If you can be there now for your customers and colleagues, you can build powerful connections that will last a lifetime.
While 2020 laid an array of challenges at our doorsteps it also created unprecedented opportunities for each of us to grow as leaders.
Key characteristics of a good leader include the ability to step up during crises and have a meaningful impact on those they touch. The saving grace in the adversity we are facing is the opportunity for you to strengthen your leadership presence—with your customers, with your work team, and far beyond.
Bonds are formed in times like these. People who stand together to face great challenges often enjoy powerful and enduring lifelong connections with those who fought by their side. If you recognize this opportunity and seize the moment to lead with purpose, you will be profoundly rewarded.
Traits of a Great Leader Include a Focus on Others
Your customers are having just as hard a time as you are during these extraordinary days. It’s up to you to focus on the fact that their success will unlock your success. Take this moment to reach out in an intentional way to tell them you have their backs and it will start you on the journey toward lasting loyalty.
Listen to their struggles and determine what you can realistically do to help–even if it bends your plans or priorities out of shape a little. Find out from them how you can go the extra mile. It might be to offer billing flexibility or to make a one-time product adjustment or to provide an extraordinary act of customer service. Take an action, even if it’s small, to demonstrate that you care about their success.
You are coming to them not in the spirit of charity but in the spirit of partnership. You are letting them know how important they are to you, and you’re doing it in a timely and tangible way. This is not the time to hunker down, turn inward, and shield yourself from customer demands. It is an opportunity to exhibit one of the qualities of a great leader—-show them you’re on their side and in doing so strengthen your relationship for the long run.
It’s easy in good times to talk about how your customers’ needs come first. It’s another thing to demonstrate that when the chips are down. This won’t be easy. Turning your words into action may require you to shift resources or reprioritize work already in progress. You have to figure out how to do what you can to make a difference for them. Pick your spots carefully, but do something. Not only will it bind you to your customers, it also will inspire your employees.
Leadership Growth—for You and Your Team
Employees on your team need your leadership now more than ever. And, by the way, you need them—and their growth as leaders—just as badly.
Perhaps your team was forced to work from home before you had a chance to plan for it. They may be getting accustomed to their environment, but remote teams can’t be managed the same way that intact teams can. Meetings are more difficult. Casual interaction is nearly non-existent. Information dissemination is a bigger responsibility because it is so easy for employees to fall out of the loop. Special accommodations must be made unequally in response to the exigent needs of the individual employee. All of these are ingredients for dissatisfaction and its brother, disengagement.
This is your opportunity to bind your team in the face of adversity. It requires you to establish a clear mission for them, giving them something to rally around. It also involves caring for them and letting them know—through action—that you mean it.
Set up casual interactions in addition to your regular individual and team meetings. Show empathy for their personal plights while continuing to value their work and set expectations for quality and productivity.
But it’s not just about working from home. The 2020 environment has challenged so many of the fundamental things that make life feel “normal” that employees may be challenged to give work the commitment and passion you’re accustomed to seeing in them. For your sake and for theirs, provide normalcy and meaning they can embrace by leading with purpose.
Teams are forged by overcoming adversity together. Military units build lifelong relationships through shared experiences only they can understand. Books may not be written about the heroism of your team, but if you lead them with empathy and with purpose, you increase the chance they will gather years from now for reunions and drinks and to relish proudly the results they achieved and the struggles they overcame together in these trying times
Leadership Can Come from Any Direction
We’ve discussed building bonds with your customers and your business teams. The opportunities to make a difference don’t end there. Every interaction is a chance to have an impact. If you share your energy, your optimism, and your passion to have a positive impact on others—in short, if you exhibit leadership—you are filling a need that is universal.
This is the time to project an authentic stature that will be remembered for the way it settled people’s souls and gave them focus—and helped your organization to not only survive, but thrive.
Leadership is inspiring, and it is also self-fulfilling. Take it on as your mission. Your purpose. You can also think of it as your survival strategy as you create your future. The pandemic won’t end with a bang but with a whimper. We hope it gets better piece by piece, and soon, but we have to be ready for anything and create a sustainable approach for getting through the next phase of our lives. Behave like a leader and you become one.
Make this your time. Be a beacon in the darkness. It will be long remembered.
If you’ve found this article interesting and would like to learn more about how its author, Steve Mendelsohn, can help you in this area of leadership development, please contact us for more information.