Leading Through Challenging Times

I was recently asked to support a group of business owners with some tips and techniques for dealing with challenging times.

The key takeaway for all was the need to focus on what we can do – and not stay stuck in the spiral of what we don’t have or can’t control.

Below are a few simple questions and tips I offered to assist.

Step 1: Retract and Refine

In challenging times, we all know that we need to retract, refocus, and refine our services. That means assessing which income streams are profitable, valuable, or lead to new opportunities, and which costs are unnecessary, where can savings be made etc.

Helpful questions are:

• What do I want to sell?
• What’s wanted and needed right now in the industry, community, planet that I can provide?
• Where is our passion, impact, skill, and love?
• What’s unique about my business?

Tip: Very rarely is it a good idea to set up a new business in challenging times. A new product or service, and/or to a new client base puts you in the terrain of new business at this point – and that can be costly and high risk. Instead, look at offering your existing products to new clients, or a new product/service to the clients you already have.

There are always exceptions to any rule, of course, but be discerning and careful!

Step 2: Know what the Boogyman is early

During challenging times, worry and stress are an appropriate emotional response. We worry whether wages will be paid, commitments met, personal guarantees honoured, and many other scary thoughts haunt us.

This is natural! But the best thing you can do is take a little time and research your scenarios. Understand what happens if you come under budget by 20/40/60/80%. What happens if you don’t get this contract you need? What happens if you can’t meet a debt repayment?

It might make you anxious to think about these scenarios, but when you know your risks and consequences, you also identify support along the way and actions needed to prepare or prevent. And when you have a plan to handle those what-if scenarios, then that anxiety tends to fall away. Also, it helps to call your lenders early, and understand your options. People too often sit on concerns and fail to try and understand them, or reach for support too late to be helped. Proactivity is your friend here.

Tip: Be discerning with what you share with employees and leaders. They will have worries too, and an honest, deliberate, and responsible level of transparency goes a long way. So does support considerations made in advance. For example, I supported a company who is likely to make leadership team pay cuts – but before doing so, I suggested that they share the scenarios with the team so they knew when and why these would take effect, the factors influencing this direction and what could be done to prevent it and, if it goes ahead, offer financial planning support so they could prepare in advance. 

Step 3: Select the scenario you want to create and invest fully

If you stay focussed only on retraction, then you risk losing your skill at creating and contributing – as well as your motivation, innovation and creativity. You’ll soon head into a negative spiral. And no one likes to buy products or services from a desperate person!

Once you know the direction you want to take, what you want to sell, and where you want to take things, make sure your marketing material broadcasts this accurately and then take action.

Hustle! Dig deep, and market yourself like you did when you first set up a business. Ask for referrals, talk to your current and prior clients, cold call, gather testimonials, take smaller jobs, offer trials and discounts if you need to.

In challenging times, the effort expended for the result is far greater than usual. But don’t get discouraged. Just hustle more and make this the new normal. One thing I learned is that many truly successful organisations actually never stopped hustling – the hustle just evolved as their markets changed.

Tip: Set realistic goals. Where are you at? Where could you realistically get to in a year? What are the short-term milestones, achievements, steps you can take? Then debrief them. You need to encourage yourself with realistic and doable progress in challenging times, so you don’t get mentally stuck in the ‘If only’ mindset and the often demoralising and demotivating story that stems from that.

Step 4: Help others

As soon as conditions get tough, I often see leaders regress to very traditional leadership styles. They become competitive, self-serving and stuck in their comfort zones. They also bring back all the bad habits of earlier times and lack the care, collaboration, diversity and innovation that we know is needed. You’ll often see this reflected in the budgets that are first to be cropped and the employees first to be made redundant: people, innovation, marketing, sustainability…

Really, you need to keep your attention out in a wider realm of real leadership: once you have your steps clear, a plan in place and actions underway, put your attention out on others. Help, provide care, look for things you can do to assist others, and so on.

At the end of the day, the challenging times you are experiencing will be felt harder by others around you. Stay present, as a leader. You can provide real support in these times by exploring what you can do to help and helping your people see what they can do too.

Real leaders doesn’t care only for themselves – they care for others around them and the impact and impressions they leave behind. We do no want to be leaders that only practice and exhibit values and a sense of purpose only in the good times, because that is not leadership at all.