Panic Management: Keep Your Eyes on the Road
Many of us respond with a knee-jerk
reaction when adversity hits, but a more considered approach is better for a
successful resolution. Joshua Margolis discusses the resilience regimen.
The sun was setting and a light snow falling, creating a thin
white blanket that covered the winding two-lane country road stretching in
front of Joshua Margolis, when he suddenly felt his 1992 Volvo give into the
slick surface, pull out of his control, and veer into oncoming traffic.
As he felt panic rise, his wife, sitting in the passenger seat,
said calmly: “It’s going to be fine. Just relax. Exhale. Keep your eyes on the
road.”
The scare was eye-opening for Margolis, perhaps because it
occurred when the United States was still reeling from 9/11 and the economy was
slumping. “That was actually the moment that got me to reflect on how the world
was changing, [including] the world sitting in front of me in classrooms,” said
Margolis, the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business
Administration at Harvard Business School.
He made his remarks at a recent presentation to HBS staff about
how to respond to sticky situations with resilience. The discussion included a
step-by-step walk-through of what to do when seemingly overwhelming adversity
strikes.
“At HBS, we do a great job of teaching students how to build things
… but we really haven’t had much [to offer] when the
stuff really hits the fan. What happens when you’re up against it,
between a rock and a hard place?”
THAT OVERWHELMING FEELING
Those thoughts set him on a journey to learn more about handling
business-related adversity—unexpected obstacles, setbacks, failures, and
disappointments, “situations that outstrip your immediately available set of
resources, knowledge, and skills,” he said.
Managers are faced with significant challenges—a shaky worldwide
economy, an increasingly globalized business world, and technologies that are
constantly changing. Within that dynamic environment, a curveball can come from
anywhere: a portion of their businesses may suddenly dry up, belt-tightening
layoffs may loom, or strategic plans that made sense years ago may need serious
rejiggering to compete in our ever-more-mobile, Internet-dependent society.
Margolis, who co-wrote a Harvard
Business Review article called How
to Bounce Back from Adversity with PEAK
Learning CEO Paul G. Stoltz, looked at how workers could face challenges head
on, by becoming more resilient, building a repertoire of skills that allow them
to recover quickly, and responding constructively to hardships.
“A lot of tough stuff hits us,” he told participants. “If you’re
in this room, you’re facing challenges. People are asking you to do more stuff
with less time. You are managing people who also face hardships and
difficulties the likes of which they have not encountered before. How do I
build my own resilience and how do I foster it in those I’m working with?”
Margolis said that adversity tends to spark a counterproductive
response in many of us: “If the car is spinning out of control, it grips our
jugular of emotion and makes this negative feeling course through our veins. We
feel deflated and victimized,” he said. “We look in the mirror at coulda,
shoulda, woulda, and it’s so much more tasty if we can blame someone.”
When our brains are preoccupied, he continues, we engage in
counterproductive behavior. “We demonize, we retreat from the problem itself
and from others who might provide counsel, and then we redouble those efforts.
We do more and more of the behavior that didn’t help us in the first place.”
None of it helps clean up a workplace mess.
ADVERSITY TOOLKIT
Managers can soup up resilience in themselves as well as their
teams by making a shift in how they size up a challenge. Rather than dwelling
on their misfortune, resilient managers move quickly to develop a plan of
action.
Margolis described a couple quick and simple tools that allow us
to get a better handle on the adversity we face:
·
Write it down: Taking a few minutes to write down a problem
can save all that time you might have spent commiserating with others. The act
of writing allows us to feel distance from the issue and look at it more
clearly.
·
Release your emotional grip on the problem: Based on
a Harvard Business Review article “Pull the Plug on
Stress,” by Bruce Cryer, Rollin McCraty, and Doc Childre, Margolis
recommends you first recognize the emotion you’re feeling, label it, and “give
yourself a time out.” Margolis said. Then put your body into your best posture,
close your eyes, and visualize that you are breathing through your heart.
Third, invoke a positive emotion by thinking of something you’re grateful for
or a joyful memory. (Margolis likes to think of his daughter spinning around
with an expression of glee on her face; or he thinks of a crucial Red Sox game
and a slide into base that turned around a 0-3 deficit for the team.) Finally,
ask yourself what you could do. Drawing on research he’s done with
Francesca Gino and Ting Zhang, Margolis explained, “Asking people to consider
what they could do helps them come up with more thoughtful solutions versus
asking what they should do,” he said.
It's also helpful when adversity strikes to ask questions that
examine the problem, then consider constructive approaches through the lens of
four different dimensions that research on resilience and hardiness identify as
crucial:
1. Control: Which
facets of the situation can you potentially influence? Think about how a person
you emulate and admire would act. Then, work with your team to identify all of
the areas the team can have an impact on.
2. Ownership: Regardless
of your job description, how can you step up to make the most immediate and
positive impact on the issue? Think about what effect your efforts will have on
the people around you. And consider what you can do to encourage those hanging
back to pitch in.
3. Reach: How big
or bad do you think the problem is? Is it something so far-reaching that it may
cast a shadow over all of your activities? Think about what you can do to
address the potential pitfalls, as well as what you can do to maximize the
potential upside. Baby steps count, so even if you can come up with something
that improves the situation by just 10 percent, that’s progress. Consider the
strengths and resources you and your team can develop by addressing the issue.
Identify with your team what each person can do to increase the chances that
things will work out.
4. Endurance: How
long do you think the situation will last? Think about what you’d like the
business to look like on the other side of the obstacle. Consider what you can
do in the next four hours to move in that direction. Develop a series of steps
and an ongoing process for dealing with the setback. Keep your team members
informed and ask for their input.
HELPING OTHERS OVER THE HUMP
When it comes to coaching, even resilient managers often have
trouble helping staff members deal with a crisis. Many supervisors react with a
soft, reassuring, and consoling approach, while others opt for a harder
pep-talk method with a how-to guide for moving forward.
The problem: Those responses won’t equip your employees to deal
with the next unexpected twist or turn.
It’s better to take a collaborative approach by asking employees
questions to get them thinking about how they can take steps toward resolving
their own issues. It’s a subtle role shift: As a manager, rather than looking
at your job as putting someone on your back and getting them over the hill, you
are changing your approach to: How can we use this hill to build your
capacity to get over the next one?
“You’re not trying to fix someone,” Margolis said. “[You’re
saying]: ‘It’s no longer my job as a coach to solve this for you. Let me help
you use this as an opportunity to build your own capability to get stronger
over time.’”
by Dina Gerdeman
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/panic-management-keep-your-eyes-on-the-road?cid=spmailing-13280167-WK%20Newsletter%2008-10-2016%20(1)-August%2010,%202016
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