Leigh Thomas Brown argues that leaders in chaos need bold communication: show up and listen, admit what you don't know, share accurate information fast to kill rumors. Confidence comes from standing firm and consulting experts. Teams don't want polished press releases. They want their leader present.
When it seems like everything is falling apart, and you are caught up in a whirlwind of chaos and disruption, your team does not need polish, and they don't need a press release. They need you. And when they need you, what they need is bold communication, which looks like truth delivered with confidence. That's pretty much what it boils down to, y'all. In today's world, the news cycle moves so quickly and so aggressively. That people can feel exhausted just by turning on social networks. And you're the one in front of your organization, so you don't have the luxury of sitting back on the couch and waiting for somebody else to figure it out, because guess what? You are the somebody else. Now, when we talk about being in front of your team, here's what that looks like. Number 1, getting off the couch and being available. There are so many leaders right now that are afraid to speak because they don't want to make a mistake. Y'all, life isn't about being perfect. Life is about the mistakes that you make. When you make them with your own sense of humility and honesty, you're actually going to be forgiven when something has happened as a misstep. But what you're not going to be forgiven for is being unavailable and ghosting your entire team who works so hard for you. That availability also means being able to answer questions and listen to questions. Maybe you don't have all the answers, but when you hear what the concerns are, you actually if you just got a blueprint for how you can make people feel more confident so that you can achieve the goals you were already striving for. Your answers might lie right within your own team if you show up for it. Now, when I mentioned that what they need is also confidence, it takes confidence to stand in front of people in a time of chaos and not know the answers. But friends, we weren't designed to know all the answers. We were designed to grow. And growth looks like finding other experts when you need one. I do know that in structural real estate, we are in a big moment of disruption right now. We don't know what it's going to look like to help people buy and sell real estate a year and 2 years from now, because everything's changing. Whether you're looking at hedge fund money coming into the game, virtual businesses, or you're looking at the legal outcomes of what's going on with the government, those are out of the control of the everyday practitioner. So how do they get confidence? Well, sometimes they get it from the leaders being able to talk to them. Just showing up and saying, "I'm still here. I'm going to keep showing up, and you can too." Confidence can be transferred. It is one of the most important transferable skills that we have, yet we often talk about it as though it's going to be generated from within. Not everybody can generate confidence from within. But when you are the leader who's available, and you've got your shoulders back, and you've got some information, they're going to say, "I can put my shoulders back too. I can absorb that information so that I can move forward." And then that third piece of that bold communication strategy, it involves truth, which means if you don't know the answers, you've got to go get them. Because we do know a very important thing about the world right now. When people don't have the truth, they will invent their own version. That's the last thing your organization needs is rumors and gossip mill making things up. Or in that lovely quote that's attributed to Benjamin Franklin, although it's been said he didn't say it, "A lie can make its way around the world while the truth is still getting its pants on." That is what happens when you don't have your information ready and available and in front of your people with the confidence of knowing that you gave them good information. I will tell you, the space that you're in right now may get smoother. It may start operating on all cylinders without a hitch, and it may continually reinvent its own chaos. No matter which path you're in, somebody's going to come out the other end as a success. My suggestion is, You be the kind of leader who doesn't just make it to the other side of the chaos, you take your entire team with you. Because when you are doing good with your product and service, somebody benefits from you surviving. So get that communication plan together and get back out there. You got this.
