Keeping Your Cool in Hot Times
October 2023
An executive friend recently asked me for some tips on leading in stressful times. She commented, “You always look so calm, cool, and collected, Deb. How do you keep a smile on your face when it seems like we’re facing the apocalypse?”
My response was, “First, I believe God is control and everything happens for a reason. I also learned long ago that the only thing I can control is myself. So, to me, attitude is everything. These tenets allow me to deal effectively with ambiguity and peril while keep my emotions in check.”
With so many Black Swan events occurring on the world stage these days, keeping your cool as a leader can be challenging. Yet, we’re always in control of our coping tactics and the way we choose to respond to threats. With every adversity we overcome, we build stronger coping skills and greater self-confidence. So, when calamity strikes—and it will—don’t run and hide or let negative emotions get the best of you.
I grew up with an alcoholic mother. Simply arriving home from school could be like a Black Swan event—although I didn’t know the term back then. I never knew whether I would find my mother in a rage, or in stupor, or passed out on the couch, or in a car accident, or worse. As a result, I learned to deal with situations beyond my control with a cool head, just to preserve my own self-esteem. I refused to let fear and upset rule my life.
After my father abandoned us and my mother died, a neighbor lady offered some advice I’ve never forgotten: “Everything you have been through, my dear, will only serve to make you stronger than everyone else. Believe it or not, you are more likely to be successful in life because of all you’ve learned to overcome.”
The chaos that prevailed during my childhood prepared me well to lead in a volatile business world. Perhaps it’s why, as an adult, I chose to pursue bleeding edge career opportunities and accepted challenges that most others shied away from. Perhaps it’s also why I got involved with our city’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program—a trained organization of volunteers that professional first responders can rely on for support during disaster situations.
CERT volunteers must be able to take appropriate, level-headed actions in complex, high stress situations—ranging from fires and earthquakes to tornados, hurricanes, floods, and beyond, depending on one’s geography. CERT training heightened my ability to handle incredibly stressful, emotionally charged situations while maintaining my cool. It even enabled me to be a more effective, cool-headed leader during times of havoc and confusion at work.
The primary purpose of CERT training and practice in disaster response skills is to enable you to protect yourself and maximize your ability to help the greatest number of people after a disaster, until professional first responders arrive. These concepts are every bit as relevant in the workaday world as in your community. For example:
Before a disaster happens
- Plan: Identify potential problems and mitigate them to the fullest BEFORE chaotic events occur.
- Prepare and Train: Build a solid foundation of appropriate emergency response practices.
When disaster strikes
- Render basic aid: Take care of yourself first, lest you become part of the problem.
- Triage where you stand: Identify critical immediate needs, what can be delayed, and what can be ignored before acting.
- Communicate: Clearly and concisely state what you know and what needs to be done to those who need to know it.
- Connect with others yet contain your emotions: Show you care…but don’t over-identify with the traumatized or take on their problems as your own.
As a leader
- Be visible and offer encouragement.
In my book Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring, the now retired Chairman and CEO of the WD-40 Company, Garry Ridge, shared the importance of leaders being visible and optimistic, especially in times of chaos:
When we were going through the global financial crisis in 2008, I observed people in the company as I’d wander around this office or any of our other offices around the world. People were asking me more often, “How are you?”
It dawned on me—they weren’t asking me how I was; they were asking me how they were, through me. Now, my answer to them could have been, “Oh, things are … ugh” or “Hey, let’s not waste a good crisis. We’re going to get through this. This, too, will end.”
I realized they were looking to me in their time of uncertainty and fear, to give them a little bit of security to carry them through. Leaders must make sure in times of war, and in times of trouble, they are visible…. In hard times, as a leader, you need to be more visible than ever before. But how many leaders go underground in hard times? You need to be up-front in times of trouble and in times of need, not hiding under a desk or locked away in some corner office.
I’m really fortunate…. I think I’ve always been pretty positive. I find it hard to think negatively.
In my book, Strong Suit: Leadership Success Secrets from Women on Top, I asked Nancy Howell Agee, President and CEO of Carilion Clinic—a $2B+ not-for-profit integrated health system in Virginia—how she communicates with her organization during especially challenging times. She shared this:
In just the first five months of the pandemic, the executive team and I did over 100 videos. People liked that. We also emailed twice a day, in a very organized way, what we were doing, the way things really were—being very transparent.
A lot of people worked from home during the pandemic. But our clinical staff were here, on-site. I felt that if my staff was going to have their lives disrupted, or their lives were on the line, so to speak, and they were going to be on-site, then I was going to be here and I expected the same of my executive team. We made rounds nearly every day…. listening to people, encouraging them, every day.
Keeping one’s cool has been a key characteristic of highly respected leaders for eons. Thomas Jefferson even discussed the importance of remaining cool in a letter to his grandson, Francis Eppes, when the boy entered the New London Academy in 1816:
…. Above all things, and at all times, practice yourself in good humor. This, of all human qualities, is the most amiable and endearing to society. Whenever you feel a warmth of temper rising, check it at once, and suppress it. Recollecting it will make you unhappy with yourself, and disliked by others. Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another, as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. Think of these things, practice them, and you will be rewarded by the love and confidence of the world.
I couldn’t have said it better myself unless I simply used the more concise and modern military vernacular, Stay frosty, which means to stay alert and keep a cool head when the going gets rough.
Bottom line: Attitude is everything, so stay frosty.