—an inability ever to love again.
Yalom had felt overwhelmed. How could he possibly change someone’s inability to love? But now he looked at it differently. He could dedicate himself to identifying and eliminating the obstacles that kept her from loving.
So they worked on that—her feelings of disloyalty to her late husband, her sense that she was somehow responsible for his death, and the fear of loss that falling in love again would mean. Eventually they eliminated all of the obstacles. Then her natural ability to love—and grow—returned. She remarried.
Reading this story made me think of the responsibility of leaders toward the people they need to develop—and for the growth and learning that leaders themselves require to be the best that they can be.
Many leadership development challenges seem overwhelming—even impossible. The leaders that we coach usually have a list of areas where they want to get better, but how? How do you “build better relationships with your peers and direct reports”? How are you supposed to “get out of the weeds and demonstrate enterprise-wide thinking” or “build executive presence”? All of these goals are as abstract as they are huge.
So the best approach is to not focus on the huge and fuzzy goal. What we try to do is to break these goals down into concrete actions through working on real-time business problems. To put it simply, though, we do just as Yalom does: We identify the obstacles and work toward knocking them off, one at a time.
Leadership development is not usually a quick fix. You’re not going to develop executive presence through a half-day workshop or a one-time meeting. If you’re interested in meaningful, lasting growth—whether for yourself or for those who work for you—it’s a commitment.
But don’t ever forget that we’re all capable of growth throughout life and our careers. The trick is to find the right coach or mentor who will guide you through that obstacle course.
In my work as an executive coach, I meet at least once a month with each of my coaching clients.
I often talk to them on the phone and exchange emails with them as we work on their real-time business challenges. So, what happens in those conversations? Recurring themes start to come up. I find that many leaders have a “talk track” of words and phrases that they use all the time—without always being aware of the impact. For better or worse, this talk track ends up becoming part of their executive presence and their brand as a leader.
One of my clients had a talk track for many years that led to a reputation for negativity. In one meeting alone, I noticed that he had described about ten different work experiences as “nightmares.” Strong word! So we talked about this talk track. And the next time I heard him lapse into that way of talking, I decided to delve into it. “What I just heard from you was an example of that ‘talk track’ we’ve talked about,” I said. “So let’s talk about this. You say it was a ‘nightmare.’ Okay—why do you call it a nightmare?”
The upshot was that he had made a sales presentation but didn’t get the deal. I said, “Let’s use accurate language to describe the situation.” Was it a nightmare? No. Maybe it was a disappointment. Maybe he could have said, “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the deal” or “They decided to go with another vendor” and state why, objectively. My goal was to get him to stop “catastrophizing” when something didn’t work out.
This leader didn’t want to be defined by that negative “talk track” anymore. So I told him that the only way to do that is to turn up the volume on a very different talk track—one that captures the brand and presence that you want to project.
I’ve had clients who always talked about how difficult or challenging or complex things seemed to them. You’ve probably had a boss or colleague with any number of talk-track themes:
- “I’m so exhausted/overwhelmed/unhappy/unappreciated….”
- “Everyone here is useless/stupid/incompetent….”
- “It’s such a difficult environment/project/client/travel schedule…”
- “That will never work/We won’t get that deal/It’s a dumb idea/What were they thinking?”
Often people aren’t even aware of how much they harp on a conversational theme and how negatively this lack of executive presence is affecting their professional brand. So what can you do to make sure your talk track is working for you and not against you as a leader? Take these four steps:
1. Identify your talk-track themes.
What are the words and phrases that you find yourself constantly using in conversations at work? Write down the things you seem to say almost every day—or think about what themes come up all the time for you in conversation at work or elsewhere.
2. Consider the impact of your talk track.
As a leader, your words carry more weight than others. You’re setting the tone for your team or division or organization. Whether that tone is absurdly optimistic, cynical, critical, upbeat, energized, or overly emotional, it’s going to be the model for others. Make sure that your talk track is consistent with the values and behaviors you want to drive.
3. Challenge the reality of your talk track.
How accurate is your talk track? Do you have a natural tendency to see the part of the glass that’s empty? How do you respond to setbacks? Do you gloss over the pain? Do you make a mountain out of a molehill? It’s crucial for leaders to be balanced, objective, and real about what’s happening. Your language choices need to reflect that.
4. Consider what you could say differently.
It’s easy to lapse into your talk track. When you catch yourself saying the same old things, try to catch yourself as if an alarm was going off. Can you find another way to say it—something that’s consistent with the brand and presence you want to project.
Don’t get me wrong. Leaders do need to be “real” about challenges and setbacks, and a somber tone may be appropriate and even helpful at times. The goal is to become more aware of your talk track and what it’s doing for you and others. As a leader, people take their cues from you. Before you know it, your talk track can dominate or drive the culture.
Changing your talk track is a challenge. Our ways of talking and viewing the world are pretty ingrained through several decades of life experiences. But change is also very possible. Pump up the volume on a more positive talk track for the holidays, and your presence will be viewed as a gift.
A while back, I heard an anecdote on the radio about cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and it really struck me. Surprisingly, Ma said that once of his biggest inspirations was chef, author, and television personality Julia Child.
Huh?! Well, it turns out that thinking about Julia Child helped him get in the right mindset before a performance. He would think about watching her on television, making a roast chicken that looked beautiful—only to have it fall off the plate and onto the floor. Did she flip out? No, she never stopped smiling. She just acknowledged what happened and went on with the show.
