The pandemic brought a wave of global uncertainties: supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, rising prices and an oncoming recession. Crisis after crisis has characterized the 2020s.
When facing so much uncertainty, it can be easy to worry about the future. That worry often then becomes doubt, which can quickly spiral into panic. And when we panic, we usually rush. But try to take a step back and think of your last rushed decision that ended up being a good one; panic is never a good foundation for making healthy decisions. Calmness, on the other hand, is the key to leading others through a crisis. Leaders who can stay calm can get their teams through anything.
Managing a team can be stressful. Between navigating different personalities, solving problems and trying to hit goals and deadlines it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. However, as a manager, your team looks to you to remain calm under pressure. Losing your cool only adds to the team’s anxiety.
When you find yourself in tense situations, it’s essential to keep your cool. Here are some tips to maintain your composure so you can lead effectively.
Take a Moment to Breathe
When tensions rise, take a step back to breathe deeply a few times. Inhale for 5 seconds, hold for 2-3 seconds, and exhale for 5 seconds. Just 60-90 seconds of deep breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, reducing feelings of stress.
If possible, step away from your desk and go for a short walk while breathing deeply. A brief respite clears your head so you can address the situation calmly. If you can’t step away, just try to take a few mindfulness breaths at your desk.
Key Tip Make deep breathing your go-to stress reliever. With practice, you can instantly relax in difficult situations.
Listen Actively to Understand
When a team member comes to you with a problem, make sure to really listen. Pay close attention without thinking about what you’ll say in response. Paraphrase their concerns back to them to ensure you understand.
Active listening shows the person you care about what they’re saying. It builds trust and prevents miscommunications from escalating conflicts. Validate their perspective by saying things like “I understand where you’re coming from” or “You make some excellent points.”
Key Tip: Avoid knee-jerk reactions. Listen first, then take time to consider the best response.
Brainstorm Multiple Approaches
For complex issues, don’t just consider your first solution. Brainstorm multiple ways to address problems. Ask team members with different perspectives for input.
Evaluating different options prevents you from insisting on one rigid approach. It also gives team members a say, increasing buy-in. Even if you don’t use their exact suggestions, team members will appreciate that you took their opinions seriously.
Key Tip: Stay open and flexible, not wedded to one solution. Two heads are better than one.
Acknowledge Your Fears
It’s normal to feel scared that you won’t be able to solve a problem or meet a deadline. However, keeping fears bottled up only causes more stress.
When you feel anxious, name the emotion and accept it. Tell yourself, “I feel apprehensive about this upcoming deadline. That’s understandable given the circumstances.” Acknowledgement releases emotional tension, keeping it from erupting later.
Key Tip: Don’t criticize yourself for having fears. Recognize emotions without judgment.
Address Your Team’s Core Needs
In tense times, reconnect with your team members’ fundamental needs – respect, autonomy, belonging. Make sure team members feel heard, involved, and valued. Recognize their hard work and empathize with their challenges.
When core needs aren’t met, people grow frustrated and defensive. Satisfying these needs produces goodwill, cooperation, and resilience. Helping your team feel secure enables everyone to stay calm under stress.
Key Tip: Don’t get so task-oriented that you forget about your team’s emotional needs.
Manage Your Own Expectations
Unrealistic standards create unnecessary stress that trickles down to your team. Be honest with yourself about what’s feasible. Look at data, not emotions, to set goals. Build in padding for unexpected issues.
Communicate timelines clearly to stakeholders and ask for more resources if goals seem unattainable. Make success possible by setting rational targets. Your team will mirror your realistic confidence.
Key Tip: Don’t demand the impossible from yourself or your team. Set goals you can realistically achieve.
Establish Clear Boundaries
To avoid burnout, define clear boundaries around your availability. Set core hours you’re accessible and periods when you unplug. Let your team know the best ways and times to contact you. Schedule uninterrupted focus time.
