July 18, 2025 • 60 mins
What separates a true crisis from everyday challenges, and how can leaders effectively navigate through unprecedented disruption? In this eye-opening conversation, Peter Willis and Gareth Morgan—authors of "Becoming Good at Crises: A Field Guide For Leaders"—share hard-won wisdom from leading through Cape Town's devastating drought and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The conversation cuts through crisis leadership platitudes to reveal something profound: leaders aren't born ready for crises—they become good at handling them through intentional capability building before disaster strikes. Willis and Morgan outline four distinct phases of crisis management and the specific leadership approaches each requires, from cultural readiness to recovery and transformation.
For talent development professionals, the conversation offers practical guidance on preparing for future disruptions through updated workforce planning, succession strategies, and communication protocols. These capabilities serve dual purposes—enhancing regular operations while providing crucial resilience when crisis strikes.
Whether you're navigating the ongoing ripple effects of recent global crises or preparing your organization for the inevitable next disruption, this conversation provides a valuable framework for becoming the leader your team needs when normal comes to a grinding halt.
Visit their website: https://www.becominggoodatcrises.co.za/
Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jay Johnson (00:01):
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge,
where, together, we are shapingthe future of training and
development.
I'm really excited because it'sthe first time on the Talent
Forge that we have two gueststhat are joining us today.
I'd like to introduce PeterWillis and Gareth Morgan.
Welcome to the show, gentlemen.
Hi, jay, great to be with you.
(00:22):
So I always like to ask ourguests how did you get involved
and what brought you to whereyou're at?
You are authoring a book oncrisis, and I know that that's
something that a lot of peoplein talent development and HR are
dealing with on a daily basishow to lead through crisis.
So let's get a little bit ofyour background.
(00:43):
How did you get into this space?
You go first, peter how to leadthrough crisis.
So let's get a little bit ofyour background.
Gareth Morgan (00:48):
How did you get into this space?
Peter Willis (00:50):
Y ou go first, peter, yeah, okay, so I think we
both got quite sort of long anddetailed histories in sort of
different but somewhatoverlapping areas.
We overlap around the whole areaof sustainability, climate
change, resilience and so on,but Gareth more from a
government perspective and memore from a sort of teaching,
(01:11):
consulting perspective, workingwith business leaders.
But what really was the genesisof this book and our coming
together to write it was that weboth went through two major
crises that afflicted our city,cape Town.
The first one was a major sortof one in 500 year drought that
(01:35):
hit us in 2016, right through to2018.
And Gareth was part of theleadership team in the city
administration who was copingwith that and strategizing it.
And then, a couple of yearslater, as we all did, we went
through the pandemic COVID andthe city responded really well,
(01:56):
and in both cases I raised somemoney and ran a project
interviewing leaders who wereinvolved in responding to the
drought, because I'm veryinterested in leadership
development and what it takes tolead well in difficult
circumstances.
So and Gareth himself is aleader and is surrounded by in
(02:19):
my estimation because I live inthe city very good leaders, so
we found we had a lot of commoninterest in sharing some of the
amazing insights and lessonsthat came out of those two major
crises which we came through.
Jay Johnson (02:33):
That's pretty amazing, gareth, from your side.
Gareth Morgan (02:37):
Yeah, so I'm an executive in the city of Cape
Town metropolitan government.
It's a large organization,31,000 employees, and I lead a
significant portfolio that scansthe horizon, that plans for the
future, sort of a 25 yearhorizons of planning and I,
(02:58):
interestingly enough, which isrelevant to the particular
audience that's listening today,among other things, I lead
strategic workforce planningactually in the city of Cape
Town and leadership development,but I guess of the particular
topic today, I also lead theresilience functions and the
business continuity functions.
I cut my teeth in thisorganization prior to becoming
(03:36):
executive by playing seniorleadership roles in the response
to that rather existentialcrisis we dealt with in Cape
Town, which was coming quiteclose to running out of water in
2017.
And then, like all of us, covid, in the way we were responding
to these very large crisisevents, these slow-moving crises
that were lasting months and,in the case of COVID, probably
more than two years and Petercame to me through a connection
(03:59):
and we only met each other inearly 2018.
We discovered that we both likedreflecting on things that had
happened in the leadership spaceand documenting those, and it
took a few years further, but Ikept on saying to Peter I can
see patterns from how weresponded to the day zero
(04:20):
drought and COVID andinterestingly enough, at least
for me, I was saying it didn'tmatter so much what the actual
crisis was, but that there wereways that leaders could build
capabilities which would beuseful for their regular mission
but could be repurposed duringcrisis and perhaps we can talk
(04:40):
about those in a little whilebut also that the phasing of
crises are common, irrespective.
So we're kind of ratheragnostic about what the crisis
is, that the leader is preparingfor and put that into a
framework, and Peter and I, overthe course of just over a year,
put this piece, this manuscript, together and then ultimately
(05:01):
we had a piece of work and we'rekeen to share it with as many
people as possible.
Jay Johnson (05:06):
I love this and I love the title of the book
becoming because you know, whenyou think becoming, you don't
always think like crisis, right,like that's not always
something there.
So I was like, wow, this is,you know.
I really appreciate that.
So here's here's going to bethe question I have, because I
think that this is somethingthat, no matter what your role
(05:28):
is in an organization, whetheryou're in a senior leadership,
whether you're in a manager role, whether you're in talent
development, whether you're inHR, we hear the word crisis
every single day.
We've got a work for.
We've got a talent crisis.
We have a.
We've got a leadership crisis.
We have a.
We've got a leadership crisis.
We have this.
Everything has been labeledcrisis.
(05:49):
Now that the ones that you'retalking about, those are what I
would most certainly consider.
Those are big crises, right,like a drought.
When we're looking at somethinglike COVID, a global crisis,
and before we get into, hey, howcan we navigate some of these
things?
Can you help me understand, andmaybe the audience how do you
(06:10):
perceive what is an actualcrisis when we're thinking about
?
You know, if we're in thatposition where our boss comes to
us and says we have a salescrisis and we need a training
for it.
Is it really a crisis Like whatis happening?
How do we define this term?
What are your thoughts?
Peter Willis (06:32):
Well, if I go first, the way we have focused
because, yes, you're right thatyou can crisis is a very elastic
term.
You can wake up in the middleof the night and feel as though
you're having a crisis becauseof the things you've forgotten
to do the previous day.
But we're talking about crises,and I think this is really
interesting.
We're talking about criseswhere, when you look around you,
(06:54):
everybody is experiencing thiscrisis, the sort of crisis
you're talking about, where yourboss comes in and says we're
having a sales crisis.
People outside the company,even a lot of people in the
company, they wouldn't care, itdoesn't concern them.
We're talking about I mean, withthe pandemic, it was a quite
extraordinary experience, asyou'll remember, where you
(07:15):
looked around and you knew thateverybody you met or spoke to
was also experiencing the samecrisis.
So that's our kind of frameworkwas also experiencing the same
crisis.
So that's our kind of framework.
And I suppose the other thing Iwould say is that you know
you're in a crisis when normalcomes to a grinding halt.
(07:37):
It's not a crisis if you knowthere's a problem coming.
The crisis is when normalsuddenly is completely disrupted
and then everybody has to stopand say, oh, we have to do some
completely different things now.
