Mindful Leadership in Corona-Times

Welcome to the VUCA world! Just few weeks ago we could not have imagined that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity can invade our private and professional lives so promptly and deeply.

The worldwide recommendations on the corona crisis are quite clear-cut: anyone who is not immediately required to maintain operations and supply for basic needs is to remain at home. While some continue to work from home office, others are shifted into short-time work and in the worst case even find themselves unemployed. Public life is largely at halt. Our economy is heading for one of the most violent crises we have seen in the modern world at a rapid pace.

It is inevitable that this will cause fear and a blend of emotions inside all of us. Employees worry about their income or even their job. Added are numerous private challenges such as unexpected childcare, quarantines, positive test diagnoses or in some cases even serious illnesses. In the worst case some of us may have to deal with death in their own teams and families. In contrast to previous crises everything just seems to rain down on us simultaneously.

Owners and supervisors must find a way to overcome this fundamental crisis, together with their team, and figure out how to deal with the vast amount of changes that continue to rise. Keeping the team together and addressing the greatest concerns of colleagues is crucial in this situation. However, the question remains: How may this goal be achieved, and these challenges tackled, alongside all the other issues and challenges that one is facing.

New leadership is now in demand. Anyone who has failed to take care of new leadership qualities such as empathy, mindfulness and self-reflection must now make up for it in a very short time if they want to continue to exist with their team in the future.

The following recommendations maybe helpful in this situation:

Ensure transparency and clarity

1. Communicate swiftly, comprehensively and regularly with your team.

2. Share all information that is important to your team immediately and directly.

3. Use all possibilities of digital communication: Set up very regular virtual team meetings and use new means of communication such as slack and teams.

Emphasize appreciation and communication at eye level

4. Allow your team to express their feelings and take their concerns seriously.

5. Consider yourself part of the team and openly talk about your own concerns as well.

6. Involve your team in the process of finding solutions, whether it is dealing with customers, finances or individual personal challenges.

Live a culture of continuous improvement and learning

The good news is that there is no one to blame for the crisis that hits our companies in these times. Everybody has to deal with the same challenges.

7. Avoid any judgement or even blame. Look for the good in an apparently bad situation and work hard to find interesting new insights and solutions.

8. Ensure that everyone involved learns how deal with the crisis.

9. Keep an eye on changes and challenges for your customers. Motivate your team to develop more suitable solutions than the previous ones.

Handle conflicts constructively

10. Listen to others and consider the benefits of different perspectives instead of devaluing each other's perspective. The VUCA world is too complex to rely on single views!

11. Work with scenarios instead of one-sided, seemingly clear conceptions.

12. Encourage your team to find a variety of solutions that can be tried out and reviewed, rather than limiting yourself to the one solution that seems to be the right one. The latter could very likely only solve part of the complex problem in this volatile situation.

Take care of yourself

At the moment almost all people run on “autopilot” and in crisis mode: directly controlled from the amygdala in our brains, adrenaline secretion and other reactions by our nervous system may result in us acting on our basic instincts in a fight-or-flight manner. Unfortunately, this system is genetically built for short moments of danger as opposed to longer periods of crisis like these times of corona, whose fallout will definitely face us for a very long time.

Conscious of this knowledge of our basic nature, we need to create other solutions and habits to remain healthy, to keep the ability to act adequately and to stay resilient on a long term. This includes:

13. Taking regular breaks for relaxation, meditation and self-reflection.

14. Maintaining our social environment that supports us, even if it is stressed itself.

15. External coaches or moderators can be a valuable help because they are not directly affected by your personal concerns. After all, it is about keeping a clear head, making sure that everyone remains on board and adapting to the new situation as quickly as possible.

We in the Consensa team set out on these principles. Hopefully, we can all emerge from this existential crisis eventually, strengthened with new knowledge and skills that help us to deal with the fundamental changes that will hit us in the next years.

The Concept of Lazy Consensus in Projects

Lazy Consensus means to assume common sense between people that are communicating until you learn that there is a dissent. You don`t discuss and approve a plan or a suggestion unless you get other signals or hints. That practice helps you to get on with your teamwork and not become inefficient because of endless discussions.

You can operate on lazy consensus if you are sure that there is no important dissent – but only if you are equally prepared to roll back as soon as a valid disaccord is raised.

If you identify dissent you should move to a concept of active consensus creation, sometimes even use techniques of conflict management.

