I recently completed an assignment for my Post-grad certificate and it taught me so much that I just had to share what I learned with you.

The question was “How might ideas and theories of social psychology help create ‘better’ leaders?”

My take on the question is preceded by the notion, that the effectiveness of a leader shouldn’t be measured by their ability to lead in the good times, but rather, during the tough times. Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela are three figures that spring to mind as beacons shining light on what leaders should aspire to be like during difficult times.

We are currently going through a difficult time. I mean, a lot of us are building resilience towards our current situation, but without a good leader, it’s easy to lose your way.

Here are 6 ways you can lead ‘better’ in a crisis:

1. Recognise a VUCA environment:

VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Globalisation and the intricacies of each industry create a certain level of VUCA environment and a lot also depends on how each individual interprets the world around us. Without question, our current Covid situation and heightened every component of VUCA. Recognise and empathise with your team on how the VUCA environment is affecting them personally and identify which areas you have the capacity to influence the most. It will take time for people to identify that the environment has started to settle, so make sure you ‘rewind and repeat’ the empathy and the prevailing support you provide them.

2. Learn about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

https://www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571

People respond with an increasing level of urgency and reactivity when the VUCA environment is one that may impact their “Physiological needs”. This is why we saw people hoarding toilet paper – they’re just protecting themselves. The needs of your team will follow this order as well. Once they recognise their health is as safe as possible, they then need security and then a sense of belonging.

3. Uncertainty-Identity Theory

This theory of social psychology describes the way one identifies their sense of self in association with the groups around that they have the most affinity towards. If people have a leader that makes them feel safe, supported, and accepted followed by providing clarity, purpose, and direction, they will tend to identify themselves as being part of that leader’s group. People then tend to mimic other members of the group as that is interpreted as the accepted way of behaving – this is clearly seen in people copying others behaviour crowding beaches, going and stocking up on essentials, and wearing masks when they are isolating inside their own car.

4. Balance what’s happening externally with what happens internally

It’s easy for business leaders to mimic other leaders (as per uncertainty-identity theory), but it’s kind of like copying someone’s exam answer – they can be wrong as well. So pretty soon we see the ‘blind leading the blind’ in business. It’s important, as ‘better’ leaders, to identify with what your team is seeing externally, and address that with a clear direction internally coupled with valid justification. Easily followable processes – such as social distancing – and a monitoring system to be able to enforce the process as we go along. Standing proud and sprooking your stance externally so you can not only lead internally but also intervene and allow others to follow your lead as well.

6 ways you can lead ‘better’ in a crisis

5. Adopt an ‘autocratic’ leadership style

This is typically the least favourable of Lewin’s leadership styles in business leadership across the board. However, in a VUCA environment and to provide a sense of belonging and be looked at as a leader, it seems to be in favour. Employing a direct, authoritative tone and pragmatic attitude.

You can utilise lessons 1-4, but it seems the secret ingredient is the style and the approach. This approach comes naturally for some (myself included – has a lot to do with my upbringing), and less so for others, but at the very least, you need to be direct during a crisis.

6. Explain your vision

Your team doesn’t know what’s in your head. They want to be led by you. Help them see what you can see as a visionary. Where will we end up? What might it look like? What are we preparing for? The future can’t be promised, it’s arrival can… What are we hoping for? Your team is relying on you to impart your dream so that the treadmill leads somewhere – so that after all this is done and we can go back to ‘normal’, that it will all be worthwhile.

So, these are 6 ways you can lead ‘better’ in a crisis. It is imperative that you understand the crisis’ impact on your team first and provide empathy; followed by addressing the first 3 tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; concurrently assessing the external environment and formulate a plan for how you will respond internally; provide a very clear and simple process that you can uphold; provide a sense of clarity, purpose, and direction and create a sense of group belonging; be direct; articulate what things might look like on the other side.

Client after client, you’re meant to know what the problem is and how to solve it. There’s something thrilling about solving someone’s problem. In the case of health professionals, it often involves people that are in pain. The problem is so involved and affects so many aspects of the person’s life, that when you solve it, the gratitude you receive is far greater than the effort you put into solving it.