Okay.
Gareth Morgan (07:56):
Yeah, jay, I would add to that.
Actually, in the book we layout a number of conditions.
We don't say that they all needto be met, but certainly a
majority of them need to be met,and that includes there's no
let up in the volume ofdifficult challenges, and people
around you in the organizationare anxious and the teams that
(08:19):
would normally respond to thetypes of problems that are
emerging are entirelyoverwhelmed.
Some of those things I wouldregard, if you put them all
together, probably suggest tothe leader that we're in crisis.
Jay Johnson (08:33):
Yeah, and I like that because I think that term
crisis is overused and, as Imentioned to you before, one of
my degrees, one of my master'sdegrees, was in crisis
communications and I oftentimesso.
Communication really means alot to me when I'm thinking
about like, okay, how are wedefining something?
What are we looking at and isthis really a crisis?
(08:56):
Is this a organizational crisis?
So I think we can all agreethat the pandemic was a global
crisis of epic proportionshopefully once in a lifetime,
because I'm not ready to gothrough something like that
again.
Let me share with you sort ofwhat happened with my position
(09:19):
and when we were looking at itand we are starting to see the
expansiveness of this and peoplewere starting to talk and it
was still rumor and there wasn'tthat much great information out
there, so on and so forth.
At one point in time, I rememberlooking at one of my business
partners and saying it's goingto be here in less than a week
(09:41):
and it is going to be the mostdisruptive thing that we've had
to deal with.
Now my business was aliveduring the global recession,
2008, 2009, housing market crash, et cetera and I kind of just I
don't know.
I had this inkling that thiswas going to be bigger, and it
was.
You know, two weeks into it, wewatched $200,000 worth of our
(10:05):
revenue walk out the doorbecause, well, no more speaking,
no more training, no moreevents, no more any of those
things, and I know that my brainwent into full crisis mode.
So talk me through that.
What does that process looklike in general, Because you've
had the opportunity to haveconversations with tons of
leaders that have obviously gonethrough different things.
(10:27):
What should we know about?
When we kind of get that tinglein the back of our neck or we
start to feel like this is goingto be bad, what do we need to
be thinking about?
Gareth Morgan (10:40):
Yeah.
So I think you're talking, jay,there, about as you positioned
yourself before the crisis hityou in the face.
I mean, that sounds like a sortof a weak early signal of you
as a leader, scanning thehorizon and going.
Something is happening here.
Ideally, you probably want toget that feeling even a little
(11:03):
bit before that.
You probably want to get thatfeeling even a little bit before
that, and I suspect youprobably did, because I think we
all knew that something washappening in the world around
about sort of January of 2020.
And we all started locking downaround the world in March 2020.
So that weak early signal isimportant.
It's the curiosity that comeswith it and it's those first
(11:24):
discussions that you have with ateam.
It might not be the actualcrisis team that you put
together.
It could just be your regularteam.
We don't for a moment argue thatyour crisis team has to be your
regular team.
That's the time to start sayingwhat could the impact of this
be?
What are the first decisionsthat we can start making Now?
(11:48):
A lot of what we argue, peterand I, is around these
capabilities that we think arebest built during peacetime, and
, if you don't mind, let me justsort of mention them quickly
because it might help the restof the conversation, but they
include, for example, supplychain adaptability, the quality
of your data systems, thequality of your ICT
(12:11):
infrastructure, yourcollaboration and partnerships
those that exist because theybecome very important during a
crisis.
Sometimes, even your competitorsare actually really good
collaborators during crisis, andcommunication protocols are all
important.
A leader would have hopefullythought through a lot of that
the capabilities and stress testthose, because those will often
(12:34):
become the foundations ofwhatever you decide to do.
When you then get into the caseof, okay, what is my strategy
going to be?
What is the data that I'm goingto be watching and in your case
, you immediately referencerevenue I guess cash is such a
big thing during crises andtrying to keep cash flow at any
(12:55):
point in time during that, andthen, of course, getting into
things like who are the rightpeople to put around me those
are the first things you wouldbe able to put together as a
leader during those early daysof a crisis.
Jay Johnson (13:14):
And it's funny because you're absolutely right.
It was when we heard the firstthing about this in January and
I can tell you in the US therewas a lot of people saying it's
not going to get to us, we'regoing to handle it.
And a lot of arrogance and alot of sort of the independence
came out and we started to dustoff in January our crisis manual
(13:37):
that we had put together afterthe recession Cause, when the
recession hit and we were aliveas a business for like I don't
know six, seven months, we gotbaptized real early, survived
that and afterwards put togethera nice crisis communication
plan, a manual, a strategy, etcetera.
We pulled that out in Januaryit was March when I was like no,
(13:59):
this is imminent, let's startgoing.
So but yeah, I've got aquestion.
Gareth Morgan (14:06):
I've got a question for you, jay.
So now that you reflect on thatfive years down the line, how
was that, how relevant was thatcrisis manual to you?
And then the actual specificsof how this crisis COVID was
playing out?
Jay Johnson (14:26):
Yeah, I think one of the things it was relevant
and it was completely irrelevantright, because it was obviously
two very different crises.
But when some of the differentthings that we looked at was
like, okay, we need tostreamline, we need to manage,
we need to expect that we'regoing to have massive revenue
drops or that people are goingto panic.
We know that.
So we're going to have massiverevenue drops or that people are
going to panic.
We know that.
(14:46):
So we started putting messagesout to clients in advance hey,
we know something's coming, weknow this is here, we're going
to remain by your side, we'vegot you, so on and so forth.
And we knew that there was likeone of our part of our business
does marketing and the otherpart of our business does
training.
And that was actually alearning outcome that we got
from the recession was when onegoes up, the other often goes
(15:10):
down.
When the other goes down, theother goes up.
So we started saying training'sgonna take a hit Marketing.
If we're right, if we positionthis right, we can actually
position our clients to be wayahead of the game by the time
that this is all resolved andwhatever.
And we took a gamble on thatand it paid off.
So some of it worked.
(15:30):
Some of it was just like, okay,this is useless, this is
useless, this is useless, but atleast we started with something
.
I've felt yeah, that's a yeah.
No, I was just going to pointout pretty much where we where
we got to with the in the book.
Peter Willis (15:43):
We that and good point.
That's pretty much where we gotto in the book and this is
Gareth's experience in the city.
I think that you have plans,you need to have plans, you need
to think as much as you can inadvance, but reality always
surprises, and something we alsotalk about is how quickly and
quite devastatingly sometimesthe secondary crises arrive.
(16:06):
So what looks like we'rehearing stories of a virus, a
virus, a virus, a virus, andeverybody thinks are sickness,
death, actually because of thedecision to lock down, make
people stay at home.
You have all kinds of secondarycrises around unemployment,
people losing their businessesand so on, and those you
(16:29):
wouldn't have in your pandemicplan because they would be all
about the health concerns.
Jay Johnson (16:36):
Yep, well, and I think it was smart that you
brought in one of the things ofsupply chain.
You know and really thinkingabout your supply chain, your
network, your collaborators,your competitors, and what that
looks like in a world of hey, weall need to navigate a crisis
that's impacting all of us.
How can we work together?
