by Peter Classen and Christine Zdelar
Part 1 of 3
Highlights:
“Mindfulness” as an idea has been around for two hundred plus years, but it has been associated with polite society and acceptable social interaction. In fact, most executive leaders in today’s Corporate America are down-right suspicious of the idea. What they miss is that in an age when society is increasingly demanding that corporations act socially responsible, mindfulness and mindful leadership is mandatory.
Mindfulness in modern business, and in today’s crisis setting, is probably best thought of as the next evolution of the idea of “situational awareness”. Where traditional situational awareness asked for leaders to be aware of external factors impacting one’s business (i.e. knowing one’s business environment), a cutting-edge definition would include asking leaders to be aware of external and internal factors. Today - in COVID America - the biggest internal factor leaders should be thinking about is the health of their workforce, their teams, and each and every one of their employees.
This three-part article explains mindfulness in a way that a pragmatic business leader can better understand it, and then apply it, to achieve excellence in leading and managing in today’s COVID-19 setting.
Wednesday April 15th, 3:13am... time to start texting. Not everyone is feeling bored during the current national crisis. Some people are doing amazingly well - business is booming - and they are busy in a positive way. Other people are not so lucky - business is failing - and they are just as busy but in a terribly negative way. I talk to about a dozen start-up executives and business owners a week right now, and on average I would say two or three of these start-up leaders are in dire straits. They tell me they are feeling wiped out, that the losses are unrecoverable, that their situation is hopeless.
With one venture in particular, run by a talented, young CEO-Entrepreneur, business is bad. She invested almost her entire net worth in this difficult-to-execute, industry-transformation play. She is all in, just as investors like their “unicorns” to be. The next-round capital raise - poised to move into high gear on March 1, 2020 - is in an executive-induced coma. Cash from service operations that was meant to provide a financial “runway” through the next 9 months is also comatose. Cash reserves are insufficient to keep the full effort in motion. The plan for “what do we do” swings between “keep on life support” and “do not resuscitate.” Each day brings new complications, new breakdowns, new challenges - all of which are getting dealt with - but, wow - everyday feels like another torrential downpour of new business troubles.
In this setting, as the older, more experienced, more collected Chairman, what exactly is your job? What do you say? Do you text this young CEO: “it's not so bad, we can fix this?” You probably should not, for obvious reasons. Do you call her and tell her the cold hard facts? Also probably not helpful. Are the cold hard facts what you say to someone who stands a very real chance of being financially wiped out?
This is a tough question and in the current reality, this is the kind of dilemma that many Chairmen and Chairwomen, Board Members, and Executive Team Leaders face on a daily basis. What exactly do you say? How do you say it? When do you say it? If you are “mindful” and you know this young CEO as any Chairman should know their CEO, you would immediately realize the right answer for her is a thoughtful, personal note, one that acknowledges how hard the current situation is, sets forth practical ideas for the day in a calm and mindful matter, doesn’t ask her to think about the unknowable future, and reinforces the notion that unwavering support exists, all of which gets delivered by text so it's the first thing she read around 4:30am, when she typically starts checking emails and thinking about what troubles the new day will dump on the company.
To get to an answer to such tough questions about what to say and how to say it when business and personal interests overlap, the science and art of “mindfulness” is truly an outstanding tool and a management skill executive leaders and team managers should look to develop, and fast.
What is Mindfulness?
The more “science” sounding definition of “mindfulness” is “the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.” For example: "The visiting film critics were well received for their mindfulness of the wider cinematic tradition." The more “art” or “therapist” sounding definition is “a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.”
For some, like Baby Boomers and Gen X, the “science” definition is probably more palatable. For Millenials, chances are the “art” definition rings more true. Both definitions, however, refer to something that does not come up frequently in the hard conversations behind closed executive doors. It is not the language most of today’s CEOs, COOs, and CFOs are used to.
Situational awareness however, is a well understood and more universally respected management concept. By definition, situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status.