Reflecting on this, Ma realized that the best mindset he could have as a performer was to ensure that his audience was having a good experience—rather than worrying about being perfect. Speaking to the St. Louis Post Dispatch last October, he said, “The idea of performing is hosting. It’s like you’re giving a party. You invite people to come to a place and enjoy something special; basically, they’re subject to whatever you dish out. You want them to have a great time, they want to have a great time, and what are you doing to facilitate that?”
In a Malcolm Gladwell article that I read years ago, Yo-Yo Ma also admitted that he used to strive for perfection in performance. When he was 17, he practiced a Brahms sonata for a year with technical perfection in mind. So what happened when he did that? “In the middle of the performance I thought, I’m bored. It would have been nothing for me to get up from the stage and walk away. That’s when I decided I would always opt for expression over perfection.
”There is a valuable lesson here for executive presentations. In my experience, many leaders worry too much about precision when they present. Aiming for total accuracy, it’s easy to end up with text-heavy PowerPoint slides—and far too many of them. And once you have a ton of bullets on a slide, you usually feel compelled to read them all. At best, slides still tend to distract the audience’s energy away from you—and the presentation is really all about you, not your visuals.
Think about it: What would you rather be able to say at the end of your presentation?
- I covered every point perfectly and spoke without a single stumble.
- I connected deeply with the audience, and I could sense that they were completely engaged with my presentation.
It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? If you’re able to really connect with your audience’s questions, concerns, and needs, they won’t even notice if the imperfections that jump out to you as the expert.
Of course, there’s a catch here. Connection trumps precision… but the more you master your topic through preparation and practice, the more you’re freed up to focus on connecting with the audience. When you don’t have to work to remember your key points and transitions, you can concentrate more on your eye contact, gestures, and reading the room.
So give some thought to drawing some inspiration from Julia Child, just as Yo-Yo Ma does as a concert performer. When you’re giving a speech, you’re the host, and your job is to set the tone and make sure that everyone has a good experience.
That’s a recipe for a successful presentation.
Related content
La maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non fallisce.
Semplicemente non porta a una decisione.
Ed è lì che si perde valore.
I clienti di oggi sono più informati, più selettivi e hanno meno tempo.
Non hanno bisogno di altre presentazioni di prodotto.
Hanno bisogno di conversazioni che li aiutino a stabilire le priorità, decidere e andare avanti.
Eppure, il 58% delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore reale.
Non perché i venditori manchino di capacità, ma perché le conversazioni non sono progettate per far avanzare le decisioni.
“I clienti non agiscono su ogni esigenza che riconoscono.
Agiscono quando qualcosa diventa una priorità.”
In questo breve executive brief scoprirai:
- Perché la maggior parte delle conversazioni informa… ma non porta all’azione
- Cosa spinge davvero i clienti a stabilire priorità e muoversi
- Come creare urgenza senza compromettere la fiducia
- Il passaggio dal presentare soluzioni al facilitare decisioni
- Cosa distingue le conversazioni che si bloccano da quelle che accelerano il progresso
Se i tuoi team stanno affrontando trattative bloccate, decisioni ritardate o un pipeline lento, questo brief ti aiuterà a capire il perché e cosa fare in modo diverso.
Scarica l’executive brief e scopri come progettare conversazioni che portano davvero a decisioni.
A maioria das reuniões de vendas não fracassa.
Elas simplesmente não levam a uma decisão.
E é aí que o valor se perde.
Os clientes de hoje estão mais informados, mais seletivos e com menos tempo.
Eles não precisam de mais apresentações de produto.
Precisam de conversas que os ajudem a priorizar, decidir e avançar.
Ainda assim, 58% das reuniões de vendas não conseguem gerar valor real.
Não porque os vendedores não tenham capacidade, mas porque as conversas não são desenhadas para impulsionar decisões.
“Os clientes não agem sobre todas as necessidades que reconhecem.
Eles agem quando algo se torna prioridade.”
Neste breve material executivo, você vai descobrir:
- Por que a maioria das conversas informa… mas não gera ação
- O que realmente faz os clientes priorizarem e avançarem
- Como criar urgência sem prejudicar a confiança
- A mudança de apresentar soluções para viabilizar decisões
- O que diferencia conversas que estagnam daquelas que aceleram o progresso
Se suas equipes estão enfrentando negócios estagnados, decisões atrasadas ou um pipeline lento, este material vai ajudar você a entender o porquê — e o que fazer de diferente.
Baixe o material executivo e aprenda como desenhar conversas que realmente impulsionam decisões.
La mayoría de las reuniones de ventas no fracasan.
Simplemente no llevan a una decisión.
Y ahí es donde se pierde el valor.
Los clientes de hoy están más informados, son más selectivos y tienen menos tiempo.
No necesitan más presentaciones de producto.
Necesitan conversaciones que les ayuden a priorizar, decidir y avanzar.
Y, sin embargo, el 58% de las reuniones de ventas no logra generar un valor real.
No porque los vendedores carezcan de capacidad, sino porque las conversaciones no están diseñadas para impulsar decisiones.
“Los clientes no actúan sobre cada necesidad que reconocen.
Actúan cuando algo se convierte en una prioridad.”
En este breve informe ejecutivo descubrirás:
Por qué la mayoría de las conversaciones informan… pero no generan acción
- Qué es lo que realmente hace que los clientes prioricen y avancen
- Cómo crear urgencia sin dañar la confianza
- El cambio de presentar soluciones a facilitar decisiones
- Qué diferencia a las conversaciones que se estancan de las que aceleran el avance
Si tus equipos están experimentando acuerdos estancados, decisiones retrasadas o un pipeline lento, este informe te ayudará a entender por qué y qué hacer diferente.
Descarga el informe ejecutivo y aprende a diseñar conversaciones que realmente impulsen decisiones.