How true leadership practices help you positively navigate the pandemic.
In life, we often face circumstances we would never choose. A fender bender on the way to work. A lost cell phone while traveling overseas. A twisted ankle on a morning jog. Anything out of our control that interrupts life is a stressor and has ripple effects beyond what you can imagine.
Now, escalate those day-to-day occurrences exponentially, beyond what you typically imagine or experience.
At this moment, the coronavirus affects not only you and your plans for the day, but every single person, family, community, business, home, organization, school, and neighborhood on the planet.
Of course this experience is going to be stressful, anxiety-producing, shocking, confusing, confronting, aggravating, frustrating, sad, scary, and much much more. We are on fight-flight-freeze overdrive as we try to navigate our lives in a new way without being able to clearly plan for the future. Even for those of us who love ambiguity, risk, and unknown, this seems like too much.
Yet it’s happening.
In a time of global upset like this, consider that we don’t have the capacity to learn anything new. Instead, we get the opportunity to exercise all of the True Leadership muscles we’ve developed over time, that will help us and our communities get through this time with grace, conviction, compassion, and creativity.
BEGIN WITH ACCEPTANCE
As you may know, in our model Acceptance never means tolerating, resigning, or being falsely positive or optimistic. It’s more nuanced, grounded in releasing resistance to what-so. Here are ways you can bring Acceptance to this circumstance:
Accept how you are responding. Are you stressed? Are you angry? Are you resisting or rebelling? Are you jumping into action? Embrace your response, learn from it, and have self compassion for your own journey through this unknown landscape.
Accept how others are responding. OK, now it gets trickier. You may be witnessing how others are reacting, judging too harshly their level of stress, anxiety or nonchalance. Know that everyone responds to something of this magnitude differently, and allow others their responses. Listen so they feel heard and bring kindness and compassion to their experience, making them feel safe in sharing. As part of this, you may want to accept the real fear that people are experiencing because jobs, livelihood, financial security, healthcare options and more are truly at risk for them, even if this isn’t true for you.
Accept the reality of the situation (and only the reality). We are inundated with opinions, data, and facts, making it challenging to discern fiction from the truth. Arm yourself with data you trust (consider the CDC or World Health Organization), understand what it’s telling you and others around you, and accept the current state. Then stop yourself from a downward spiral of listening to repeated messages and ill-informed opinions that fill up your time and drag you down.
EMBRACE THIS UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO PAUSE
How many times have we complained that we have too much to do? That we have to be multiple places at once? That we don’t have enough time at home? That our commutes are too long? That we haven’t read a novel since forever?
We are all being asked to take a moment and literally stay put.
After the shock of what social distancing means for you pragmatically, try this: Embrace the much-needed pause. Stop, breathe deeply, follow your self-care practices, and use this crisis as an opportunity to return to your center.
Remember, you can only authentically create, innovate, and connect to your intuition when you are present and centered in the moment. If you are in a mental swirl either worried about the future or focused on the past, the most meaningful choices and options that are available in this moment elude you.
We have permission and opportunity to slow down in some ways. Let’s not let it slip by us.
PIVOT TO CREATIVITY, CHOICE, AND CONTRIBUTION
Once centered, our Tiara community shifts relatively quickly to the creative phase. Our Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn feeds are full of stories about athletes taking care of employees who were asked to be on leave, CEOs supporting remote education, health care workers inventing safety measures in their own homes, communities coming together for creative ways of transitioning to social distancing, families providing “school lunches” to neighbors who might not have money for groceries now that their kids are home all day, and creative solutions cropping up to stay connected as colleagues from a distance.
Even in the most dire of circumstances, once we release resistance and pause to center ourselves, we can make small choices to regain a sense of power and creativity. We get to respond to questions like these:
What are we focused on? What could we be focused on?
Who are we talking with? What’s the nature of our conversation?
What internal mindset and inner dialogue is most supportive right now?
What can we be grateful for in this moment?
How can we reach out and help someone else?
How can we learn and grow?
Who do we want to be for others?
When we make small choices like these, we leave victimhood behind. We reconnect with our inner power. We start to feel a surge of creativity, connection, and community as we shift our attention intentionally toward being part of something we believe in, based on our own values and priorities.
We cannot control everything that happens in the world. We cannot control others and their reactions or actions. Yet in any situation and in any moment we can live by our values, choose our mindset, contribute toward others, be grateful, and create new opportunities.
More than ever we can see we are not alone, that we are in this together. Together let’s return to center, stay connected in a supportive community, and create solutions that we are proud of during this intense time.
About Tiara International LLC
Tiara is a global leadership development company that provides coaching, consulting, and virtual leadership development solutions based on the Tiara Model for True Leadership (SM).
The Tiara Resource Circle is on online leadership development resource for women, providing the leadership insight, tools, and support they need at any time.
