In times of tumultuous change and especially new political climates, it’s important for leaders to remember that part of the burden/opportunity of leadership is being the go-to person that people can trust when they need support.
Great leaders demonstrate resilience in hard times—they exercise the capability to respond to the unexpected, pivot, and make thoughtful decisions.
That does mean that the work is scary, and it also means that you get to be a rock on unsolid ground. This is leadership. And it requires courage. And that can be scary, but that’s also the gig. This is also why I will always defend a bigger salary for people who take their leadership role seriously. Hopefully your leaders are getting paid the big bucks in accordance with their degree of active courage during changing times.
If you’re a leader in an organization who’s currently struggling under the ambiguity of recent executive orders, changes to labor law or EEO protections or even shifts when it comes to the economic solvency or financial health of the company needs to hire or fire. There is always an opportunity for leadership teams to come together and ask themselves the hard questions to make sure that they’re supporting the needs of their employees and teams as best as possible.
Specifically, around eeo protections.
Resources
Regardless of your specific challenge, leaders always need to continually educate themselves on the environmental factors impacting their business. Here are some examples of how to stay informed.
I trust resources like Lily Zheng when it comes to understanding anti-discrimination changes and its impact on the workforce. Lily has been closely monitoring this challenge since the Supreme Court of the United States reversed Affirmative Action in higher education. She speaks on this topic and the nuance of equity in admissions and selections often.
And for those of you who are struggling with things like cashflow management (a primary concern for most businesses in their startup/growth phases), it can be helpful to tap into resources like the SBA and WBENC who often offer free or low-cost webinars to educate leaders on how to prepare for financial changes and manage them accordingly.
And finally, if you’re dealing with hiring and firing issues, I recommend the following HRCI or SHRM as they remain the most well-funded research engines on human resource trends.
Start a Roundtable
But regardless of the type of transition you’re experiencing at your organization, there are some key questions that leaders can engage in to make sure that they are responding to the needs of their staff in a way that is authentic and supportive
If you don’t have standing executive leadership team meetings on the calendar, now is the time to schedule them. These meetings should be at least one hour long and include everyone with a C-suite title or those who direct a major function of the business. That includes the CEO, CFO, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Operations Officer, and likely the head of your tech team (because AI is transforming industries right now), as well as your go-to people operations leader. This is the bare minimum. Of course, there may be others on your team who play critical roles in leading business functions. However, the people who have the most influence over how revenue is generated, how work gets done, and who does the work should absolutely be in the room. These conversations should be run as a roundtable discussion.
A roundtable format means that everyone has an equal opportunity to speak their mind and challenge ideas during a discussion. It’s an open dialogue that prioritizes communication, shared decision-making, and inclusivity. This means that participants contribute as much as they receive in the conversation. To support this format, I recommend the following logistics:
- Visibility: Arrange seating so that everyone can see each other (e.g., at a round table or in a circle if on-site, and with all cameras on if virtual).
- Facilitation: Hire a facilitator to guide the discussion and ensure the conversation stays on track.
- Engagement: Ensure everyone shares their input and is given as close to equal airtime as possible.
- Co-Creative: Use collaborative tools to capture new ideas, share ownership, and create accountability across the leadership suite.
- Outcomes-Driven, Not Time-Driven: The meeting isn’t over until a clear goal is achieved or a decision is made. Once that happens, the meeting concludes.
Leadership Roundtable Agenda
Because the agenda for this meeting needs to drive discussion, you’ll need some open-ended questions that get people sharing and talking. Once the facilitator aligns everyone on the meeting outcome or goal, consider the following ways to engage in dialogue about change:
Questions to Consider to Keep the Dialogue Going
- What is currently going on that impacts how we do business?
- What parts of our business are impacted by this change?
- Where is there uncertainty for our people?
- How do these shifts relate to our organizational values and goals?
- What do people need to know in order to stay connected to our organizational values and goals at this time?
- When will we communicate what people need to know?
These initial prompts help lay everything out on the table. You’re also going to want to create space for people to share their visceral reactions to what’s happening in the environment. This could include a bit of venting, but it’s also an opportunity for people to be authentic and talk about the challenges and fears of being a leader during a transitional time.
ROI of Leadership Roundtables
You can achieve a lot with a roundtable format. While I don’t know what you will specifically gain in terms of goal attainment, there are both interpersonal and quantifiable benefits to running a leadership team that engages in this way.
Firstly, by establishing a regular cadence for this type of discussion among leadership, you help build trust and rapport among your leadership team members. Secondly, you are actively modeling what it means to create open communication and foster a culture of feedback at the highest levels of your organization. If these types of conversations can happen for the C-suite, then certainly your directors and mid-level managers can have similar gatherings to build alignment and foster community, especially when the Executive leaders are modeling it well and with regularity.
Thirdly, you’re being proactive about company culture. Anytime people can revisit the lived experiences of company culture—its goals, values, and vision—in relation to real-time events, it’s a good thing. Use dialogues like these to build clarity around what values look like in action and foster transparency so that employees feel empowered to participate in those conversations as well.
Start talking
It can be easy to want to bury your head in the sand when change is afoot. That means exercising real capability to respond to the unexpected (change often is) and then pivot and make new decisions. When leaders come together to share in that burden, it makes it less scary, and a lot less lonely too.
When leaders can communicate new decisions in a way that demonstrates effort and thoughtfulness, employees get to feel supported knowing that their leaders are working hard to be that rock on ever shifting ground that all of us need from time to time.