Most health practitioners I have spoken to (hundreds), say they just really love to help people. I suppose, if you’re a health professional and you didn’t have a drive to help people then maybe you’d be in the wrong profession… But don’t most professions help people to some extent? For me, ‘helping people’ just doesn’t cut it as a true reason why you want to deal with health issues.

People always tend to have an event they refer back to – for me, I hurt my back at the age of 15 and went to a Chiro who sorted it out for me. I was in awe of the white coat, the way I felt looked after, the pain relief. I knew I wanted to do that too, but I hadn’t identified the emotional need that the experience satisfied.

The decisions you make about your life most often come from a fulfilment of an emotional need. Emotional needs are otherwise thought of as your values. Your values come about by your subconscious beliefs and these dive deeper than surface reasoning like – “I just want to help people”.

I had never identified my driving purpose – and so I got addicted to helping people.. Sadly not because of helping people, but because it satisfied the addiction. It made me cynical, arrogant, harsh. It’s because I would use it to fuel a sense of significance for my existence. That if everything that was happening didn’t position me as an expert, then I’d have failed to be the expert.

Diving into my own emotions and questioning myself strongly enough, is when I started to get closer to the true reasons why I wanted to get into Chiro in the first place.

Why was I in awe of the white coat?

Why did I want to make people feel cared for?

Why did I want to relieve people of pain?

I realised that I was inspired and educated. That’s why I want to make a difference to people’s lives, as it is my contribution.

I care much less about the significance I feel but more whether or not I’ve helped someone achieve a breakthrough.

It’s changed my conversations, my intention and has helped me really appreciate all the amazing relationships I have around me.

So, dear allied health practitioners.. I hear you ask, “how will doing personal development help me in the clinic?”

My answer to you is – it will help you in your entire life – as it has changed mine.

People can tell that I’m curious, and I love to search for the truth in things. There’s no denying though, there are some ‘truths’ I prefer over others. There’s an internal rumble when I hear something I don’t agree with – even if I haven’t figured out why yet.

“So what do you think is really going on here?”

I’ve been asked this question so many times with respect to the spread of this pandemic. Was it planned?

What’s the real agenda?

Should we go into lockdown?

Do you think all our measures are an overreaction?

I recently wrote about Hofstede’s “Uncertainty Avoidance” and I strongly believe people want the ‘truth’ to mitigate their avoidance of the uncertainty that they are faced with. People are looking to connect with others that share their beliefs. So many speculations and ALL of them are subject to confirmation bias. You look for what you believe to be true.

“It’s written in the bible”

“They just want to create another vaccine”

“They want to roll out 5G”

…..whatever it may be…..

In Winston Churchill’s famous words “Never waste a good crisis” – our governing bodies would be stupid not to use this for some benefit (and if they don’t and we will label it ‘weak leadership’)

Coincidences are always convenient – but they can be misleading. My experience as a Chiropractor has taught me not to assume causation or correlation just because two separate things coexist. In Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent work Talking to Strangers he refers to this as “coupling” – people will tend to associate an action only in a particular setting. I wonder how many ‘truths’ people are buying into because they are “coupling” it with our current COVID-19 pandemic?

I care deeply about the truth, because it affects humanity – and my experience as a human within it. Often, when I search for it, it leaves me feeling unsatisfied and helpless. It’s like an interconnected bottomless pit.

No matter how hard you search, you will always fall short of answering all your questions. All you can do is fill that void with speculations and malevolence of those that control the globe. Instead, try to fill the void with faith. It takes courage, which is why I’ll encourage you to believe in an optimistic view of the world – that things will get better from here. Become the owner of the belief that you can prosper in the toughest environments and you just need to learn how.

I’ll stay intrigued and curious in my search for ‘the truth’ – but it’s not MY truth.

“The devil you know is better than the one you don’t” – is a saying that’s been tracked as far back as the 1500’s AD. Individual people and societies have been dealing with uncertainty for millennia – and could not be more pertinent right now. An unprecedented pandemic has spread throughout the world stopping everyone and everything in its tracks.

The uncertainty in the world is at a scale none of us have seen and are unlikely to ever see again..

The news is constantly repeating the same headlines – yet people keep watching. The same questions remain unanswered.