(16:56):
Now, even though we werecompetitors last week versus and
you saw a number, I can tellyou from trainers and speakers
perspectives there was a lotmore collaboration amongst
trainers and speakers thatoccurred, you know, weeks,
months, whatever, after, thanany time in before in my career.
Peter Willis (17:15):
So yeah, Can I just say something about?
We're focusing on this sort ofwhat we call when the wave
begins to break, that moment ina crisis when you think, oh,
this is actually now reallygoing to happen.
Yeah, it's a sort of secondphase that we identify, and I
just want to say something aboutthe role of the leader.
(17:35):
In an organization, wherethere's quite a number of people
in the organization and theyhave a leader or a team of
leaders, one of the things thatwe regard as so important is
that the leader informs him orherself better than the best of
(17:56):
his employees.
You really have to know what isgoing on, so it's up to you to
go and reach out to expertswherever you can find them and
say look, I have a hunch, thisis going to be X.
Please tell me what you think,and then you can bring that back
to your team so that your teamis better informed than anybody
else, because in a crisis,there's so much uncertainty and
(18:19):
anxiety and people lean intotheir organization.
And people lean into theirorganization If it's a good
organization with a decentculture.
People expect to feel saferinside their organization than
days and be willing to talkabout it openly and not say no,
(18:48):
don't worry.
Don't worry, we'll have a planin a week's time.
You go back to your work, sothis sort of is the scanning and
learning, rapidly gettingknowledge and then being willing
to communicate and reassurepeople that this is going to be.
This is a crisis.
We're declaring a crisis, butwe're on it and we will talk to
(19:09):
you.
Gareth Morgan (19:11):
Let me add something there as well.
Jay and Peter, I think anotherpart of this wave begins to
break phase, and you weredescribing it in your own
circumstances there in March2020, jay was at some point.
A leader also has to declarethat this is a crisis, and
that's a difficult thing to dobecause, of course, there are
(19:34):
going to be occasions when thoseweak early signals were
incorrect, and that could beembarrassing, but also a lot
could be lost if you don'tdeclare and it indeed is a
crisis.
It's a big moment, and I thinkour teams look to leaders to be
(19:56):
able to define something, to beable to say this is what it is.
I don't know everything at thispoint in time, but we're going
to get through this together.
Here are the initial things weare going to do and as we learn
more information, I will giveyou more information and we will
address the plan accordingly.
(20:17):
I think that sense-making is soimportant at the early stages.
Otherwise, organizations can bespinning wheels for a long
period of time and ultimatelylooking to someone else perhaps
a government or a localgovernment or another company or
something to offer someleadership in the sector, and
(20:38):
those are critical moments inthe early days of the crisis,
when getting as far as possibleahead of it is very, very
important.
Jay Johnson (20:47):
Yeah, and I like that addition, gareth, as I was
looking at the four phases ofthe crisis, with before the
crisis and the culturalreadiness, I know that, at least
in my company, one of thethings is I accept and I
encourage challenge, even as theCEO.
I want to be challenged.
(21:08):
I want somebody to tell me whyI'm wrong and I want to have a
discussion and a debate about it.
I don't shy away from that inany way.
You could have been in thecompany for two weeks, two
months, two years, two decades.
I want your voice and in someof the conversation in advance
and in that leadershipdecision-making.
And here's my question for youhow should we, as maybe leaders
(21:31):
or well, let's put it this way.
Let's go back to this theleader comes down and tells the
L&D team we have a sales crisisand we need solutions right now.
At what level is obviously theleader, the senior leader, the
CEO, whoever it is, leader bytitle versus?
(21:51):
How can I maybe step into aleadership role and say I'm not
sure that this really qualifiesas a crisis?
How do we create the conditionsfor some conversation around
that space when we feel likemaybe the leader is misjudged?
Is this actually a crisis or ifwe're in a leadership position.
(22:12):
How can we create theconditions of openness to say
what are your thoughts, team,what do you guys think on that?
Peter Willis (22:21):
Well, if I may, gareth, I'll just say that
that's the work of building aculture just like you described
in your business, where youwelcome the voice of anyone who
has a contribution.
To make me like if you were inthat situation where you felt
(22:46):
there was a leadership crisisand you walked into your L&D
team and said what are we goingto do?
We need a solution.
People would feel free to talkand you would work something out
fairly quickly.
It's when you haven't got thatculture and people are afraid of
losing status or their jobs orwhatever if they speak their
(23:09):
mind.
That and that's, I think,something we say quite strongly
in the book is you cannot buildculture in a crisis.
That has to be done beforehand,and it sounds like you've done
that work.
So I would think you know youcould check that box quite
strongly and say we're at leastnot going to be tiptoeing around
(23:31):
each other when we need to betalking frankly in the next
crisis.
Gareth Morgan (23:37):
Yeah.
So I agree with Peter entirely.
I think culture is built inpeacetime and certainly after a
crisis one can reflect onwhether the culture of an
organization has got more robustor more fragile.
But let me add to that a littlebit.
I think let's assume that it isa crisis.
(23:59):
Now a leader, in what we wouldcall the turbulence of the
crisis, which is sort of phasethree in our minds of a crisis,
that team dynamic is vitally,vitally important.
And here I think we have tomention a critical point which
(24:20):
we argue in our book, which weargue in our book, and that is
that in a crisis, a leader'sregular team let's imagine
several people around a leaderthat are most close to that
particular person that regularteam is not necessarily the
right team in a crisis.
(24:41):
Now, I guess differentorganizations are going to have
different configurations of howleadership teams work, but we've
got some ideas on what we callbreak the organogram in a crisis
, because a leader should beable to pick the right people
for that moment, and sometimesthat means having difficult
(25:03):
conversations with members ofyour regular team saying you
know, maybe this one stick itout.
There are lots of tasks to bedone.
Go and do those.
But I'm going to ask thisperson and this person and this
person who may be from adifferent part of the
organization, one or two levelsbelow, to actually step up in
this particular moment, becauseI don't think everyone is good
(25:26):
during crises.
The book is about becoming goodat crises from a point of view
of a leader or people who aspireto be leaders, but not everyone
is good.
So we've got some ideas inbreaking our diagram, putting
the right team in place, andwith that, jay, comes obviously
the ongoing teamwork andperformance management that
would be done in the context ofthat crisis.
(25:47):
And part of that, I would argue, is that kind of robust
feedback looking at the dataregularly, what is changing,
what new information is comingat us.
And, as you say and I agreewith you, I also like this, as a
leader, asking people tochallenge the assumptions.
Like this, as a leader, askingpeople to challenge the
assumptions, challenge theexisting strategy and to test it
(26:12):
regularly to ensure thatwhatever path is being chosen is
as robust as possible to getyou safely out of the crisis.
Jay Johnson (26:16):
I love what you said there and it totally took
me to if you've ever seen any ofthe Godfather movies and at one
point in time he's, you know,he fires his conciliary and he
says he's not a wartimeconciliary.
And you know, it's just such aninteresting thing because for
some reason, even in my youngerdays, that stuck with me and
(26:37):
it's always been like, okay,who's my number two?
And I've had number twos thatare great in crisis and I've had
number twos that are great incrisis and I've had number twos
that you're not a wartimeconciliary.
It's time to bring somebodyelse into this space.
So I mean, that definitelylands quite strongly for me.
