VUCA Leadership: How to lead in a VUCA world

Are You Fit to Lead in a VUCA World?
Six critical leadership traits to help you lead your team more effectively during uncertain times
If you were skeptical that we live in a VUCA world, this year’s COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it may have reshaped your thoughts.
Leading teams that have ‘fractured’ into remote and virtual groups requires rapid development of a distinct set of leadership skills.
In the VUCA world, nothing can be taken for granted. Your markets, customers, supplies and regulations are volatile and complex. Uncertainty breeds ambiguity. These factors collide to create a range of emotional responses from employees who are concerned for their futures.
Do you have the skillset and characteristics to lead your team and navigate it through the unprecedented and uncharted VUCA world?
6 Key skills for leaders in a VUCA world
As your team becomes virtual and more of your work is completed online, the challenges come more sharply into focus. People may feel isolated. They may find it difficult to manage their tasks and time effectively. Collaboration becomes more complex. Morale can quickly turn south. How you lead your team in an online VUCA world will determine its performance.
Here are six key leadership skills to maintain morale and motivate peak performance.
1. Demonstrate objectivity
A slip in performance can be consequential of frustration and anxiety. Though the market is constantly changing, people’s creativity and ability are still present. Good leaders resist making emotional, subjective decisions. Instead they remain objective, helping people to understand the nature of their problems and find solutions to them.
2. Be confident
Confidence is essential to performance. As Henry Ford once said, “If you believe you can, then you will.” A leader who is confident about the future will help people to remain resilient through changing conditions. When the volatility subsides, confident teams will take advantage most readily.
3. Be empathetic
In the VUCA world, change affects individuals differently. Leaders must adapt their response accordingly. Sometimes your people will act out of character. Understand that this is a result of the ambiguous nature of the world around them and the complex nature of that ambiguity. By seeing the world from an employee’s point of view, you will learn what motivates them and be able to develop individualized development strategies. Walk a mile in their shoes, and show you care.
4. Demonstrate integrity
You are all in this together. The same challenges face you all. Be honest with yourself and your team. Encourage others to share their fears openly and help by engaging and providing coaching through uncertainty.
5. Facilitate realistic expectations
As a leader, your job is to facilitate your team and individuals within it to do the best work they can. Ensure that you speak to your people to identify and agree “on” realistic targets. There is nothing more demotivational than a target that cannot be met. Targets should be discussed frequently and adjusted as you navigate changing market conditions.
6. Be democratic and practice engagement
People don’t destroy what they create. Engage your people in meaningful conversations that help them understand the challenges faced by all – themselves, their colleagues, the organization, and you. Discuss possible solutions to these challenges and solicit feedback.
When joint decisions are made and enacted, you will benefit from the joint sense of purpose and set of collective goals that help inspire the team. Creative solutions are more likely, and motivation to find those solutions and make them work is high when the solutions are owned by the team.
Are you ready to lead in the VUCA world?
The world has shifted in recent months. Few leaders are fully equipped for the challenges this shift has produced. Are you ready to lead in the VUCA world? Take this Rising to the Challenge leadership self-assessment to find out.
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