Protecting your personal time preserves your energy and patience. When you take care of yourself, you have more resources to manage stress at work. Your team will respect the boundaries you set.
Key Tip: Don’t let work bleed into all hours. Draw lines to prevent exhaustion.
Delegate More Tasks
You don’t have to solve every problem alone. Empower your team to handle more themselves. Explain the issue and parameters, then have capable members develop solutions.
Delegation reduces your workload so you have time and energy for higher-level responsibilities. When team members take ownership, they invest more in success. Let your team support you more.
Key Tip: Resist trying to control everything. Delegate so you can focus on broader goals.
Tap into Your Support System
On very trying days, don’t hesitate to reach out for support. Talk to a mentor who’s been in your shoes. Meet up with an old colleague or friend to vent and gain perspective. Discuss challenges with your spouse, partner or other family member.
Seeking counsel relieves stress before it builds up and boils over at work. Wise, caring people in your life want to listen and help you. Build your own support team.
Key Tip: You don’t have to navigate difficulties alone. Turn to your personal support network.
Make Self-Care a Priority
Don’t neglect your basic needs – sleep, nutrition, exercise, leisure. Eat healthy meals, move your body, and get enough rest. Make time for fun hobbies and real relaxation. Chronic stress weakens your reserves.
Protect your days off and vacations. Leave work on time to enjoy personal activities. Taking care of yourself equips you to handle challenges when you’re back at work. You can’t pour from an empty cup.
Key Tip: Prioritize self-care consistently, not just when burned out. Maintain your health and energy.
Reframe Setbacks as Learning Opportunities
When you try but fail to resolve an issue, treat it as a learning experience. Analyze what went wrong and create strategies to improve moving forward. Failure often holds important lessons for growth.
Rather than beating yourself up, harvest the wisdom from mistakes and setbacks. Write down your key learnings so you remember them. Reframing helps maintain optimism and enthusiasm.
Key Tip: Don’t dwell on what you could have done differently. Identify ways to do better next time.
Apologize for Mistakes
If you handle a situation unprofessionally, sincerely acknowledge this to your team. An honest apology de-escalates tension fast. Admitting you were wrong models accountability and humility. Let go of defensiveness.
Promise to learn from the experience and make changes to avoid repeating the mistake. Thank team members for their patience and commitment. Apologizing mends ruptured trust and morale.
Key Tip: Don’t let ego or pride prevent you from owning mistakes. Apologies rebuild connection.
Infuse Fun into the Workplace
Look for opportunities to inject more fun and levity into the office, especially during high-stress periods. Surprise your team with breakfast or coffee. Organize a potluck or trivia game. Bring in homemade treats to share.
Taking a few moments to smile and laugh together releases pent-up pressure. It reminds everyone of your shared humanity and connection. Boosting morale and camaraderie enables you to weather challenges.
Key Tip: Don’t lose your sense of humor when work gets serious. Find appropriate ways to add fun.
Practice Ongoing Stress Prevention
Don’t wait until your team is in crisis mode to start utilizing stress management tactics. Make deep breathing, active listening, boundary setting, and self-care your norms, not exceptions.
Developing emotional intelligence and life balance prevents stress from accumulating and spiraling. You and your team will grow more resilient when managing stress becomes automatic.
Key Tip: Make stress management part of your regular routine, not just a crisis response. Develop sustainable habits.
Managing people can be a pressure cooker, but you have many techniques to discharge stress before it boils over. Staying calm allows you to lead with wisdom, empathy and clarity. It also sets the tone for your team to keep their cool when faced with adversity. Make calm leadership your superpower.
Lead through crisis with calmness
It may not always be easy to stay calm in the face of crisis, but executives who do can lead their team through anything. As we make our way into another round of uncertainty, here are five ways they can lean into calmness for better outcomes:
- Show your calmness. Breathe easy. Relax and show your team how to do the same. I imagine Gordon Ramsey in a kitchen of panicking chefs, smoking ovens and pots boiling over — his leadership on TV may not be conducive to keeping calm. Still, the chefs who manage to keep theirs despite his drama can survive in any kitchen. Even when things feel like they might fall apart, leaders who work to keep this calm visible will be able to slow down and make better decisions. This visible example also influences more calm decision-making from others, too.
