Leaders and Followers and Organizations in Crisis
Organizations are often in crisis mode.
I’ve been involved with a few organizations who seem to think they are thriving in crisis mode.
And leaders tend to do weird things when their organization is in crisis.\ Our Hollywood version of leadership makes this tendency common.
We pull out the largest leadership guns we can find and start firing. Grab the swords and begin the fight. Get the team together and have a meeting. Or have a lot of meetings. Meetings for days. Whiteboard this thing. Brainstorm until the walls are covered with butcher paper and magic-marker. We're in crisis, gosh-darnet.
Some leaders don’t even do this much. They take on the lone and troubled hero persona. Solve the problem yourself. Make a decision. You are Braveheart. You are Joan of Arc. You are Captain America. You are Mighty Mouse. You've got this.
Be directive.\ Make a decision.\ Save the day.\ Lead.
And a bit of research published last year says leaders who are leading this way may very well have it all wrong.
Leadership researchers from Aston Business School in Birmingham, England, in partnership some folks from the University of Oklahoma have found that the vision necessary to create solutions in a crisis will not usually come from leadership.
Solutions come from followers.
The people who are in the cubicle trenches, serving the customer, or managing field offices. The people who are doing the work of the organization every day.
Organizations are complex. We will find more solutions by leveraging the complexity of our organizations than by insisting this is only the job of leadership. Solving for a crisis is potentially the work of every person in the organizations.
Leadership holds conversations.