How to Manage Upheaval

Whatever form your personal upheaval takes, your feelings are a catalyst to make you a better leader. This is easy to write but difficult to put into practice, especially for men. Many women tend to do a better job being open with their emotions, acknowledging their upset from a divorce or their fury because of the way their child is behaving. Women often seek out a colleague at work (usually another woman) with whom to process their experience. Men tend to focus more on goals and on fixing things rather than experiencing or expressing their feelings, so this passage presents special challenges. We’ve coached many executives who admit they have talked themselves into believing that they were functioning acceptably during a personal crisis, when in fact they were distracted and working at half-speed. The fact is, you’re most likely to make major work mistakes when you give the appearance of being fine while inside you’re anything but. Others assume you have recovered from your problems. Sometimes, in an effort to distract or help you, they give you the usual tasks, new responsibilities, or challenges. At such a time, you are ill-equipped to handle them.

To learn and grow during a difficult time in your life and to use adversity for leadership development, consider doing the following:

• Reveal your vulnerabilities. Grief is a common, human experience. It binds us all. No one is expert at handling grief or hardship, and yet we all feel that we should be better at doing so. Leadership, in fact, may be viewed as providing a model and permission to others for how to handle this universal, difficult, inescapable human experience. As counterintuitive as it might seem, explaining your struggle to others, coming to terms with an adverse medical diagnosis, dealing with difficult children, and working through loss humanizes you as a leader and actually makes you more, not less, effective. Asking for additional support from others during a difficult passage is not weakness but strength. Our reluctance to show our vulnerability invokes our fear of appearing weak. In reality, being vulnerable humanizes us, connects us to others, and empowers rather than weakens us as leaders. Direct reports want their leaders to be human; they already know they have weaknesses as well as strengths; disguising them creates distance that affects performance. Followers appreciate tough-but-tender leaders: tough in demanding performance, tender in their ability to understand and appreciate our humanity. Leaders, too, respect those who are courageous enough to be open about their dilemmas and feelings and open as well about what they can and cannot handle.

• Be authentic. There is a temptation to play a role in order to get through this passage. You become the “Strong, Courageous Leader” or the “Inwardly Suffering, Outwardly Cheerful Boss” because that is the role you believe others will accept, even prefer. In reality, you appear to be distanced from yourself and ungrounded, which may actually cause others to avoid or distrust you. If you tell everyone you’re okay but isolate yourself in your office, others may provide support by avoiding you, believing you don’t want to see or talk to them. The effort to be genuine is important. Obviously, you don’t want to arrive every day at work in tears or require others to endure lengthy discussion of your pain. What you can do is allow your sadness or anger to surface under the right circumstances—for example, when you are talking to trusted others and have the time and privacy with which to engage in this type of conversation.

• Accept fate and move on. The people who handle this passage best are able to accept that life is uncertain and frequently painful, and they can accept this without bitterness. Nor do they drown in guilt. They reflect instead on what has happened and, after a period of time, make peace with it.

You’ve probably known colleagues or friends who can’t move past a personal upheaval. They are the ones who remain stuck in a painful transition. They recover from an illness but remain filled with self-pity. We’re suggesting that you find a way to come to terms with whatever negative event has taken place as a catalyst for both personal growth and leadership development. Adversity creates leadership strength. Finding a way to grow may require taking any number of paths—meditation perhaps, or prayer, therapy, reflection, or sabbatical. Even committing to a larger purpose or cause in order to create meaning can restore order to your life and help you emerge from the confusing aspects of the event. Once you’ve done this, you can determine what you want to do next in the sense of setting new goals and doing what’s needed to achieve them.