Leadership isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about creating stability when things feel shaky. In times of uncertainty, your team looks to you for direction, reassurance, and focus.
The key? Prioritizing your own energy, practicing emotional intelligence with clear boundaries, and communicating with confidence.
This guide breaks down three essential leadership moves to help you stay grounded, keep your team engaged, and navigate the unknown with clarity and purpose. Let’s get into it.
1: Prioritize your energy
- Write down your list of restorative practices. Do at least one thing every. single. day.
- Cancel or reduce events, commitments, and people that drain your energy
- Clarify your personal and professional boundaries and priorities. Write them down.
- Invest in your emotional emergency contacts through live interaction – phone or in person, not text!
- Practice listening to your intuition so you know when you need to slow down or pause
Real World Example
You feel burnout coming on, but you can’t take time off right now. You write down about 10 things that restore your energy and put the list where you can see it daily, then prioritize doing one thing each day – before work whenever possible. Next, you cancel two events you don’t really need to go to next month. That frees up one evening to have happy hour with a personal friend, and one weekend afternoon to just go for a walk and listen to an audiobook. You also delete a few political podcasts from your feed and turn off notifications from every phone app except text messages.
2: Practice emotional intelligence… with boundaries
- We must fill our own tank in order to have reserves for our team
- Self-awareness is the foundation for social awareness
- Self-management/regulation is a prerequisite for managing/regulating a team
- Observe/acknowledge what’s happening for you and the team: Name it To Tame It.
- Practice the three C’s: Connection, Context, Choice
- Lead with empathy through presence + active listening. Not everything has an immediate “fix.” You are not a therapist. You are a compassionate Leader.
Real World Example
You have an employee who tends to be anxious and it can be contagious for the rest of the team. In your next one on one, you note, “It seems like you’re feeling anxious lately. Is that accurate?” She validates it, so you ask if she has support in place in her personal life. Once you confirm that she has some resources, gently remind her that your organization’s mission has to be our shared focus at work. She can contribute and practice her own leadership by creating space for possibility and ideas for moving forward with unified determination.
3: Communicate with clarity
- Proactively communicate what you can. Don’t delay.
- Be consistent in your communication cadence and format.
- Communication vacuums create assumptions and anxiety. Even if you don’t have answers, tell your team that you don’t know yet, when you expect to know, and how you will let them know.
- Repeat your communication multiple times through multiple channels.
- Give defined times when you will hear feedback and shape the type of feedback you want to receive, including the tone. For example, instead of “Let me know how you’re feeling,” you can ask, “What ideas do you have to keep everyone in a mindset of service to our clients this month?”
Real World Example
The City government has a budget shortfall which will affect nearly every bureau. Staff are understandably worried about their jobs – whether they might be laid off or expected to pick up a significantly larger amount of work due to a smaller workforce. A bureau director wants to proactively manage the uncertainty, so she introduces a memo where she’ll update her staff on any developments quickly and succinctly. Even if something is published in the citywide newsletter or happens in a City Council session streamed on YouTube, she posts a memo and doesn’t assume everyone is seeing everything outside of her bureau. Her memos get posted simultaneously on one designated page on the bureau intranet in reverse chronological order so the latest news is always at the top. This builds trust with her team that she isn’t withholding information and that leadership has their back.
Questions? Need support? Email us at go@pregamehq.com. We got you.
