A Good Lead - are you your team's calm centre?

As individuals, we need to be able to find our way back to our centre and the very same thing goes for the team. When adversity occurs, a team needs to have a place to regroup, share perspectives and create a response. For this to happen in the most efficient and effective manner, the team leader needs to create a space where people feel safe and secure.

Even if a mistake has been made, in fact, more importantly if a mistake has been made, the team need to see the space remains safe and secure.

The effectiveness of this approach rests with the team leader's ability to hold themselves in a calm and grounded centre. If the leader is unsettled, poorly composed and anxious, the team will be impacted by this and their individual doubts and misgivings surface and be given strength and validation.

This is not to say that there isn't a place for confronting our doubts and misgivings. These can provide us valuable insights into the reality of the situation and the challenges involved with safely navigating beyond it. However, we shouldn't give ourselves over to the self-doubts and fears.

Left unchecked our minds tend towards bleakness and mundanity. They paint in hues of anxiety and failure and are able to trigger our emotional state to heighten the sense of pending doom and catastrophe. This ability of the mind to take over our emotional state, is highly disruptive to the process of analysing the reality of a situation and creating options and strategies.

I am sure we can all recall being in a difficult team situation when there is one individual struggling to get beyond their fear and anxiety. Generally, they become stuck in a cycle of blame and retribution as a reaction to the hurt and humiliation they are busy talking themselves into. The goal for them isn't about finding a solution for the team's predicament, it is all about relieving their individual state of discomfort.

The focus of the team becomes at risk of being absorbed by this individual's predicament. A leader must be able to remain unaffected by this, even if fault and blame is is being directed at them. They must uphold the duty they owe to the team to maintain a centre of clarity and calm. Working from this centre the team leader needs to help the individual move beyond their predicament by reframing their perspective in ways that are less exaggerated and focused on the negative consequences. If necessary, the individual can be invited to excuse themselves from the meeting so that their anxiety and concerns are not being triggered by the discussion to analyse and resolve the issue.

Sometimes it is a real struggle to exit a situation when we are in the middle of an episode of heightened emotions. We worry that the team might talk about us in our absence and make a decision that impacts on us without including us. However, the team really does need to move beyond the view of the individual and get back to resolving the challenge facing the team.

As a leader, no matter the seriousness of the situation and level of anxiety and concern of the people involved, I have always recognised the importance of composure and clarity. The ability to show humility and a readiness to serve helps ensure that people are heard and understood, their questions, as much as they can be, answered, and any disparity in the group resolved.

The qualities of a leader are often revealed by the way they manage the questions they don't have an answer for, as much as the ones where they do. And, their ability to empathise with those that feel more greatly impacted by a situation, and speak directly to what might be their unique concerns.

..The perceived transparency and integrity, i.e. the honesty, of the team leader, is the single most significant contributing factor to a productive crisis meeting…

In a volatile and emotional situation the goal is to achieve a collective approach to overcoming the challenge. The leaders ability to connect with each and every individual's situation, hear their questions and concerns, reflect genuine interest and facilitate constructive discussion and debate - these are the hallmarks of great leadership.