Tough Economic Times Require Courageous Leadership

Tough economic times

require courageous leadership

Tim Connor

If the current economy has not had a negative impact on some minor or major area of your business in the past couple of years, then I’ll bet you are living in denial.  Tough times come and go and they always take their toll on businesses that fail to respond in an appropriate and timely way.  This is the fourth recession I have lived through during my work history and I can say with total honesty none of them have been easy.  I’ll bet you could say the same.  But what these challenging times can do if we will bring courage and leadership to the party is learn, get better, get smarter and still be around when the good times once again roll.

I can also say that during these same years I have seen hundreds of organizations fail due to a failure of dealing with reality or what is.  So, what does it take to weather challenging economic times that are driven by uncertainty, fear and a future filled with unknowns?

I am not going to delve into the multitude of definitions of leadership but suffice it to say either you have it and exhibit it or you don’t.  You inspire others to excel or you don’t.  You have an unstoppable vision for the future or you waffle waiting and hoping. And you for any number of reasons you hold back from a take charge mindset lacking trust in your future, yourself, your organization and/or your employees.

You don’t have to look very far to see organizations that are being led by courageous leaders and prospering and conversely I’m sure you have witnessed the fall of many organizations that for whatever reason, are now history due to leadership that lacked an effective and timely leadership mindset that led their organization slowly to the chopping block.

What exactly is courageous leadership and how does someone develop and demonstrate it?

Courageous leadership is simply making the tough choices where the health of the entire organization supersedes any individual agendas.  It considers the history, present and potential and charges ahead with innovation, initiative and commitment.  It believes in the talent, experience and loyalty of its employees and it recognizes and rewards decision making, creativity and risk taking.  It is not stuck in historical paradigms and ways of doing business that might have been effective years ago but trusts its inner guidance system and intuition with confidence and courage.  But more than any of this - it acts.  It doesn’t sit around for hours or months discussing, planning, evaluation, considering and contemplating.  Yes, these behaviors are valuable but in the end without action all of these are wasted effort.

Action tends to separate winners from losers regardless of economic conditions.  But especially during challenging times action is a must.  I’m not implying here that all action will lead to a successful outcome but without action how will you ever know what could work?

There is no guaranteed formula for sustained success.  History has proven this.  But one thing is certain during the past 50 or so years and that is - that the courage to believe, act and follow-through and then learn any lessons associated with these actions and make corrections and continue forward are vital.  The opposite is true.  If you created a list of all of the organizations that have failed in the past 50 years or are failing now you would find one common denominator – they are stuck in mindsets, attitudes, approaches, policies or procedures that are just no longer working but are afraid to try something new or different.

By now I’m sure you have an idea whether you bring courageous leadership to your organization.  If you don’t what can you do to change this behavior?

Developing a courageous leadership style isn’t a simple process and it requires more “inner” work that outer work.  By this I mean the willingness to confront your weaknesses, attitudes and mindsets that sabotage your success as well as your experience and how it impacts your management/leadership style.

Leadership isn’t a title - it’s an attitude.  It’s not inherited but learned and it’s not position but an approach to life.  The single element that contributes to poor leadership is low self-esteem.  So if you want to improve your leadership style and exhibit courage, faith, trust and belief in who you are what you do you must work on the ability to see beyond the present and into the future.  You must be willing to let go of historical mindsets that are no longer working for whatever reason and know in your heart that you have the ability to “take charge”.  By this I am not suggesting that you let your ego rule your leadership approach but that you embrace humility and compassion and let go of arrogance and the attitudes that you are the only person in your organization capable of effective leadership.