Managing Team Energy During Adversity
By Russell Hunter

September is often a time of change for many individuals and organizations. But this year seems exceptionally turbulent for many of our clients. Whether its concerns about merger transitions, massive org restructuring, or shifts in government ministry portfolios - they all trigger some challenging thoughts and emotions.

Everyone faces fears, doubts and obstacles. But how we respond to them will define our leadership legacy. How to ordinary people become extraordinary leaders under extraordinary conditions?

In 1994 two unthinkable tragedies occurred on the University of South Florida's division one tennis team. Within the span of two months, a member of the team, and the coach's own son died. In a remarkable example of personal leadership, the team captain rallied the players to support the coach and his family in their grieving, pushed them to continue to work hard, and encouraged them to remain focused and positive despite the pain and confusion. Through his leadership, the deaths unified the team, deepened their character, compassion, commitment, and focus on each member. The team finished with an unprecedented top-20 division one national ranking.

How was this achieved?

It begins by first creating the right story.

Underlying all four dimensions of team energy (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) are our stories. Great leaders understand that the stories they tell others about adversity, and how they communicate it, are often more important than the events themselves. Our energy, both individual and collective, follows our stories.

There are three important elements within our control when adversity hits:

1. What we choose to focus on in the event
2. The meaning the attribute to what we focus on
3. How we choose to respond based on that meaning

Different stories can be crafted from the same facts and can profoundly affect the individual and team dynamics. Stories can leave team members feeling inspired, challenged, and hopeful, or frightened, frustrated, and discouraged.

In the case of the USF tennis team's situation, here were the facts:

1. A member of the team had died.
2. The coaches son died in an accident
3. The team and the coach were devastated by the losses.
4. Because of his son's death, the coach was unable to attend many practices and some matches.
5. Team members felt overwhelmed by a mixture of sadness, confusion, and shock.

Based on this, here are two different stories that could be communicated from these same facts:

Version one:

Two unthinkable tragedies have occurred that devastated our coach and us as team members. The season will not be cancelled, but the coach, as everyone understands, must tend to his family and be given time to heal and grieve. He will not be available for a number of practices and matches. Do whatever you can to get through this and, should you be unable to play given the tragedies, let your conditioning coach know before any match. I recognize that many of you had high hopes for this season, but things occur in life that are beyond our control. This is a very sad time. Do your best to get through it.

Version two:

Two unthinkable tragedies have occurred that devastated our coach and us as team members. The season will not be cancelled, but the coach, as everyone understands, must tend to his family and be given time to heal and grieve. He will not be available for a number of practices and matches. Life events like this push us to the very edge of our capacity as human beings. They can cause us to reexamine and question nearly ever part of our lives. In times like these, turn to your core values to guide you. Focus on the things that mean the most to you to help find your way - family, compassion, kindness, faith, courage, and hope.

If we turn to each other in this crisis and face the tragedies as a unit, neither you, nor the season need to become lost. One of the most helpful things you can do for the coach is to continue to work hard, stay focused, and complete our mission as a team. What is needed is great personal courage and leadership.

The coach and this University need you to step up and continue to move forward. I need everyone of you to pull together and become extraordinary leaders. It is times like this that we build and reveal out character and strength as human beings. If we pull together, we will make it through this.

So which story which story is more effective?

As human beings we never have all the information on any given event that occurs - only our perception. The reality we experience is filtered by our senses and once that reality is perceived, we give it meaning and interpretation. We build our story around the facts as we know them, and extraordinary leadership requires the "right" story to be told.

Here are three rules of engagement for storytelling in adversity:

1. The story should reflect the team's core values and sense of purpose.
2. The story should represent the truth (facts) as fully as possible.
3. The story should leave those who are being led with a sense of hope.

The first version of the story above only followed the second rule of story telling, but the second story followed all three rules. Which of these stories do you find more motivating and why?

Take a moment to think about your own story telling habits with your team. Recall a story you told when the team faced a serious challenge or disappointment. Write it down, then review the three rules of story telling. Did it pass the test? How could it be improved?

Managing team energy based on your story

Now let's look at this extraordinary example of leadership in the context of the four dimensions of energy management. How was each dimension of energy managed in light of the right story?

Spiritual leadership in Adversity

Leadership begins at the top of the energy management pyramid (spirit). In this case, the team captain's spiritual leadership centered on using personal and team values as the starting point for making decisions and taking action during the crisis. Issues of character, compassion, strength and commitment served as rallying points for doing the right things at the right time. Team members responded courageously because the captain's decisions stemmed from their shared values and beliefs.

Extraordinary leadership from a spiritual perspective requires clarity of vision, purpose, mission, and decision making, and a code of conduct based on shared core values. In essence, the captain communicated, "This is how we can respond to each other and the world in this crisis."

Mental leadership in Adversity

In terms of mental leadership, the team captain kept the team focused and thinking clearly in spite of the shock and confusion surrounding the tragedies. He openly faced the truth about the reality of what had happened, neither denying not exaggerating it, and remained reality based in his discussions about the events.

Realizing that the events might disrupt the team's focus and concentration, he encouraged everyone to intensify their resolve to be mentally prepared and to show the coach and each other that if they worked together, they could work through this difficult time. He set the pace and modeled this in his behaviour.

Emotional leadership in Adversity

The core issue of emotional leadership is helping team members recruit emotions that best serve the team's mission, such as optimism, hope, and confidence. By linking the tragedy to their core values, helping them stay focused, and giving meaning to the tragedy relative to their values, the team captain kept everyone from becoming engulfed in energy debilitating feelings of fear, anger and disillusionment.

Hidden within the turmoil and discomfort of tragedy are opportunities or expanding team and individual emotional limits. For this team, the crisis offered the opportunity to show extraordinary compassion and caring for the deceased team member's family, as well as for the coach and his family. It also pushed them to find the courage to move forward with their lives and their team's mission.

Pushed well beyond their emotional comfort zone, team members used the crisis to reflect on their own emotional limits and achieve new levels of emotional depth and maturity.

Physical leadership in adversity

When adversity strikes, energy supportive performance rituals such as eating light and often, or getting exercise, can easily be disrupted. Healthy patterns of sleep, rest and recovery are often abandoned resulting in depleted energy reserves. This then erodes the quality and focus of energy - a vicious cycle can develop. When this happens any mission becomes threatened.

In this case, the team leader's behavioral integrity was critical. He trained hard, adhered to eating, hydration and sleeping schedules. Team members followed not because they were told, but because the path was modeled for them.

So often our team members toss aside performance rituals that manage their physical energy when the demands of life or work push them beyond their normal comfort limits. But these times are precisely when rituals and routines are most valuable.

Conclusion

Human energy is the foundation of high performance; and as a consequence, we must make difficult choices about how to invest and renew that energy. Great leaders help team members mobilize the energy required for success. It begins with crafting the right story, and flows through the management of all four dimensions of energy in an integrated manner. This is the path from ordinary to extraordinary, regardless of whatever adversity we may face.

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TAKING ACTION THIS MONTH:
Take a moment to think about your own story telling habits with your team. Recall a story you told when the team faced a serious challenge or disappointment. Write it down, then review the three rules of story telling. Did it pass the test? How could it be improved?

View other articles in September 08 Issue                      Back to Performance Pulse Archives

RESOURCES:
Power of Story  :  Power of Full Engagement  :  Corporate Athlete  :  Reports  :  Articles