Now I'm thinking about this andagain, I love this framework and
(26:59):
I love this conversationbecause I think as an
organization, especially an, youknow, an HR person, they
experience crises.
All right, how would yourecommend like let's, let's put
it into the mindset of we're inour day to day here, okay, and
you know, obviously there's the,the different phases before the
(27:20):
crisis, the way it begins tobreak the turbulence, the
recovery, learning andtransformation.
And I'm not trying to skipahead to the recovery, learning
and transformation.
I'm trying to say we'repre-before the crisis.
They know there's going to beanother one coming.
What should we be doing now asHR teams, leadership teams,
(27:41):
management teams, training teams, coaches, teams, leadership
teams, management teams,training teams, coaches.
How do we prepare now for whatwe can't necessarily anticipate
before the crisis?
Gareth Morgan (27:54):
So I've got a couple of ideas.
Peter Willis (27:57):
You go.
Gareth Morgan (27:57):
You can go, yeah.
So I mean HR practitioners andtalent professionals, you know,
have so many tools in theirtoolbox and I would argue some
of those tools aren'tnecessarily as up to date as
they should be at any point intime.
And getting some of the basicsright and making sure that those
(28:20):
are in place, I think, would bepart of peacetime work.
Now, I think the great argumenthere is these things are always
good for the regular mission ofthe business, but if they are
not done properly, they becomeareas of serious weakness during
crisis.
So I would think, for example,around some of those things that
(28:40):
good organizations have all thetime, like good workforce
development plans for differentdivisions, ensuring that those
are as up-to-date as possibleand are future-focused.
Excellent succession planning atall times is vitally important.
Possibly, I would say, havingaccess to short-term or
(29:06):
temporary mechanisms to bring onmore people into your
organization.
Can that be done quickly?
Would you, for example, in acrisis, need a certain number of
skills that you don'tnecessarily have Now?
I'm not saying you would knowwhat those are, but do you have
procurement vehicles in placewhere you can bring on temporary
(29:27):
talent that you wouldn'tnecessarily do Now?
These are all good things tohave in place at any particular
point in time.
Comms protocols are very, veryimportant.
Peacetime the regular missionof the talent management or HR
divisions of an organizationhaving good and regular contact
(29:54):
with the broader organization inpeacetime can be leveraged a
lot during a crisis.
The trust that has been builtduring peacetime can be really,
really sweated during a crisis.
Those are some of my initialideas.
Jay Johnson (30:04):
I love that, Gareth Peter, what do you?
Peter Willis (30:07):
think I've had an idea while we've been talking,
which is that it comes from yourpoint at the beginning, jay,
about crises happening all thetime In any organization.
You could point to a crisis anyminute of the day, and I would
say that if you are a farsightedHR manager or talent officer,
(30:36):
you can see these mini crises asyour raw material for testing
things like trust.
You mentioned it just now,gareth.
Trust is probably I would argueperhaps the most important
element of culture that's goingto get you through a crisis.
Well, and if you are anorganization that's constantly
(30:56):
having crises and a feature ofthe crises is that people are
not trusting each other andthey're therefore splitting
apart rather than workingtogether then you're going to
have to think how do we startbuilding trust?
Small, small, then get itbigger, and so on.
That's another wholeconversation, but I would use
these mini crises Don't sort oftry to swap them out of the way.
Jay Johnson (31:19):
So practice on the smaller fish before the big fish
enters the pond.
Gareth Morgan (31:23):
No practice on the smaller fish before the big
fish enters the pond.
Jay Johnson (31:25):
No, I love that.
That's that.
It's.
That's great real worldlearning and that's definitely
something that I think is apowerful takeaway.
Let me ask a couple of questionsas it relates to and I'm going
to tie this into something thatI know that a lot of people in
the workforce development spaceare dealing with fear.
Okay, it's prevalent fear thatour budget's going to get cut,
(31:49):
fear that we're going to be letgo.
I mean, I part of the reasonthat I started the Talent Forge
podcast was because I got realtired of seeing a number of my
friends on LinkedIn saying I'mopen for work because my company
literally just cut the entiretalent development portion out
and has replaced it withLinkedIn pulse, um, which I have
(32:09):
plenty of opinions on, butthere's a there's, there's a lot
of fear in a number ofdifferent spaces and obviously
when we're in a crisis, we're infear mode.
I mean our limbic system goesmy background's in behavioral
science, neuro neuro.
I mean our limbic system goesmy background's in behavioral
science, neuroscience,neurobiology.
Well, guess what?
Your cortisol, adrenaline,norepinephrine none of which you
(32:35):
actually have control over inthe moment autonomic responses
that end up occurring.
However, we can subvert themwith neocortical action, et
cetera, and particular things,but we're in the middle of this
crisis.
Whether I'm in a leadershipposition, whether I'm in the,
you know, in the talentdevelopment space, that fear is
fear.
How can we be better?
How can we become somebody whonot only can be potentially
(32:59):
motivated by the fear, takeaction in spite of the fear,
manage the fear and keep us frommoving into a place of
paralysis?
I know that the book speaksquite a bit to this and I'd love
to get your perspectives abouthow do we deal with this fear
concept, because a lot of peopleare living in fear every single
(33:20):
day of their life.
I think this transcends evenjust crisis.
How do we navigate of theirlife.
Peter Willis (33:27):
I think this transcends even just crisis.
How do we navigate?
Well, I definitely have athought on this and I'm so, so
delighted you bring it up,because I think this is not just
in the workplace.
You can guarantee that a lot ofpeople are living with anxiety
and fear, but I think around ourcountries, around the world,
it's becoming almost an epidemicof anxiety, and the answer
(33:47):
actually is from the perspectiveof leadership.
I think the answer isrelatively simple, which is that
you, as the leader you're theonly person you really have any
control over.
You need to, by whatever means,with whatever help you can
muster, you need to becomefriends with your fear and your
(34:11):
anxieties, because, to theextent that you are not doing
that, you are going to bewalking around exporting your
anxiety onto other people,unawares, people unawares, and
(34:31):
what people most want in acrisis from their leadership is
a sense of calm that this is notthe end of the world.
And I am not terrified, I'mhyper alert and I'm concerned
Absolutely, but I'm not fallingapart.
Jay Johnson (34:43):
Don't pull that panic button out and start
slamming it on the table.
Peter Willis (34:47):
No, no, no, no and seriously, if you can't do that
, get to a therapist inpeacetime, fast.
And just like Gaira saidearlier, you'll get plenty of
rewards, whether there's acrisis or not, by learning to
embrace your fear and livethrough it and not be mastered
(35:08):
by it.
Jay Johnson (35:12):
Gareth, anything to add on that question?
Gareth Morgan (35:16):
Yeah, I mean, the point is we look at it through
the lens of the leader, andPeter, I think, has given a lot
of content there.
It is the job of the leader tobe able to help manage the
anxieties of a team duringcrisis.
You gave a very particularexample, I guess, in the talent
(35:37):
space, and I don't have a lot ofcontent to be able to respond
to that in particular.
But in a crisis, it is okay fora leader to be able to say
every now and again I don't knoweverything either.
Take time out, get help.
Let's create time for learningand reflection, and sharing.
(36:01):
All of that is vitallyimportant.
