We all experience and manage uncertainty every day (high five to us!). But the year 2020 was a special kind of uncertainty; an in-your-face constant kind of uncertainty that many of us had never experienced. And the reactions to last year’s uncertainty have been wide and varied: from a momentary feeling of self-doubt to a loud inner voice yelling, “I am SO not qualified to do this!”; quick and decisive action to complete inaction; and/or an emotionally charged reaction to a measured and thoughtful response.

My go-to mantra when I am wrestling with uncertainty is to start with me. And, as we’re moving through 2021 and towards the light at the end of this global pandemic tunnel, I am doubling down on this mantra. Here’s why.

This road is long, and I expect we will all continue to experience the peaks and valleys of emotional exhaustion. Leaders that I have talked with have expended more energy this past year than ever before to create connections, check-in, listen, and lift people up. And that is a great thing! But it can come at a cost, and that is their own well-being. So be a kind leader to others AND, especially be a kind leader to yourself. Take the time to check-in with yourself, give yourself a break, and cut yourself some slack. It’s like the airplane safety speech (if you can remember back to airplane travel) when the flight attendant tells us that in the event of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first and then you can help others.

How will you pace yourself now in 2021? What new ways of working or leading will become your new normal?

You don't need to have all of the answers. One important lesson that has come out of these COVID-19 times is that we don't need to solve problems alone. Organizations that harnessed the collective intelligence of their workforce and who let go of that “I need to be an expert” mindset were able to shift quickly and figure things out in new and creative ways.

As companies move into and through recovery, leaders will continue to face new uncertainties. And because none of us has ever seen the other side of a global pandemic, there is no template for how to be or what to do. When decisions and problem solving seem hard, consider thinking about your approach as an experiment. Come up with a hypothesis and then try something new; observe what happens, what works, and what doesn't. Then adjust or scrap it altogether. My hope for work-life post-COVID-19 is that we continue to rely on the collective intelligence of our colleagues and focus on asking questions more than needing to have the answers.

How will you stay adaptable? What are the outdated ways of thinking that your organization successfully let go of in 2020? What changes did you make during COVID-19 that you want to keep? How can you make them stick?

When it comes to conversations (with one or with many), you only control 50 per cent of them. This is an underlying idea of my start with you mantra. And if we accept that this statement is true, then it makes sense to focus on the parts of the conversation that we have control over.

As we continue to lead through and out of these COVID-19 times, I suspect that the pattern of second-guessing your decisions, how you communicate, what employees need, how you connect, and so on, will continue. The pressure to get it right and satisfy everyone is real.

As you move through this uncertainty, consider 1) taking the time to unpack your own thoughts, feelings, and observations; 2) getting clear on your why; 3) asking yourself who you want to be in this moment; and 4) determining what you need to let go of. I hope that this relieves some of the pressure. And remember, you will sometimes get it wrong, you can’t anticipate every reaction, and you can always course correct.

Self-reflection is input to self-awareness, and self-awareness hopefully leads to meaningful action. I recently heard someone say that self-awareness is a baseline skill for leaders; what is more important and impactful is what we do with that self-awareness. Events that happened in the last year have shone a very bright light on things that many of us weren’t previously aware of or maybe were too busy and distracted to notice. And while it may feel uncomfortable to look into that light, I am hopeful that we have all now seen things that can’t be unseen.

What did you open your eyes to in 2020? What ways of thinking and working have you let go of? What else do you need to let go of?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on leading through uncertainty in 2021. Send me a message or connect with me on LinkedIn.