People are burying their heads in the sand and acting like the pandemic is ‘out of sight out of mind’ – the most avoidant way of dealing with uncertainty..

Why do people act in such illogical ways when it comes to uncertainty?

Why do people choose to stay in jobs they don’t like – but prefer to complain about them.

Same goes for relationships.

Why do some people want to know so many of the details?

If someone needs to get their health in order, why do they avoid the doctor until something bad happens – burying their heads in the sand?

But then, some people are comfortable with not knowing everything and can stay calm whilst they negotiate new things they’ve never done before..

Geert Hofstede conducted a worldwide questionnaire of the company IBM between 1967-1973 and identified some ground-breaking tendencies – one of which was coined “Uncertainty Avoidance”.

“Uncertainty Avoidance” is a scale of how comfortable one is when dealing with something that is ambiguous or in how they manage a situation where there is no specific clear outcome. We all have varying levels of uncertainty avoidance, and people like to manage their uncertainty by watching the news, planning, reading reports, reiterating the same issues or dissecting the same problem. They can also seem very avoidant of issues they really need to address – like losing weight, getting a blood test or pretending to be happy in a relationship saying – “anyway, it should be ok – things will get better”.

Right now, the uncertainty of our future in terms of this pandemic’s impact on public health, our economy, global politics, globalisation of industrialisation and many more matters, could not be any higher.

People have been flooding to buy toilet paper – as that gives them certainty.

They buy enough food to last them a month – as that gives them certainty.

The discontent of staying at home as that’s a disruption to the certainty of their routine.

What I find interesting, is that despite any single person having a scrap of understanding about how to handle a global situation like this – people are saying “Just put us in lockdown so we can slow the spread” – really all they are asking for is certainty.

In uncertain times, people like a decisive leader. Decisions help put them out of mental pain. It eases the uncertainty because now – “the devil they know is better than the one they don’t”

“Just put me out of my misery so I can move forward.”

There are 12 agreed characteristics of a leader. Courage is one of them.

It takes courage to make a decision.

Which one would you be…

The leader that takes their troops through a battle. The leader that will manage their troops’ language, behaviours, attitudes and beliefs to help them stay strong to reach an outcome. The leader that will manage the uncertainty themselves, and still provide the troops with certainty to keep them calm, supported and focused. The leader that will back themselves and the decision they’ve made, even if it is an unpopular one. The leader that also knows WHEN to retreat, acknowledge the failure and change their decision.

OR

The leader that is easily swayed by how their troops feel. The leader that will rush to take safer options. The leader that will raise the questions of uncertainty, like “what if..” forgetting how much that affects the way others think. The leader that will lead their troops to safety, but leave them hungry. The leader that will show courage to make a decision, but only because it guarantees their own safety. The leader that will make every excuse to bias their own decision and why it was their only choice.

Take care choosing your leader.

Leading others is a responsibility.

But leading yourself is your own.

I’m not an expert when it comes to business or on how to build relationships. It’s just been years of trial and error. Relationships that I’ve had all my life and other bridges that have been burned along the way. There’s a lesson in every relationship and sometimes the most painful ones have a way of imprinting the lesson deep in your mind.

The facts of what happens in your life might be interpreted differently inside your mind.

If you don’t learn to control your own mind, it has a way of making small things become catastrophic and in other cases, it makes bigger and more important issues just somehow blow by the wayside.

To me, building a relationship based on trust, personal value and reciprocation takes time. A constant push and pull whether that be with friendly advice, telling you something you need to hear, or helping you when you need it.

When times are tough, at least one of you will sacrifice to keep the relationship strong. I suppose, if there is not enough trust, value or reciprocation – neither of you try to keep it alive.

The things I’ve done to help myself navigate through the turbulence of maintaining relationships comes down to constantly reminding myself of 4 things:

Just be yourself – you can’t do more than that

I’ve often fallen into the trap of thinking “I’m not good enough” or feeling like I don’t belong and even feel like an outsider or rejected. I’ve come to realise that how people choose to respond to you is their choice. There was a time where I overplayed this though, and just expressed my thoughts without keeping other people’s emotions and sensitivities in mind.

Don’t expect anything from other people.