I have no doubt and I've seen itdone and I've been in
leadership teams where I havehad these roles during these
large-scale crises that we'veexperienced in my own city, in
(36:22):
my own city, and they have beenincredibly effective at managing
fear not entirely eradicatingit, certainly not, but being
able to one ensure that everyoneknows that everyone is going
through something and that thereare ways to talk about it and
there are ways to process it.
And, importantly, it'simportant for the leader to be
able to articulate somethingvery brave, and that is that we
(36:46):
will get through this together,there is an end to this crisis,
and that's why we are heretogether, we are trying to
navigate it.
This crisis, and that's why weare here together.
We are trying to navigate it.
If a leader has such degree ofuncertainty or fear themselves
and isn't able to articulatesome degree of clarity during
(37:07):
these moments, that team is notgoing to function optimally at
all and it might result invarious forms of trauma and fear
cycling and spiraling even more.
Jay Johnson (37:20):
So, yeah, I love this and I really like how you
said, peter, becoming friendswith your fear, because I think
oftentimes we try to reject it,deny it, push it away, and
that's not how we would treat afriend.
So shifting into this sort oflike let's become friends, let's
figure this out.
And then I really appreciatethat sort of direction.
Gareth is when it's like okay,I have a fear, and usually our
(37:42):
fears are because we fear thatwe don't have the resources to
overcome whatever challenge orbarrier that's coming so being
able to say, as a leader and Iremember very clearly I looked
at my team at one point in timeand said here's what I know and
here's what I don't know.
And I'm asking your help.
I don't know what this is goingto look like, where this is
(38:03):
going to go.
I don't know if we're going tohave to shift X, y and Z or
we're going to have to drop this, but I do know that we've
survived something like thisbefore.
We're going to survive this andthis is not going to last
forever.
I do remember saying almostthose exact words, so I kind of
feel a little validated.
Guys, that's really nice.
Peter Willis (38:23):
You should.
Jay Johnson (38:24):
I was scared to say that.
And here's why and this ismaybe where I'd like you to dig
into this conversation I wasafraid to tell my team things
that I was afraid of and that Ididn't know.
And then, honestly, it was amoment of I realized the value
(38:44):
that came from that afterwards,because there was a huge value
in sharing that vulnerability.
There was a huge value in howmy team reacted and responded,
but I felt, as the leader, likeI can't tell them.
I don't know.
I can't tell them.
You know, I don't have all ofthe answers right now, and I
think a lot of leaders, I thinka lot of people in general, have
(39:06):
a fear of saying here's what Iknow and here's what I don't
know.
Yeah, I'm going to try to findout, we're going to find out
together, but let's talk aboutthat because I do think that
that is a huge human thing ishow can I announce what I would
maybe internally perceive as myvulnerability, my weakness, my
(39:26):
lack of knowledge?
Where does that show up in thiskind of crisis for leadership
conversation?
Peter Willis (39:40):
conversation.
We should have involved you inwriting this book, jay.
You're spot on.
We could invite you over toCape Town for coffee and do
volume two.
I like it.
This is we're back in the realmof culture here, because if you
have a culture wherevulnerability is allowed, then
you're well over halfway thereto being able, in a crisis, to
(40:03):
keep changing plans withoutshame.
I want to introduce this wordshame, because we talk about
fear and anxiety and I thinkshame comes along with it,
particularly if you have beenall the way through school and
through university and so on,collecting awards for knowing
(40:23):
stuff.
And then you get to a placewhere a moment in a crisis,
where you realize that you don'tknow, but people are expecting
you to know, and then there's areal risk that, because of the
potential shame, you will dodgethat and you will find excuses,
(40:43):
or you'll blame somebody else,or you'll try to look strong
when actually you're feelingweak.
And one of the points we makein the book is that people will
not be fooled.
Your people know, particularlyif you've been leading them for
just.
If you're the CEO for the lastweek, they won't know you yet,
but if you've been around for alittle while they know when
(41:05):
you're not yourself.
So you might as well give uptrying to put on a front of okay
, I've got this, because peoplewill see through it and even if
only half of them do, they willtell the other half no, no, he's
faking it.
So, um, we're talking aboutintegrity, honesty and these are
(41:25):
things that make a wonderfulcompany to work in anyway during
peacetime, and they aremassively reassuring when
uncertainty stalks the corridors.
Gareth Morgan (41:39):
Just to add to that.
I agree with Peter entirelythere.
Let me add something from adifferent angle there.
So the leader may not knoweverything and may have major
degree of anxiety about it, butthe one thing that I do think
the leader needs to do in theseparticular moments is to process
their thoughts, what they doknow and what they don't know,
(42:04):
and to be able to put that intosome framework to be able to
present to his or her team, tobe able to say this is how I am
thinking about it, so that ateam still gets a sense of
putting different ideas togetherthat tell some degree of a
story.
It may not be the right storyfor the crisis where it is at
(42:27):
that point in time, but it'smuch easier for a team to be
able to respond to thatframework of what the leader
thinks is going on, because thenthe team can say you know what,
I agree with that, that andthat I think you are wrong on
that.
Let's go and find another pieceof information.
I think the worst case scenarioif the leader is just
(42:50):
presenting a whole bunch ofrandom, chaotic ideas, overly
describing what is going on,without any data points, and
hence adding to the anxiety,that sense of I'm able to talk
about this even if it is theearly days, and then help me on
(43:10):
the journey.
That's the vulnerability partof it that leader is able to get
through that moment, I wouldargue, much better than simply
existing in fear and allowing,as Peter to say, to be exposed
to the team as someone who isprobably not quite up for this
moment.
Jay Johnson (43:31):
There's a lot of wisdom in both of what you said
and I can actually remember,looking back and thinking about
some of the leaders, that I andI never really reflected on a
number of other leaders'behaviors.
That's why I'm really lovingthis conversation.
But I remember, you know, kindof watching some people go into
that panic mode and just a shiftin the wind, every you know
(43:54):
here's 50 things, and it waslike there is no consistency,
there's no, and all it was doingwas it felt like they were
dodging.
It felt like they weren'tactually, they were just saying
stuff and not being transparent.
It felt like there was no plan,even though they were iterating
.
Oh, we've got all these plans,there's all these things.
(44:14):
It's like, okay, realistically,you couldn't have done that
pre-COVID.
How are you going to plan to dothat now?
I mean, you're right, it waspretty obvious, even though they
weren't my leader, it waspretty obvious that they were
grasping at every potentialstraw.
So this is, and again, I reallyadmire the work that you're
(44:36):
doing on these different things.
I want to get to one other kindof area and I think that this
is really important, especiallyfor the people in the talent
development world.
Phase four you're talkingrecovery, learning and
transformation.
Right it through.
(44:57):
We made it through all theturbulence.
We made it through the you know, you, you've.
How do we even think about this?
As a leader, as a company, asan organization, as you know,
some kind of entity?
What do we do to really say,okay, because we, we have
transformed.
Every human being on thisplanet that was alive during
covid transformed in some way,shape or form.
Whether they acknowledge thator not, everyone is different.
(45:17):
Now, the cognitiveneuroscientific studies that are
going to show how our brainsliterally evolved in less than
two years is going to be aninteresting thing.
