How do I lead during this unprecedented time?

- [David] I'm David Gassner, managing staff instructor for LinkedIn Learning's Technology Library. During a severe global crisis, when entire national economies have gone into a deep freeze and business of all sizes are being disrupted, your team and your customers will look to you for guidance. How do you provide the leadership that they're seeking? First thing's first, it's normal and natural to be uncertain about the way forward. We're living through an event that's unlike any that's happened in our lifetimes. The crisis we're experiencing in early 2020 has disrupted every nation, every state, every city, and every business around the world. Its most prominent feature is uncertainty. Public health professionals and political leaders can give us guidelines and recommendations, but nobody can say when our world will return to something resembling normal. As a business leader, though, you can make a difference. You can provide the guidance that your team and customers are looking for. Here are a couple of things to remember. First, you'll do the best you can do. And you'll make the best decisions you're capable of given the information you have at the moment. In an ongoing crisis, we have a flood of new information coming at us everyday, some of it's specifically relating to your business, but a lot of it about the world at large. Keep your eyes and ears open and learn as much as you can. Consult with everyone you think can be helpful. Put a team together that's tasked with creating a plan that you can approve. And then, once you've made a decision, whether on your own or with your team, communicate it clearly and decisively. Take all the time that's needed to answer your team's and your customer's questions and keep at it until you're confident your message has been heard. Then, be ready to do it again, the next day, the next week, the next month, because one thing we know about an ongoing crisis is that events are unpredictable. The information you have available today will change tomorrow, and you have to be ready to adjust. And each time you make a change, you'll need to communicate both the new direction and your reasons with clarity and confidence. And here's the other part, it's okay to change, and it's okay to have been wrong. In times of uncertainty, your team will be comforted to know that the confusion and apprehension they're experiencing is normal. Given the circumstances you're all dealing with. One of our organization's favorite sayings is, "The plan is the plan until the plan changes." Just because you're the company's leader, doesn't mean you have a crystal ball. Nobody can see the future. So when someone asks the question, how long will it be until we get back to normal? The correct answer is nobody knows. Tell the truth, and acknowledge the uncertainty you're all experiencing. But then follow it up with a reminder that the plan you're implementing was created with the best information available as of that moment and that it gives your company and its customers their best possibility of a positive outcome. When you're managing your business through a global crisis, your ability to change the path of the overall crisis is limited, but by being your company's eyes and ears, and by providing the leadership your team needs to make, adjust, and implement its operating plan, you'll give everyone their best possible chance of success.