- Know your team. Everyone has their own role, priorities and experiences that make them more or less prone to panic during times of crisis. An emergency for one team member may be regular business for another. Know who might need extra support and step in to provide advice or other efforts to keep them calm. Lean on others on the team who demonstrate calmness to serve as additional support for their colleagues.
- Learn from everyones past experiences. A diverse team brings together professional and personal histories that can serve as a wealth of knowledge when moving ahead into times of uncertainty and crisis. Leaders must remain transparent in their actions and open-minded, accepting great ideas from anyone on the team. Unless we talk openly about the companys problems, well end up stuck handling them ourselves. But allowing the team to offer input for solving issues will result in a wider pool of creative ideas and greater flexibility.
- Lean on support. Meet outside mentors and role models to draw out creative ways to stay nimble. I have been fortunate to have a team of high-level executives (and very close friends) who are available for me to call at any time looking for advice. They are older and wiser, with longer histories and more experience running huge organizations. This outside support lends new perspectives to my emergencies. We can make better decisions by seeing our situation in a broader context.
- Be supportive. Rather than a dictatorial approach of shouting orders down the line, I recommend being the kind of leader who will jump into the kitchen and get your hands dirty. There is a lot to handle in times of crisis — many different dishes on multiple burners. Everything needs the right temperature and dedicated attention to come out right. Your work crises are no different. When leaders get involved with helping their people assess the possibilities and determine the best approach through hard times, they see our efforts to include supporting them in our workload and work even harder to support the team in return.
When considering how to confront a crisis, I always think back to a particular quote: The devil challenges a warrior with, “You cannot withstand the storm.” The warrior replies, “I am the storm.”
This is how leaders must confront a crisis: be the storm. Take control of adversity by making the best out of it with the calm, understanding and wisdom you already have in yourself and others.
CEO of Boardsi Martin Rowinski is the CEO of Boardsi — a corporate board recruitment company. Rowinski is also an investor and author.
Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.
The benefit of calm decision-making
Staying calm through intense situations is one of the reasons retired Marine Corps and military officers make such great police officers. After they live through such high-pressure training and life-threatening experiences, problems that seem crazy to the rest of us are much less extreme for them. Instead of panicking, they can take a controlled, more informed approach, reacting calmly.
The same goes for the corporate world. The company website goes down and everyone panics, creating hours of stress for the team. However, by slowing down and staying calm, we can better calculate who needs to be involved in restoring the website. With the right person on the job, it may be a pretty simple solution.
How to stay calm when you know you’ll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED
What are the benefits of staying calm as a manager?
Staying calm as a manager provides several benefits for both you and your team, such as: Establishes team trust: When you stay calm, you’re more likely to inspire trust among your team because they know they can rely on you to not get angry. Staying calm can also help you gain their loyalty and improve your relationships with them overall.
How do I regain my calm at work?
Should you find yourself suddenly set off at work, try one or more of these strategies to regain your calm Take deep breaths: When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, your breathing becomes irregular, fast, short, and shallow. Regulating it can be your first line of defense. Lengthen your exhales and focus on breathing from your belly.
Why should you be calm at work?
The experience you have at work is largely influenced by your attitude and the attitude of those around you. When you feel calm and practice positivity, you may feel more motivated, happier at your job and more connected to your team. Those around you will also notice and appreciate your calmness, leading to a better workplace atmosphere overall.
How do you manage a team during a crisis?
If you’re in a leadership position, learning how to control yourself and maintain a level head during challenging times will serve you well over the course of your career. But that can be easier said than done. Here are three techniques that can help you manage your team during a crisis while also keeping calm. 1. Wait to Act