So, with that being said, whatdo we need to be thinking about
in that recovery, learning,transformation stage?
Peter Willis (45:37):
Well, can I make a start, gareth?
For me, the first thing to say,before you can encourage people
to learn and reflect, the thingthat I learned after both the
drought and the pandemicparticularly I noticed it after
the drought, interviewingleaders in Cape Town was that
when the drought was declaredover and we were safe, all these
(46:01):
people were told oh, by the way, your in-tray is over there and
it's rather full because youknow you've been busy for the
last year or two, but thesethings are waiting to be dealt
with.
And, being sort of decentleaders, they said, oh right,
yeah, I'd better get on with myin-trade.
And so many of them got sickbecause they simply were
exhausted by the stress ofmanaging this abnormal crisis
(46:26):
and they went off sick, some ofthem for weeks.
And so I think and I'm afraid myconversations with senior city
managers reflected this in thatno, actually we didn't think to
pause and really give people achance to talk about what
they've been through, kind ofdecompress, maybe give out some
(46:46):
awards you know they don't haveto mean a lot, but the context
means a lot for saying this isover now, well done.
And then you're in a spacewhere you can get into little
groups, almost like focus groups, and say what went really well,
what didn't go so well, whatgoals do we take forward from
(47:08):
this and so on.
Those kinds of simpleconversations and I bet they
would be incredibly livelyconversations because people
feel a whole lot when they're inthese crisis situations, but
people don't usually get asked.
Jay Johnson (47:28):
There's so much wisdom in that, peter.
And just from a neurobiologicallevel, cortisol, adrenaline and
norepinephrine actually canhave the impact of keeping
sickness away and everythingelse.
And there's some pretty coolstudies like, uh, soldiers are
often, uh, the amount ofsoldiers that get sick while on
deployment is actually very low.
(47:50):
And they're eating well, they'renot sleeping well, they're not
doing all the things that theirbody should be doing, and yet
the rates of infections or anyof infectious disease super,
super low.
Until they come home on leavethat first week, coming back,
they are sick.
It's almost like everything iscaught up to them.
(48:11):
Why?
Because the human body wants tosurvive, and when we're in
survival mode, well guess what?
It's almost as though we'rejust like nope, put that, put
that in the back shelf, backshelf back shelf, and then it
all needs to catch up, yeah.
You know.
So I love that you say allright, let's pause, let's take
some time, let's reflect and,you know, get healthy some
(48:34):
self-care, maybe some, you know,recognition.
I think that's beautiful.
That's really well said, gareth.
What else?
Gareth Morgan (48:42):
I want to emphasize a point that Peter
mentioned, but to make it alittle bit more explicit.
It is important for the leaderto declare the crisis over.
In so many cases, it can justbe phased out or assumed to be
(49:03):
over.
It's an important moment.
I think it links to yourprevious point, jay.
It allows for that relief andthere are consequences and, as
you say, people may very wellget sick, but they can also use
those moments to rebirth and getreally, really healthy and
balanced again.
But don't take it for granted.
(49:24):
It must be declared over, ofcourse, but I want to emphasize
that point and, yes, a littlebit of time, but banking the
learnings while they are stillwarm is also very, very
important, so not drag it outunnecessarily.
(49:46):
So there's a really goodbalance of just the right amount
of time to wait and thenbanking those learnings.
And then, importantly, as Petersaid, what worked well and what
didn't work well.
I think we also need to look atthe structures that were
created during the crisis,bearing in mind in the way we're
suggesting a leader should work.
(50:07):
We've now broken the organogramor the organogram has been
significantly adjusted duringthe crisis.
It's a good moment to say whatworked and should we keep any of
this for our regular mission?
All of that is very, veryimportant.
Jay Johnson (50:22):
Yeah, and Peter, I didn't mean to cut you.
Did you have somethingadditional?
I wanted to make sure I createdspace for that.
Peter Willis (50:28):
Oh, I probably got tons of additional things
straight out of my head.
That's very good.
Jay Johnson (50:35):
So let me ask kind of a follow up question to that,
and I'll use COVID as theexample here, because there was
points and times when and I'mgoing to say strictly from even
just America's standards, thatthere was states that said this
crisis is over, and it was July2020.
(50:58):
There were states that saidthis crisis is still ongoing and
it's December of 2020.
Let alone when you get to therest of the world where maybe
the United States I could saythe way that I would have looked
at the crisis really came toconclusion probably January,
february of 2021.
(51:19):
A lot of the elderly started toget vaccinations and things
like that and so on and so forth.
And I'm not going to get into adebate about the good, the bad,
the ugly or what the timeframeis.
What happens when a leaderpotentially says, okay, the
crisis is over, and maybe it is,maybe it is for 60% of the
(51:41):
people, 70% of the people.
But at the beginning of ourconversation we had said, okay,
a crisis is something thataffects everybody in an
organization or everybody in amunicipality or whatever else.
There's going to be lastingeffects.
There's going to be some peoplethat may not see the crisis is
over.
There's immunocompromisedpeople, example, and that's
still a major crisis, orpotential crisis for them, and
(52:04):
large events are still.
You know, behavior is shifted.
How do we navigate?
How do we make that decisionlike?
What does that look like?
Is it okay well, 80 percent ofthe people are no longer
affected.
Crisis over it's now only 20percent.
Or is it now okay well, 80% ofthe people are no longer
affected.
Crisis over it's now only 20%.
Or is it now the crisis is done, when we really have gotten
everybody back into a new normal?
What does that look like to you?
Gareth Morgan (52:27):
So I remember those moments and, as you say,
it was different.
In different parts of the worldthere was a lot of political
decision making.
I think in different parts ofthe world there was a lot of
political decision-making.
I think in different parts ofthe world you could see it and
there was a tension in manycases between politicians and
epidemiologists and we could allfeel it.
It was new for many people, andeven people not in leadership
(52:50):
positions, I think, werelearning to critique what was
going on and think were learningto critique what was going on,
and many people were becomingsort of mini experts.
On this, the best way I canargue it is to argue it from a
framework point of view.
I would suggest that manypeople made some big mistakes in
opening up too quickly, but Iwould also probably argue that
(53:12):
there were big mistakes indragging it out too long and
that probably the answer wassomewhere in between.
I would argue and COVID is theexample that you're using but we
would have had to the best wayto do it is have some sense of
what is a goal of a number ofpeople that we are able to have
(53:34):
a solution for, to look afterwhich who are most vulnerable in
this particular case,immunocompromised comorbidities,
elderly and all of that and beable to ensure that there are
solutions for that group ofpeople.
That ensures that where thevirus is most dangerous is an
area where there is the mostsignificant safety.
(53:56):
Now I think you could use thatin other crises.
What I guess I'm saying is whatis the goal?
How would we know if we getthere?
So that's a data issue.
It probably also relates to anICT.
Is your infrastructure goodenough to be able to tell you
that and then to be able tomeasure that?
But also, here's the trick andthis was what COVID was doing
(54:18):
was looking for the othersignals in the system that are
interfering with the currentstrategy, because, you'll recall
, during COVID, our healthauthorities were then constantly
intersecting new strains of thevirus.
Now, that took a while to workout what were the impacts of
this.
This one was moving quicker,this one was more dangerous.
So it's a very, very dynamicprocess at all points in time.
