Elastigirl To The Rescue?
The emotional tailspin I hear leaders grappling with during this pandemic is rivaling the swings and sways of our stock market and news cycles. Fear and uncertainty looms. So much is unknown about when and how we’ll all be able to get safely back to work.
Will your family survive? Will your team survive? Will your business survive?
This kind of chaos and uncertainty has a way of shining a spotlight directly on your leadership edges.
In those first few days of the pandemic, I could feel the creeping in of my old, reactive habits. How my body grows large and taut when faced with adversity. Like the superhero mom Elastigirl, from The Incredibles, I could feel my wingspan stretching, wrapping and shielding those around me, seeking to protect who I can from impending doom and uncertainty.
With the threats of a shutdown looming, in mid-March I met with the small business owners and CEOs in my local Vistage peer groups. Pooling our collective wisdom and experience, we devoted much of the meeting to discussing potential risks, mitigations and contingency plans.
As I finished up the last of those meetings, I received a text that our local schools were closing. The first wave of the shutdown was rolling up to my own front door bringing with it excitement, for the freedom my kids envisioned, and the bewilderment of navigating school work packets, workspace logistics, and multiple schedules.
More problem solving, anticipation, and staring into the unknown.
My Elastigirl’s tendency to buffer and brace against difficulties keeps me, my team, my clients, and my family steady and focused. It fosters a sense of stability that aids in the creative brainstorm of possibilities and opportunities when things seem bleak and chaotic.
Yet it has its price.
When I’m actively in this way of being, I ride on bottled emotions and anxious energy. For a short sprint, this may work. But after days and weeks of this heightened state, I will crash into my own emotional tailspin. My crash came on that Sunday morning, when I was sitting on the couch next to my daughter, watching my church’s quickly cobbled together online worship service. I slowed down, soaked in the surreality of the moment, and wept.
Elastigirl rides on a belief system that “it’s all on my shoulders.” Isolating and heavy for me, it also doesn’t fully invite others into the fray. And one thing I’ve learned by working with peer groups for over a decade is that we go farther when we go together. When the world feels upended, this can be hard for my body to remember.
I don’t have to have all the answers.
And, neither do you.
Standing here, reflecting back over the past six weeks, there was so much that couldn’t have been known or anticipated. Projects are getting canceled as other clients are demanding services. Employees are afraid of getting sick and some are refusing to work. Staying connected to a virtual workforce is a challenge as is ensuring employee safety with dwindling supplies of PPE gear. Cash reserves are drying up. Some businesses have had to shutter completely. Really good, smart, and capable employees have been let go.
Your team and your clients are looking to you for direction.
In the chaos and uncertainty, emotions run high. As a leader, your old, reactive habits can have a way of creeping back in, waking you up in the middle of the night, sneaking in as you sit on the couch next to your daughter, disintegrating you into an emotional tailspin.
Leveling emotional tailspin invites creative energy, intuition, and hope to take root, flourish, and grow. This is true for you and your team.
As leaders we’ve often been taught to hide our vulnerabilities under a mask of stoicism. Channeling a superhero can release the focus and energy needed to meet a challenge in the short-term. Yet, the emotions that triggered the defensive can still linger and fester underneath.
Learning to ground emotionally starts with naming what’s rising. By taking down your mask and meeting yourself, and others, as fully human – with all your complex emotions, vulnerabilities, and superpowers – you can establish the collective fortitude needed to weather the storm together.
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Leadership Development Practices to help you engage with these concepts in your own leadership development journey:
Naming Your Inner Superhero: This week pay attention to the rise of your own superpowers when faced with chaos and uncertainty. When adversity strikes, what superhero shows up in your system? How does this way of being serve you and your team? Which emotions is it there to protect?
How can you carve out space to take down the mask and let the underlying emotions be what they are? Not clinging to them and not pushing them away, but giving them space to flow in, be honored, and flow out. How can you offer this space to your team?