To apply this concept you need some explicit or implicit rules:

·         Everybody can assume consensus unless anybody gives a signal of disagreement
(J: Nearly all human beings practice this procedure as long as they trust each other)

·         Anyone with serious concerns has to put them up for discussion. It´s not o.k. to do so in a hidden way.

·         We discuss each serious concern that arises before getting on with the meeting or work in an appreciative mode on eyelevel.

·         Silence indicates implicit consensus

It is important to consider the cultural background of all people involved, if you want to rely on these rules. A lot of cultures are not used to address concerns without the fear of loosing ones face. In that case, it’s crucial to give explicit instructions to be open and possibly confrontational, too.

To work in the mode of lazy consensus, it`s mandatory to create a culture of trust, appreciation, mindfulness, listening to each other and openness.

Approving these implicit rules will give the parties involved regular opportunities to detect and address dissent: ask for feedback from time to time with open questions.

The advantage of the concept of lazy consensus is that a group is always able to move forward: very quick, when there are no objections - and a little slower with a learning curve when there is a valid concern to be discussed. That usually saves a lot of time und prevents endless discussions - even if not everybody is able to express her specific opinion. It also helps avoiding resistance because of concerns from important stakeholders not being heard and considered.

You can even rely on this concept if formal and informal leaders, who dominate the decision making process, enjoy acceptance of a group. Assess regularly if that acceptance is, in fact, given.

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Why is it Difficult to Create Consensus in Projects?

An ideal project needs the consensus of all parties involved to create excellent results which are accepted and can be implemented in a sustainable way.

But why is it so difficult to agree to other opinions?

The reason is that every party has its own natural view on the topic of a project and therefore tends to prefer a solution that fits exactly to his own sight.

Let me give an example: A project team which aims to implement a new software solution to improve the customer relationship management of an online-shop of a medium sized company. Let us have a view on the different sights of the parties involved:

Let´s start with A, a sales representative and one of the future users of this software. He loves the old systems and the endless bypasses they created to optimize the performance of the system. He likes to get a system which is quite similar to the old one, just faster and without bugs.

Team member B is an expert of software development and would like to try out a complete new technology which is much easier to handle than the old one. Therefore he suggests a solution he got to know some weeks before on a trade fair. Fortunately he is quite sure that this solution is perfectly tailored to the needs of this project.

The accountant C has to care for the small budget and prefers an affordable standard solution.

D, the overall manager of the IT department goes for a product that minimizes the interfaces to other parts of the IT architecture and guarantees minimized maintenance costs.

Of course you can imagine what would happen if there are further parties involved in the project like the CEO or the customer helpdesk: they all bring their own views on a future solution!

The pattern of this project can be found find in almost every project: the interface of the different solutions that are recommended of the parties involved to a project use to be very small in the beginning of a project. So you regularly have two choices: find a person that takes the decision or try to find a team consensus. Regarding the sustainability of a solution the latter one should be the better choice, even if it seems to be much more exhausting.

If you plan to facilitate your team towards consensus you have to grow the interface of the different solutions step by step. It could be easier if you use different well-known communication skills like active listening, asking questions and visualization of common sense.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-2v99paQM&feature=youtu.be

Why Projects need Consensus to Succeed?

A project is by definition a highly innovative task which needs the collaboration of different experts to find a perfect solution.

If you take that definition serious,  it`s not necessary to create a project to solve a problem which could also be solved by a single function or person. And it`s not possible to create a perfect solution merely by the decisions of a single person, e.g. the project manger or the project sponsor. So you have to create consensus within a project team if you really want to create an optimal solution.

And there is a second reason to go for consensus in project work: nearly every solution you create in a project needs the acceptance of its stakeholders to be implemented. If you
don´t get acceptance, resistance will increase and you won´t get your solution implemented on a broad range. The better the acceptance of a specific solution is the better is the rate of successful implementation. There a rule of thumb, that a 80% solution with 100% acceptance will gain a much more higher implementation rate than a perfect 100% solution with a acceptance rate beneath 50%.

In my experience there are three steps in finding consensus within a project team and their stakeholders to get a perfect and accepted project result that can be implemented without resistance:

1. Get a mutual understanding between all parties involved about the initial situation of the problem or innovative field
2. Synchronize the plan how to find a solution
3. Find an agreement on a specific solution

You usually need a set of communication skills to facilitate the consensus building process on these three important steps. One simple trick is to ask a lot of questions instead of finding quick answers and solutions especially in the beginning of the project. If you ask questions, you support the parties involved to express their specific view and help the team to understand each other. And mutual understanding is the very first step to create consensus!

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