(54:42):
So I would argue strategyframework, good data and a sense
of the crisis is over when wereach that point.
But that doesn't mean that youaren't constantly cycling
through new information.
That would probably need tomove that every now and again.
Jay Johnson (55:01):
So, being adaptable in that a little bit.
Peter Willis (55:03):
Yeah, okay, yeah, and I would just pick up.
There was another angle, do youremember, as we came out of the
pandemic, which was the dopeople have to come back to the
office?
And what if they don't want to?
And they have quite strongarguments why they shouldn't,
and so on.
And I think, from a leader'spoint of view, my strong
(55:25):
instinct is that you have to beas flexible as possible, while
remaining clear about what isour mission here, Because our
mission is not to make everybodyfeel super comfortable in their
bedroom.
Our mission is to provideproducts or services or run a
government, but we're nottyrants either, because that
(55:52):
breaks the whole culture.
So it just means you have tohave a lot more conversations
around the margins of the peoplewho are saying whoa, whoa, whoa
.
You may say it's over, but andI'm looking after an elderly
mother, et cetera, et cetera,all those cases.
But I think a good leader says,okay, this is another thing we
have to deal with.
(56:13):
We can't just sorry, crisis isover back in the office.
We didn't see a huge amount ofthat from the better run firms
anyway.
Jay Johnson (56:23):
Yeah, seeing a little bit more of it now, five
years later, people gettingyou're getting back to the
office five days a week, evensome of the bigger companies,
but I think most people see thecrisis as is pretty well over.
But I think it's reallyfascinating and I think that you
know, especially in the worldof workforce development, we've
(56:45):
had a number of well, quitefrankly, what would be
considered crisis?
A quiet quitting crisis, a, youknow, a workforce shortage
crisis?
I know trainers and talentdevelopment leaders have dealt
with a number of differentplaces macro crises, let alone
some of the micro crises thatmay be occurring inside of each
(57:06):
of their organizations.
I just want to say thank you.
This was an incredibleconversation and, honestly, like
thinking about the four phases,how we can really navigate and
adapt, how we can shift ourleadership, whether we have a
CEO title or whether we're in adifferent place.
I think that's really valuable.
If our, if our teams, if ourlisteners wanted to get in touch
(57:28):
with you, how would they reachout to you?
Peter Willis (57:32):
Well, we have a website for the book we wrote,
which iswwwbecominggoodatcrisescoza,
because we're proudly SouthAfrican, so we'll put that, I
presume, in the notes that gowith this podcast, and you'll
find how to contact us there andwe would love to hear from you.
And you'll find how to contactus there and we would love to
(57:56):
hear from you.
And you can get the bookthrough Amazon.
Have you heard of Amazon?
Is that a little bookshop nearyou?
Jay Johnson (58:02):
So far going through a crisis of getting five
days a week back in the office.
Peter Willis (58:09):
There you go.
We would love you to buy thebook.
What you haven't said, perhaps,is that it's a very short read.
We designed it specifically tobe read on a sort of a plane
trip across country, and wereckon it's a two-hour read.
Jay Johnson (58:29):
People seem to like it, yes, and I have had the
privilege of reading through agood portion of it and I've
really enjoyed it, and I thinkthat there's some great tips and
(58:51):
tactics for navigating crisis,which all of us will, and have
these conversations with leaders, which I think has really
brought some incredible insightsinto this world of crisis.
So thank you both for beinghere and for sharing your wisdom
and experience.
Peter Willis (59:06):
What a pleasure.
Jay Johnson (59:07):
Thank you so much, jay.
Thank you for having us.
I really enjoyed this.
It's been my pleasure.
So and thank you, audience, fortuning into this episode of the
Talent Forge, where, together,we're shaping the future.
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge,
where, together, we are shapingthe future of training and
development.
I'm really excited because it'sthe first time on the Talent
Forge that we have two gueststhat are joining us today.
I'd like to introduce PeterWillis and Gareth Morgan.
Welcome to the show, gentlemen.
Hi, jay, great to be with you.
(00:22):
So I always like to ask ourguests how did you get involved
and what brought you to whereyou're at?
You are authoring a book oncrisis, and I know that that's
something that a lot of peoplein talent development and HR are
dealing with on a daily basishow to lead through crisis.
So let's get a little bit ofyour background.
(00:43):
How did you get into this space?
You go first, peter how to leadthrough crisis.
So let's get a little bit ofyour background.
Gareth Morgan (00:48):
How did you get into this space?
Peter Willis (00:50):
Y ou go first, peter, yeah, okay, so I think we
both got quite sort of long anddetailed histories in sort of
different but somewhatoverlapping areas.
We overlap around the whole areaof sustainability, climate
change, resilience and so on,but Gareth more from a
government perspective and memore from a sort of teaching,
(01:11):
consulting perspective, workingwith business leaders.
But what really was the genesisof this book and our coming
together to write it was that weboth went through two major
crises that afflicted our city,cape Town.
The first one was a major sortof one in 500 year drought that
(01:35):
hit us in 2016, right through to2018.
And Gareth was part of theleadership team in the city
administration who was copingwith that and strategizing it.
And then, a couple of yearslater, as we all did, we went
through the pandemic COVID andthe city responded really well,
(01:56):
and in both cases I raised somemoney and ran a project
interviewing leaders who wereinvolved in responding to the
drought, because I'm veryinterested in leadership
development and what it takes tolead well in difficult
circumstances.
So and Gareth himself is aleader and is surrounded by in
(02:19):
my estimation because I live inthe city very good leaders, so
we found we had a lot of commoninterest in sharing some of the
amazing insights and lessonsthat came out of those two major
crises which we came through.
Jay Johnson (02:33):
That's pretty amazing, gareth, from your side.
Gareth Morgan (02:37):
Yeah, so I'm an executive in the city of Cape
Town metropolitan government.
It's a large organization,31,000 employees, and I lead a
significant portfolio that scansthe horizon, that plans for the
future, sort of a 25 yearhorizons of planning and I,
(02:58):
interestingly enough, which isrelevant to the particular
audience that's listening today,among other things, I lead
strategic workforce planningactually in the city of Cape
Town and leadership development,but I guess of the particular
topic today, I also lead theresilience functions and the
business continuity functions.
I cut my teeth in thisorganization prior to becoming
(03:36):
executive by playing seniorleadership roles in the response
to that rather existentialcrisis we dealt with in Cape
Town, which was coming quiteclose to running out of water in
2017.
And then, like all of us, covid, in the way we were responding
to these very large crisisevents, these slow-moving crises
that were lasting months and,in the case of COVID, probably
more than two years and Petercame to me through a connection
(03:59):
and we only met each other inearly 2018.
We discovered that we both likedreflecting on things that had
happened in the leadership spaceand documenting those, and it
took a few years further, but Ikept on saying to Peter I can
see patterns from how weresponded to the day zero
(04:20):
drought and COVID andinterestingly enough, at least
for me, I was saying it didn'tmatter so much what the actual
crisis was, but that there wereways that leaders could build
capabilities which would beuseful for their regular mission
but could be repurposed duringcrisis and perhaps we can talk
(04:40):
about those in a little whilebut also that the phasing of
crises are common, irrespective.