Executive leaders should have strong SA. They need to have a broad understanding of the business environment and the external factors impacting their businesses in order for them to think and act strategically. Managers should also have SA. They should know the situation with their team members and the situation of their teams as a whole. Knowing the internal situations of team members is… mindfulness.
To function well in times of crisis, executive leaders, managers, and even employees need to be aware of the total situation; externally, with their business partners (vendors, suppliers, distributors) and their customers (changes in motivations, preferences, unmet needs), and internally, with each employee (strengths, weaknesses, workstyles, worries) and their employee’s support-dependent network (significant others, children, parents, close associations).
While this may sound like simple common sense, there is management science behind this internally-focused situational awareness idea. In the new interpretation of situational awareness as blended with mindfulness, team-level situational awareness is dependent upon both (a) a high level of situational awareness among individual team members for the aspects of the situation necessary for their job; and (b) a high level of shared situational between team members, providing an accurate common operating picture of those aspects of the situation common to the needs of each member (Endsley & Jones, 2001). Let’s get clear on what the science is saying.
To have team-level situational awareness (i.e. to have a team that is awake, and not functioning like a zombie collective), we need two things:
First, the team members need a shared understanding of the real-world situation they are dealing with.
The need to fully understand the COVID-19 situation - not the hype, but reality. They need executive leaders to provide real answers to the questions of: “What is this situation doing to our businesses?” “How long is this situation going to last?” “What exactly are our customers thinking?”
Second, the team members need to know what’s happening to individual team members and themselves in order to understand the reality of both individual and team capacities and team constraints.
They need to know what real challenges they share, what’s getting in the way of thinking straight, what’s getting in the way of being able to focus? Team leaders need to know what’s exactly getting in the way of being positive, being productive and staying engaged so they can be the problem solver that they are entrusted to be.
The effectiveness of remote teams depends on their communications & collaboration infrastructure, their training, their lived experiences, and their morale, where morale is worth more than any of the other factors combined. No matter what business policy says and what hard-line coldly corporate thinkers say, individuals in pain never perform well. Mindfulness and mindful leadership is the key to helping “shelter in place” employees overcome the pains that are getting in the way of their productivity, positivity, and their excitement for work.
NEXT IN THE SERIES:
The 10-Minute Path to Mindfulness for Practically-minded People.
Part 2 of these three part series will focus on how to apply Mindfulness for better control and better performance. We will share the essentials of the approach a leader can take to increase operating control, help improve productivity, and most importantly release team pressures and save their sanity (and yours).
Want to become excellent at total situational awareness?
Becoming excellent at both internal situational awareness and external situational awareness are areas where Grahampton’s consultants have worked for decades. High-degrees of this expanded idea of “situational awareness’ has been vital to the success of many of the business transformations, crisis navigations, and revenue drives we have led in the U.S. and in markets around the globe. If hearing case studies of how “mindfulness” and “mindful leadership” factored into saving two sizable enterprises during times of national crisis (one with 1,600 employees and another with 8,500 employees), please contact us. Grahampton has approaches to improve “situational awareness” that can help leaders lead better during this time of COVID-19. Please reach out to Peter Classen - pclassen@grahampton.com or any of Grahampton’s partners for a discussion.
About the Author: Peter R. Classen is a Chief Transformation Officer, Crisis Navigator and an Expert in “Leadership and Management in Challenging Times.” Peter is also one of the Managing Partners at Grahampton & Company, a management services and advisory firm with three decades of experience helping organizations survive and thrive in some of the most complicated and thorny situations imaginable. Peter has been a hands-on c-suite leader and “chief crisis officer” in two +1,000 employee organizations during an extended national crisis and disaster settings and facilitated over 78 companies to overcome and thrive in times of calamity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his strategic revenue growth and business transformation focus have shifted to working with leadership teams on revenue continuity, on “survive now & thrive in the future” strategies, and on proactive management and team leadership in times of crisis and challenge. Find Peter and his teams at www.grahampton.com.