It’s understandable for you to uphold your own standards in relationships. It isn’t fair to cast your expectations on others.

You don’t know the other person’s story.

How other people act and behave says more about what is happening with them. I know that when I’m going through a rough patch, it’s hard to see things through rose-coloured glasses.

Peaks and Troughs are normal.

The universal law – whatever contracts must also relax. Too often I see relationships not “ebbing” and “flowing” but rather, they stay too intense for too long and end badly or they stay too relaxed and both parties perceive the other as they ‘don’t care’. Find the gentle balance.

I often have patients that have had to stop training completely because of pain.

They’ve seen 2 Physios, 2 Chiros, had Cortisone and PRP injections and have stopped training because they can’t seem to get any long term change..

Sometimes it’s because the care has been substandard.. But other times, they’ve actually been doing all the right things, and still no improvement

Regardless, it always leads me to bear the brunt of the patient’s impatience at no fault of my own but then I’m required to help them pivot and create some epiphany-like moment where I can finally give them some hope by helping them make sense of their situation.

Practitioners that are overly evidence based create problems.

They create problems by not thinking laterally.

They don’t individualise management – (simply asking “why did this patient develop this problem?” would suffice.)

They disregard the simple fact that patients are irrational because they are in pain and won’t adhere to a logical framework built by a 25 year old Physio with an IQ of 145 and an EQ of my doormat.

Over the course of my career I have always been pushing to provide the highest level of evidence based healthcare.

What that means to me is providing patients with an accurate diagnosis and the management of that diagnosis based on the latest approaches found effective in the research.

An important part of being a Chiropractor is that your opinion and advice is reflective of what the evidence says.

So over the years a lot of patients and other professionals have called me their “Physio” and even a sports doctor told a patient that “He’s a Chiropractor but thinks like a Physio…”

I’ve been reading a lot lately about people differentiating between Chiro vs Physio almost like a healthcare ‘State of Origin’. It’s always a heated battle even though all the players are on good terms off the field.

As we delve deeper into research and providing evidence for therapy.. we’re all reading and applying the same stuff.

In fact, I had a Physiotherapist in an interview the other day who actually brought to my attention that there is now a study that has showed results that spinal manipulation (a Chiropractors handy pistol) does in fact provide long term results.

We are on the same team..

There are too many influential therapists out there that focus on what the research says ‘works’ as therapy versus what ‘doesn’t work’ as therapy in relation to any condition.

There are too many therapists that try to make healthcare black and white rather than appreciating that healthcare is a big grey mess. Patients will come in as unique complex machines with varying biochemistry and genetic predispositions combined with a varying mental stability and fortitude which could often be likened to Sydney’s current weather conditions.

If only we spent more time reading and learning about understanding why certain problems develop in the first place and then realise that we only need to restore what broke down rather than use only proven methods of pain relief.

What I’m really getting at is.. What do you do when a patient isn’t responding to what the evidence says should work? Practitioners need to think a little deeper about why the problem developed in the first place.

Truly find the cause. Not just the diagnosis.

My first few years in practise, I would compete with myself to try and solve problems faster and faster. Once I realised I could manage 70% of the cases, I started to get excited about trickier cases.

I remember when I was studying Chiropractic, I would think about the future.

What did my future as a Chiropractor look like? I was ‘certain’ that I would own a clinic one day, but really, that was my father’s goal more than my own.

When a woman wants to progress in her career, her path is riddled with obstacles that a man simply will not face.

In so many instances in history, we see the typical embodiment of a “leader” as someone who portrays ‘agentic’ traits… Someone who focuses on “self-affirmation, individualised direction, self protection and self-assertion” (1).. To translate – someone competitive, controlling, direct, secretive, pragmatic… I suppose you could relate this type of person to your typical corporate ‘Shark’.

There is a saying… “Employees do exactly what you show them”. I’m not sure if there is anything more humbling than seeing your bad habits being mirrored by your team. The standards that you set in the clinic are the ones you allow yourself to get away with. So if you have expectations of your team, then you’d better start by upholding them yourself. Now how does this relate to training your team members Well, they need, not only to understand what you expect, they also need to understand why that’s your expectation, and that reason cannot be arbitrary.