Grounded leadership inspires discretionary effort and enables peak performance. It is first personal (about the leader) and then public. It recognizes, accepts, and meets natural human neurological, physiological, psychological, and social responses and needs. It is particularly helpful in uncertain times.
Uncertainty can be unsettling and impair performance
As I write this, I’m sitting in the BWI airport for an unexpected layover due to a missed connection. I am calm and collected now, but I must admit that this was not my instinctive reaction. My disquiet, frustration, and narrowed reasoning were all greater than called for by the relatively small inconvenience of only an added nine-hour delay in getting home and some late-night travel over snowy rural roads. My flight from Manchester was delayed by late-arriving flight attendants who had gotten stuck behind a traffic accident. “No worries,” we were informed, “everybody will still make their connections in Baltimore.” As it turned out: the flight attendants arrived later than expected; we made up no time in boarding nor in flight; we had more delays on the tarmac in Baltimore; and we got a gate with a malfunctioning jet bridge. Once I was finally able to deplane, I ran from the middle of concourse B to the opposite end of concourse A and arrived just in time to see my connecting flight pulling away from the gate. In that moment, and in the uncertainty leading up to it, I was not enjoying a calm and collected state of mind or being.
Our brains and bodies respond to perceived threats as if they are preparing us to save ourselves or our loved ones from an imminent sabretooth tiger attack, regardless of the real danger. That serves us well when we face a genuine and immediate emergency, but it can also impair our thinking and our performance for other non-related tasks. Additionally, when threats are persistently perceived or unresolved, they can lead to chronic stress which also impairs motivation and performance. Threat is often perceived in uncertainty, and the degree and duration of the unresolved threat can contribute to the impairment. This is true for all of us, whether we are leading or being led.
When the people we lead face uncertainty, when they lack clarity of identity, purpose, direction, when they lack resources and support, when they don’t have enough connection, trust, autonomy, and empowerment, they will perceive some degree of threat. Their sympathetic nervous system will naturally rise in dominance, delivering into their bodies extra cortisol, adrenaline, and other neurotransmitters that can prove useful in a crisis but counterproductive and even harmful over the long haul. Left unchecked, this will reduce motivation, engagement, and performance.
Grounding provides stability and direction
Grounded leadership clarifies identity and purpose. It gives direction, builds trust, and creates connection. It provides stability that enables people (leaders and their teams) to find safety in the face of perceived threats. It is like the anchor that secures boats in a storm. It is like radar, weather, GPS, and mapping systems used to navigate through storms. In this way, grounded leadership supports calming the mind and body, freeing people up for enhanced motivation and performance.
Grounding for leaders
For maximum effectiveness, leaders must consider their own grounding first. Who do they know themselves to be and what is the source of their identity? What is their own personal purpose in life and where does that purpose come from? What is their vision for their fulfilled purpose? What is their immediate mission for the fulfillment of that vision? With whom do they or can they share this purpose, vision, and mission? From where do they get the reliable support they need? Knowing, trusting, and living the answers to these questions provides the grounding that leaders need to anchor themselves and to guide them through storms and uncertainty.
Grounding for organizations
Grounded leaders support and develop grounding for the organizations they lead. They anchor their organizations by knowing, embodying, and articulating identity and purpose. They build supporting systems to navigate the storms. They communicate a compelling vision for a future that fulfills purpose. They build strategy and culture aligned to that purpose and vision. They build trust, connections, governance, practices, systems, and tools that enable simultaneous execution of strategy and management of the associated risks. They provide for the people in their organizations the anchor and the navigation systems that will reduce or at least counter the perception of threat and enable their parasympathetic nervous systems to maintain dominance, delivering into their bodies the signals and chemicals that will enable healthier states of mind and body and increase motivation, engagement, and performance.
Grounding does not eliminate uncertainty, but it does provide stability and direction that calm the storm within and free leaders and their people to excel.
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