In today’s fast-changing and competitive environment, most leaders are running at breakneck speed to keep up with the changes. The pandemic, the slowing down of businesses and the uncertainties created by the US-China trade war are examples of the changing landscape that business leaders are operating under.

On the organisation’s side, everyone is increasingly busy with virtual meetings after meetings to attend. In many organisations that we worked with, people lament that they don’t have the time to think or to plan out what we need to do. “There are so many problems everywhere. We are always firefighting.”

To lead your people effectively — especially during a crisis — requires a lot of perseverance and patience. I have observed that more often than not, leaders lose their composure when facing deadlines or adversities. This will inevitably impact their direct employees who will feel the stress being transmitted by their leaders. The result is a work environment that is highly tensed and stressed out. It is like hamsters running on a wheel – going faster and faster; and yet not going anywhere.

In my area of work in training and coaching C-suite Executives and High-Potential Leaders, I have often heard leaders complaining about being “so busy” and “stressed out”. They are expected to put out the fires, and they don’t have the time to think of a longer-term solution to their problems. We “don’t have time to think” is their common excuse when asked why don’t they slow down to see what is happening.

So, what do I mean by slowing down to go faster?

In today’s workplace, many managers are promoted because they do well in their last position. More often than not, they are good at what they were doing – which is often to manage work processes or to make sure things are done right. In their previous role as supervisors, achieving KPI’s, compliance and doing what one was told to do was often well rewarded.

Harvard Business Review September 2020 issue, David Suss wrote an article entitled “Becoming a Patient Leader”, whereby he outlined the SEAL motto, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” The article connects with what I am sharing today that a good leader needs to slow down before he can go faster.

Slowing down can mean many things:

• Providing clear vision or goals moving forward
• Checking to see whether people are on-board
• Spending time to listen to the concerns of people
• Checking in to see how people are doing

In short, it could be any form of behaviour where a leader makes the time, effort and energy to connect with his people and bring them along to where he or she is going and how to bring them along. These leaders inspire, encourage the heart, enable others to act and take the time to connect with their people.

When I was working in a mid-sized local bank, we had a new CEO joining us. He was well known in the industry, and there was a lot of excitement and buzz amongst our employees when they heard of this news.

I will not mention names for confidentiality purposes. When he joined the bank, he spent a lot of his time sharing his inspiring vision to the people – of becoming a “boutique bank” with attractive services to offer to targeted clientele. In the first three months, he also sat down with the team to know them better and to listen to their concerns and issues.

He didn’t tell us what he wanted us to do. He just painted a big picture of what the future would look like. He didn’t tell us to work harder. He was very open to what was being shared, and he listened to all the “complaints and conflicts” that we had. Like any organisations, we had our fair share of dysfunctional behaviors.

He visited branches and spent a lot of time to understand the issues, the challenges and the problems that people brought up. After a while, we were all wondering what was going to happen.

Lo and behold, 3 months after listening to our “complaints, shortcomings and suggestions, we came together again for a meeting. He surprised us by sharing the action plans being taken to address most of the issues highlighted. We were pleasantly surprised by the “goodies” and the way he went about to align the processes that created a lot of conflicts in the bank. Amongst them was an upward revision of our pay scales, better fringe benefits, increased authority to the Branch Managers and et cetera.

This was a classic case of a leader slowing down to listen to the issues, challenges and problems. Once he understood the real issues, he took the necessary action to create the right processes in terms of operations, credit approval, IT support etc.; he brought in the right people along the way. At the end of the meeting, he asked everyone in the room a simple question, “Are there any more issues?”. The whole room was silent. Then he said, “Let’s go to work!”

In hindsight, what did the CEO do?

In many ways, he was focusing on aligning people, process and purpose. He invested time and energy at the beginning – to create alignment. This helped pulled everyone together. No doubt it was a slow and painstaking process. As a leader, he exhibited patience and perseverance. When you win over the hearts of your people, they are more than willing to run the extra mile.

Conclusion

Slowing down is a simple concept that can be applied in our life and work. Whenever we are rushing around or pushing people to run faster, we just need to slow down –to review or to check if people are still behind us or whether we are running in the right direction. It will not take much time to slow down, but it will surely avoid costly mistakes or even crashing into the wall.

Postscript: The Bank grew exceptionally well during his tenure. Loans, Deposits, Profits grew by three (3) to four (4) folds in the next two years period. The commitment of the employees to achieving the shared vision coupled with clear processes made it possible for the bank to grow.