As the cold wind of the credit crunch begins to blow across the business world, rising to the leadership challenge is critical, says Sarah Lewis.

Uncertainty presents various leadership challenges, including how to continue to get the best from people while they are distracted by concerns for their own future.
Many leaders become paralyzed by their inability to give clear, far reaching answers about the future and so try to avoid such conversations altogether, or offer false hope and promises which are rapidly spotted as such by those they seek to reassure.

While some of these challenges are about business acumen, most are about knowing how to lead and manage people when you can’t give them what you think they want - a rosy picture of the organisation’s, and their, future.

"Find someone outside the organisation - a coach for instance - with whom you can have the ‘dark night of the soul’ conversations so you don’t burden or scare your staff with these."

When leading through uncertainty it is important to be able to demonstrate integrity while creating optimism. Don’t feel because you are the leader you must have all the answers. Recognise that you have a wealth of expertise, intelligence, skill and resources in your organisation to help meet the challenges ahead: call on it.

Develop the ability to act as if you knew what to do for the best while at the same time being flexible enough to change tack when new information comes in.

Recognise that you have support needs too. Find someone outside the organisation - a coach for instance - with whom you can have the ‘dark night of the soul’ conversations so you don’t burden or scare your staff with these. This demands good judgement about what any particular person or situation requires.

On occasion you may need to be honest with people that you don’t know for sure what the future holds and that you too have doubts and uncertainties. At the same time you need to be able to create optimism about the future.

It is important that people feel they are able to shape the situation, so find ways that people can be pro-active in dealing with the needs of the business and their concerns; engage and involve people as much as possible in making the decisions that can be made. Be prepared to listen to people’s concerns about the future and offer what you can to help them feel better. Resist the urge to make reassuring promises you can’t keep.

A sense of choice is very empowering, so ensure that people continue to feel that they have choices about what they can do. Act as if they have a future, both inside the company and out. Ensure that they realise that the projects they are doing will increase the likelihood of the company surviving and increase their market worth.

Recognise that everything you say and do as a leader has meaning for your followers – there is no such thing as doing nothing. So make sure you manage the meaning you create by how you communicate and by what you focus on. Help your people make the most productive and useful sense of what is happening. Recognise and encourage the value of positive emotions – laughter, playfulness, and passion.

Create stories of hope, possibility and good futures that are accepting of current realities. People know you can’t fortune tell. What they want is that you acknowledge how they feel and work to help them feel better about things so that they can pro-actively do things to help make a good future more likely.

Sarah Lewis is the managing director of Appreciating Change, a psychological change consultancy focused on helping leaders and managers achieve positive change in their organisations. For more information you can call 0845 055 9874, email sarahlewis@appreciatingchange.co.uk or see the website www.appreciatingchange.co.uk