As the world struggles to fitfully recover from the recession, many leaders are confronting a “new normal”–the prospect of slow growth with limited resources for what could be many years to come.  Managing in this post-crisis environment is a different leadership challenge and requires a new mindset.  To help navigate these uncertain times, here are some fundamental practices that never let you down:

• Lead with questions, not with answers.  Leading exceptional companies does not mean coming up with all the answers first and motivating everyone to agree with your assumptions.  It means having the humility to graps the fact that sometimes you don’t have all the answers and then ask questions that lead to the best possible insights.
• Engage in dialogue, not coercion.  All great managers have a penchant for intense debates and healthy conflict.  There are few “sacred cows” that can’t be challenged.
• Conduct autopsies without blame.  Superior leaders must taken an honest lo0k at the decisions the organization makes, rather than simply assigning blame for the outcomes of those decisions when things go wrong.
• Build red-flag mechanisms that turn incoming and adverse data into information that cannot be discounted or ignored.  Great leaders continually update their picture of reality and cultivate a “sense and respond” culture.

If leaders do these things, they stand a greater chance to thrive during these tough times, not merely survive.

“Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you’re the source of all knowledge.” –Jack Welch
As managers, we want to encourage our associates to be creative. One way to achieve this is by our being open to new ideas associates may have, and never feeling threatened by their innovative or creative impulse.
Great bosses learn from their associates. In the best scenario, all your people will be smarter than the boss. That doesn’t mean you can’t lead them!

Management experts are always in search of the “magic” bullet for leadership.  Does a set of common, universal set of attributes exist which can outline the components of effective leadership?  Well, one such study, conducted by Robert J. House and 160 scholars claims there is.  In the book, Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: the GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, House and his colleagues report the results of their survey of over 17, 000 managers working in 951 companies in the banking, food processing, and telecommunication sectors. They also compiled information on cultures of the 62 nations surveyed, and they theorized that what would be valued among leaders in each of these countries would depend much on their national cultures. What they discovered was the contrary.

Instead, House’s team found that four leadership attributes are, indeed, valued universally and cut across all cultures. These four attributes are:

1. Being trustworthy and honest. That’s not a surprise, since virtually every leadership theory has some component of integrity associated with it.  Integrity or ethics seems to be a threshold attribute of leadership.  Essentially, if a leader does not maintain some semblance of a strong moral fiber, all of the other characteristics can be tainted. Recalling past scandals focusing on high-ranking company officials like Kenneth Lay, former chairman and CEO of Enron, or the most recent scandal revolving around Bernie Madoff, it seems obvious that what brought these leaders down was an issue of character or integrity. Why is integrity so important? Quite simply, we “lead from who we are.”  All of our behavior emanates from a moral underpinning, and if that underpinning is tainted, the behaviors of the leader will subsequently follow.
2. Seeing and planning ahead—vision. Leaders must have a future-oriented focus and be able to recognize patterns in the marketplace early in the game. Leaders have to be able to “see around corners” and anticipate future trends before they become mainstream and obvious. Unless leaders can position their organizations for the future, they and their organizations will always be playing catch-up, and thereby missing opportunities to gain market share and stay ahead of the competition.
3. Being optimistic, dynamic, and inspiring. The old Texan saying, “You can’t light a fire with a wet match,” embodies the spirit of having people excited and committed to the efforts of the enterprise. If employees are not fully engaged and excited about the future of the organization, no amount of management techniques can overcome the mediocre productivity that accompanies a workforce that is not energized on the job.  And who sets the tone for all this positive energy and inspiration? That responsibility rests with the leader, for it is the leader who sets the pace of the pack.
4. Communicating, informing, and coordinating the efforts of others. It goes without saying that if folks don’t understand the expectations of the leader and are not given the resources to succeed, they can’t fulfill their optimal potential. Great leadership requires great communication that keeps people informed of expectations as well as changes in their environment. It’s hard to keep people energized and focused on the future if they are kept out of the loop and unable to understand the decisions being made that affect them.

Those four attributes form the foundation of effective leadership, regardless of culture. From those four emerges an organization that is poised and ready for the future. The question we need to ask ourselves is, “How do we stack up against those four?”

I wanted to share the latest research from the University of Amsterdam highlighting one of the concepts discussed regarding the importance of inspiration during turbulent times.  Dr. Gerben van Kleef and five coauthors have confirmed what many of us intuitively suspect, which is that we get better results by cheering people on rather than coming down hard on them when people feel stressed.  What the research revealed is that mental fatigue and time pressure during stressful periods make team members more apt to simply react to the leaders’ mood rather than the actual message of the leader.  In other words, the team members initially pick up the tone of the message and the underlying emotion behind it.  If they pick up anger or frustration from the leaders’ tone, they become nervous and less productive.  Conversely, if they pick up inspiration from the leaders’ tone, they become more engaged and productive.

While all of this may seem obvious to leaders, remember that during times of uncertainty and stress, leaders often are incapable of monitoring how they are coming across to others.  In essence, their own fears and concerns are exhibited unconsciously despite their best intentions.

So how do we avoid falling prey to this phenomenon?  First, before addressing the troops, get in touch with your own emotional turmoil to prevent sending the wrong message to your team.  Recent data from Zenger/Folkman indicates that during tough times, leaders make sins of both commission (they’re abrasive or bullying) and omission (they’re aloof and unavailable.)   Either one of these sins will further disengage team members at a time when they are looking to you for inspiration and direction.

Second, after your have regulated and managed your own emotions, you can now deliver your message in a way that motivates and inspires.  The bottom line: Manage yourself before Leading others! Don’t communicate your message until you are prepared to deliver it in a manner that empowers and engages others.  Keep in mind that people look to their leaders not just to assign them a task, but to give them a sense of hope in the future.