Leadership coach Shawn Ellis argues leaders must address team emotions before strategy works. He outlines three steps: model certainty without pretending everything is fine, let people feel their emotions, and teach concrete skills to help them choose their responses. Certainty is an internal state, not dependent on what's happening around you.
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We can't jump into the strategy before first addressing the feeling that's underneath it. We've got to be able to come from those disempowering feelings of fear and anxiety to move into an empowered state of resourcefulness and confidence and certainty that will allow us to move forward. And that is exactly what I'm here to help you with. My name is Shawn Ellis, and for the last 15 years, this has been the nature of my work— coming alongside people and organizations organizations in difficult times, to help them rise up, to help them rise up in the face of uncertainty, adversity, and change, to shift from surviving to thriving. Because it's very easy to go into survival mode right now, but we can't afford to do that. We can't afford to wait 3 months, 6 months, a year to see how all this shapes up. We've got to figure out how to move forward right now, and the answer is one moment at a time. So let me share with you 3 ways that you can spread certainty to your team right now. You can start this immediately. Step number 1 is to model certainty. You see, your people are looking to you for a model in the midst of all this uncertainty. And that doesn't mean they're looking for you to say, "Hey, everything's okay. It's all gonna be fine." Like, if you do that, they're gonna know that that is not the truth. That is not sincere because they can see everything is not fine right now. They're not looking for you to pretend. They're looking for you to show them what calm and clarity and confidence looks like right now. To recognize that, hey, no, everything is not okay. It's all upside down, but hey, as your leader, I'm going to show you what it looks like to approach this with calm, clarity, and confidence. Which of course puts more responsibility on you as a leader to take care of yourself, to show up in that way. But what you model to your people, they will mirror. So the first step to spread certainty is to model certainty. The second step is to let them know, to give them permission to feel what they're feeling, to let them know it's okay to feel fear right now. Like, it's natural. You would not be human if you didn't feel fear or anxiety or sadness or whatever it may be. To create that safe space, because that safety is going to breed certainty. If they know they're in a safe space, they're gonna feel more comfortable, they're gonna feel more certainty. So we start with that. And then step number 3 is once they know that's a safe space and that you care about them, step number 3 is to help them develop skills to rise up out of those feelings. Help them develop skills and strategies to meet the fear, to meet all the limiting, disempowering beliefs that are coming up inside them right now, the thoughts that are weighing them down. Help them rise up out of anxiety? And you see, the answer is that certainty that we seek is not in our circumstances. It was never in our circumstances in the first place. We just got lulled into believing that it was. But the certainty that we seek, the certainty your team members seek, is not in the circumstances, but it's within themselves. It's realizing that I have the power to choose to control my experience. In the midst of all this uncertainty, I still control how I show up and how I respond. I have the ability to choose my thoughts, to choose my focus, to choose my action in this moment. None of us chose this world that we're in right now, but we all get to choose how we move forward, and in that we can find certainty. And again, that's exactly what I'm here to help you with. You don't have to go at this alone. We've got solutions ranging from coaching programs to virtual sessions where we can speak with your entire team and help them cultivate these skills to rise up in the face of the uncertainty. We've got pre-recorded videos. We've got a number of solutions. Again, this is exactly what that I've been doing through my program, Mastering the Moments to Rise and Thrive. We've been developing new solutions to meet you in this new space because we know normally we would say, hey, let's come to your team and let's get everybody rallied together and help them rise up. Now, of course, we can't do that, but thankfully we do have other solutions with the benefit of technology so we can meet one-on-one or with the team virtually. So again, You don't have to do this alone. You don't have to have all the answers. I know that you are feeling fear and anxiety and all those sorts of feelings yourself. So let us come alongside you. We'd be honored to help you. Just reach out. Let's have a conversation about what solution would be best for you, and let's all rise up together because we are definitely stronger together than we are alone in this time, and I would love to support you. Take good care of yourself. Be well, and I hope to talk to you soon.
