Explorer’s Blog 13: How to lead amidst serious distraction - Second, Your Leadership

The world is not getting less busy - indeed, this last month alone has increased the levels of chaos and uncertainty that we’re swimming in. I recently attended a silent retreat in which the leader reminded us of the need to periodically reduce the noise of our daily lives - not just literal noise and verbosity, but the noise of demands on our time, needing to stay relevant, responsive, etc. 

Last month’s blog entry explored the ways you can manage your attention, ‘When the World Is Too Distracting — and It Feels Impossible to Work’, taking inspiration from and summarizing the HBR materials under this title. This month we’re taking on the same topic but looking through the lens of Your Leadership, i.e. what you can do as a leader when the volatility of things becomes a distraction for your team. 

Anxiety is a natural reaction to a stress response. It serves us well in indicating threat and signalling what is important to us. The downside is that our bodies have the same neurological and physical responses that we developed when scanning for tigers in the jungle - our bodies today do not know the difference between physical threat (jungle tiger) and emotional threat (scary meeting). 

As a leader, you need to know the impact that anxiety has on your team. Stuck in a stress response, we lose access to our prefrontal cortex - our creative cognition, complex problem solving, and critical thinking. This means that your team under stress is performing suboptimally. 

This might look like increased frustration, lower morale, reactive, exhausted, reluctant to collaborate, shorter attention span, not communicative, and/or results dropping and you’re not sure why. 

So what can you do to alleviate this? How do you lead others who may be hijacked by their own stress response? First, you need to get grounded yourself - see post from last month. Then you can avoid contributing to existing stressors and start to support your colleagues. Here’s how:

• Check your assumptions & collect data - Many leaders think they know how employees feel but their assumptions are unchecked and often incorrect. Ask! Use different methods to find out about their experiences, struggles, needs, complexity, maybe even perceptions of your leadership in this moment. 

  • When you have a better understanding of employees’ backgrounds, interests, needs, values, etc. you can meet them where they are and lead with greater intention and stronger impact. 

  • Hot Take: Many leaders are overly confident in their leadership skills - yes, maybe even you - which creates a gap between self-perceived and actual competence. Such gaps are where employee skepticism grows. Read: You might be contributing to your staff’s anxiety and not even realize it! Even if you are well intentioned in your actions. 

  • How to put this into action: One simple idea is the Red/Yellow/Green exercise - everyone uses this framework to share their mood. For example, at the start of a meeting you might go around and voice a color that represents how you’re feeling, or you can invite participants to put sticky notes with their color on a wall for more anonymous input. Expanding with more information is always optional. This gives you data on where the team is so you can adjust your communication accordingly. 

• Anchor into a wider context - When the world starts to feel chaotic and distractions call, rooting back into something greater can help with motivation and clarity. As a leader, your role here is to provide a vision, connect back to the team's unique value add, and bring the focus back to contribution to organizational and/or shared goals. 

  • Zoom out, open the aperture, get on the balcony. Whatever visual aid or metaphor speaks to you, see if you can bring some perspective to the team. This is not about minimizing anyone’s experience, but about finding the opportunity amidst uncertainty. 

  • Redefine winning - one risk when volatility abounds is that traditional markers of success change, become diluted or lose their meaning. Bring your team back with a shared definition of what good looks like and clarity on how their work contributes to a wider goal. 

• Build trust: Here’s how - Be reliable, transparent, consistent, predictable, even boring. Demonstrate competent humility. Adopt a consistent approach to how you engage on social issues. Give your team a clear meeting structure. Proactively share expectations. Avoid changes and cancellations. Maintain routine when possible. 

  • It is a false binary that many fall into, stuck between the growing demand for managers to show compassion and the compulsion to show strength, with no wiggle room to compromise outcomes. The polarity of compassion and strength is real, but the binary is false because you need both to be a trusted leader. 

  • Wellbeing increases performance. Establishing a working environment that fosters wellbeing - and you as a compassionate leader - is essential for sustained success. Likewise, team members need you to provide clarity, structure, advocacy, and strength. Normalize conversions about the support employees need. Maintain consistency and avoid surprises in your approach. Build psychological safety so your team can thrive. 

• Communication is key - Research shows that employees benefit most from leaders who show both warmth and strength. Admit when you’re not ok (your general state, no need to share details), tapping into a sense of shared humanity to strengthen empathy and build trust. This is about increasing honesty and transparency, not creating a false sense of hope and not catastrophizing. Focus on the near term. 

  • Share “non-update updates”, as one author put it. Especially when the news is distracting, uncertain, changing quickly - being told that there is no news or zero change is more calming than no information at all. 

  • Don’t feel like all of the communication lands with you. Work with HR, employee resource groups, or others within your organization to share any available resources for staff that may need more support. 

• Connect with others - My most senior clients share a sense of leadership being lonely at the top. And when things get hard, the sense of isolation tends to grow. This does not have to be the case. You are not alone. 

  • Involve your team in discussing priorities, the team’s unique value, etc. Co-create solutions with your team. It gives them a sense of purpose, ownership and voice. 

  • Reach out to your network, identify peers, mentors, coaches who can support you as you lead through volatility. It is hard - the challenge is real. You do not need to struggle alone. 

• Role model focus for others - set boundaries and honor them. Agree on, schedule and honor uninterrupted focus time at work. Remember that distractions are costly. Lead by example when it comes to speaking up, making time to focus, and preventing distractions. 

  • And here is your reminder to not email employees around the clock. Even if you are working outside of standard working hours, you can ‘schedule send’ so your emails arrive for others during work hours. What your team sees from you sets the bar for everyone else. So set limits on technology. One of the HBR researchers shares that even Slack headquarters is empty at 6pm. 

In summary - the current environment is draining, distracting. Your role as a leader is, in part, to create energy and focus for your team. You do this by defining a vision, encouraging collaboration, communicating regularly, mapping clear priorities, and role modelling warmth + strength. 

Keep working on yourself and keep focusing on being the best leader you can be. You’ve got this. 

Source articles:

https://hbr.org/2020/05/leading-through-anxiety 

https://hbr.org/2024/02/what-employees-need-from-leaders-in-uncertain-times 

https://hbr.org/2021/10/how-business-leaders-can-reduce-polarization

https://hbr.org/2024/04/leading-a-company-that-can-thrive-in-a-chaotic-world 

https://hbr.org/2020/05/5-ways-leaders-accidentally-stress-out-their-employees

https://hbr.org/2015/01/help-your-overwhelmed-stressed-out-team 

https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/09/how-to-be-less-distracted-at-work-and-in-life 

https://hbr.org/2024/10/how-to-manage-a-distracted-team 

https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/09/how-to-be-less-distracted-at-work-and-in-life

⭐️ I am deeply invested in you being the best leader that you can be, and partner with clients on three things:

✅ Bringing calm to the chaos

✅ Having clarity in decision making

✅ Maintaining confidence in their leadership

That’s what you get when you work with me - ✨ calm, clarity, and confidence. Interested? Curious? Know someone who might benefit from this work? Let me know and let's explore, together.

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