The secret is to be prepared, to draw on the strengths of the people around you, and most importantly, to instill confidence that your team will step up and find a solution.
At the end of the day it's really easy to be a great leader when things are going well. The real test, whether or not you believe in being an emotionally intelligent leader, is when things go wrong.
What I've come to realize is that emotional intelligence, which I define as buoyancy, was the only way I knew how to lead, and is, in my option, the only way to inspire real change.
As a sensitive and highly intuitive person in the command-and-control corporate world, I always felt miscast.
My grandfather used to say to me when I was a boy, "Getting knocked down is no big prize - it's getting up that's the real trick." I couldn't agree more.
Buoyant leadership is not a management technique, it's a leadership principle based on the belief that leading isn't presiding, it's taking people on a journey, and on any hero's journey there will be a setback.
Change management is kind of a weird concept to me. We can' t control events any more than we can control the weather. But we control how we deal with it and we can control the opportunities that these moments of change create.
Mr. Churchill connected truly to what was in the hearts of the British people, which is what a buoyant leader does. One of his most famous quotes is about making mistakes and learning from them. He wasn't shy to admit when things went wrong.
Inevitably in my career of 35 years, I was in one turnaround circumstance after another, and I was personally put in positions of significant responsibility but without complete authority over everyone that needed to be mobilized.
True buoyant leaders can never communicate in percentage points, or charts and figures. First and foremost, they must be storytellers, communicating with their hearts, not heads.
All buoyant leaders are driven by a real ambition- that is, what is being created that didn't exist before- and one criteria for that real ambition, is that on initial inspection, it seems fundamentally impossible.
Maintaining patience, being generous, and helping your peers takes time, and no small amount of emotional fortitude. But it brings an exponential difference in your team's ability to problem-solve.
Mandela stands alone in possessing all of the qualities of other great men, but has one quality which is transcendent... his ability to forgive and to place others above himself.
As I was coming up in business, screwing up was not an option in any form.
For so long, companies were run using a command-and-control, 'top down' hierarchical method that involved dictating down the command chain and maintaining order. What I've witnessed in our time is evolving democratization, a shift to a demand economy accelerated by technological advancements like social media.
Buoyancy is a phenomenon whereby, as a leader, you float because the people you inspired believe that you should, because you've truly connected with the collective desires and values of the people you lead.
When your people have determined that you understand their lies in their hearts and are dedicated to their functional wellbeing, they will compensate for your weaknesses and shore up your strengths.
The phrases and language used everyday in an organization can in fact affect the way your team makes decisions and conducts themselves.
What can be seeds of destruction can also be seeds of greatness.
It is so easy to "calibrate" -that is, given the pressures on a smaller company to redefine in less ambitious terms- that which you are in business to accomplish. The moment this happens the downward spiral begins.
Survival in the demand economy depends on and requires experimentation, risk taking, and trial and error.
Once you demonstrate to your team that you put them on the same plane of priority as yourself, you will create an environment, and a culture that will make your entire organization flourish.
Once you reach people on an authentic emotional level, they will reward your faith in them with their belief in you, and they will mobilize to get the job done.
Leadership is not about sitting and presiding, it's about a going somewhere. To be buoyant, you must not only ignite passion around a common quest, you must also mobilize your team to take a journey with you toward a common destination, or what I call a "real ambition."
You can't mobilize people and connect with them authentically when they can't see the true you.