So we're kind of ratheragnostic about what the crisis
is, that the leader is preparingfor and put that into a
framework, and Peter and I, overthe course of just over a year,
put this piece, this manuscript, together and then ultimately
(05:01):
we had a piece of work and we'rekeen to share it with as many
people as possible.
Jay Johnson (05:06):
I love this and I love the title of the book
becoming because you know, whenyou think becoming, you don't
always think like crisis, right,like that's not always
something there.
So I was like, wow, this is,you know.
I really appreciate that.
So here's here's going to bethe question I have, because I
think that this is somethingthat, no matter what your role
(05:28):
is in an organization, whetheryou're in a senior leadership,
whether you're in a manager role, whether you're in talent
development, whether you're inHR, we hear the word crisis
every single day.
We've got a work for.
We've got a talent crisis.
We have a.
We've got a leadership crisis.
We have a.
We've got a leadership crisis.
We have this.
Everything has been labeledcrisis.
(05:49):
Now that the ones that you'retalking about, those are what I
would most certainly consider.
Those are big crises, right,like a drought.
When we're looking at somethinglike COVID, a global crisis,
and before we get into, hey, howcan we navigate some of these
things?
Can you help me understand, andmaybe the audience how do you
(06:10):
perceive what is an actualcrisis when we're thinking about
?
You know, if we're in thatposition where our boss comes to
us and says we have a salescrisis and we need a training
for it.
Is it really a crisis Like whatis happening?
How do we define this term?
What are your thoughts?
Peter Willis (06:32):
Well, if I go first, the way we have focused
because, yes, you're right thatyou can crisis is a very elastic
term.
You can wake up in the middleof the night and feel as though
you're having a crisis becauseof the things you've forgotten
to do the previous day.
But we're talking about crises,and I think this is really
interesting.
We're talking about criseswhere, when you look around you,
(06:54):
everybody is experiencing thiscrisis, the sort of crisis
you're talking about, where yourboss comes in and says we're
having a sales crisis.
People outside the company,even a lot of people in the
company, they wouldn't care, itdoesn't concern them.
We're talking about I mean, withthe pandemic, it was a quite
extraordinary experience, asyou'll remember, where you
(07:15):
looked around and you knew thateverybody you met or spoke to
was also experiencing the samecrisis.
So that's our kind of frameworkwas also experiencing the same
crisis.
So that's our kind of framework.
And I suppose the other thing Iwould say is that you know
you're in a crisis when normalcomes to a grinding halt.
(07:37):
It's not a crisis if you knowthere's a problem coming.
The crisis is when normalsuddenly is completely disrupted
and then everybody has to stopand say, oh, we have to do some
completely different things now.
Okay.
Gareth Morgan (07:56):
Yeah, jay, I would add to that.
Actually, in the book we layout a number of conditions.
We don't say that they all needto be met, but certainly a
majority of them need to be met,and that includes there's no
let up in the volume ofdifficult challenges, and people
around you in the organizationare anxious and the teams that
(08:19):
would normally respond to thetypes of problems that are
emerging are entirelyoverwhelmed.
Some of those things I wouldregard, if you put them all
together, probably suggest tothe leader that we're in crisis.
Jay Johnson (08:33):
Yeah, and I like that because I think that term
crisis is overused and, as Imentioned to you before, one of
my degrees, one of my master'sdegrees, was in crisis
communications and I oftentimesso.
Communication really means alot to me when I'm thinking
about like, okay, how are wedefining something?
What are we looking at and isthis really a crisis?
(08:56):
Is this a organizational crisis?
So I think we can all agreethat the pandemic was a global
crisis of epic proportionshopefully once in a lifetime,
because I'm not ready to gothrough something like that
again.
Let me share with you sort ofwhat happened with my position
(09:19):
and when we were looking at itand we are starting to see the
expansiveness of this and peoplewere starting to talk and it
was still rumor and there wasn'tthat much great information out
there, so on and so forth.
At one point in time, I rememberlooking at one of my business
partners and saying it's goingto be here in less than a week
(09:41):
and it is going to be the mostdisruptive thing that we've had
to deal with.
Now my business was aliveduring the global recession,
2008, 2009, housing market crash, et cetera and I kind of just I
don't know.
I had this inkling that thiswas going to be bigger, and it
was.
You know, two weeks into it, wewatched $200,000 worth of our
(10:05):
revenue walk out the doorbecause, well, no more speaking,
no more training, no moreevents, no more any of those
things, and I know that my brainwent into full crisis mode.
So talk me through that.
What does that process looklike in general, Because you've
had the opportunity to haveconversations with tons of
leaders that have obviously gonethrough different things.
(10:27):
What should we know about?
When we kind of get that tinglein the back of our neck or we
start to feel like this is goingto be bad, what do we need to
be thinking about?
Gareth Morgan (10:40):
Yeah.
So I think you're talking, jay,there, about as you positioned
yourself before the crisis hityou in the face.
I mean, that sounds like a sortof a weak early signal of you
as a leader, scanning thehorizon and going.
Something is happening here.
Ideally, you probably want toget that feeling even a little
(11:03):
bit before that.
You probably want to get thatfeeling even a little bit before
that, and I suspect youprobably did, because I think we
all knew that something washappening in the world around
about sort of January of 2020.
And we all started locking downaround the world in March 2020.
So that weak early signal isimportant.
It's the curiosity that comeswith it and it's those first
(11:24):
discussions that you have with ateam.
It might not be the actualcrisis team that you put
together.
It could just be your regularteam.
We don't for a moment argue thatyour crisis team has to be your
regular team.
That's the time to start sayingwhat could the impact of this
be?
What are the first decisionsthat we can start making Now?
(11:48):
A lot of what we argue, peterand I, is around these
capabilities that we think arebest built during peacetime, and
, if you don't mind, let me justsort of mention them quickly
because it might help the restof the conversation, but they
include, for example, supplychain adaptability, the quality
of your data systems, thequality of your ICT
(12:11):
infrastructure, yourcollaboration and partnerships
those that exist because theybecome very important during a
crisis.
Sometimes, even your competitorsare actually really good
collaborators during crisis, andcommunication protocols are all
important.
A leader would have hopefullythought through a lot of that
the capabilities and stress testthose, because those will often
(12:34):
become the foundations ofwhatever you decide to do.
When you then get into the caseof, okay, what is my strategy
going to be?
What is the data that I'm goingto be watching and in your case
, you immediately referencerevenue I guess cash is such a
big thing during crises andtrying to keep cash flow at any
(12:55):
point in time during that, andthen, of course, getting into
things like who are the rightpeople to put around me those
are the first things you wouldbe able to put together as a
leader during those early daysof a crisis.
Jay Johnson (13:14):
And it's funny because you're absolutely right.
It was when we heard the firstthing about this in January and
I can tell you in the US therewas a lot of people saying it's
not going to get to us, we'regoing to handle it.
And a lot of arrogance and alot of sort of the independence
came out and we started to dustoff in January our crisis manual
(13:37):
that we had put together afterthe recession Cause, when the
recession hit and we were aliveas a business for like I don't
know six, seven months, we gotbaptized real early, survived
that and afterwards put togethera nice crisis communication
plan, a manual, a strategy, etcetera.
We pulled that out in Januaryit was March when I was like no,
(13:59):
this is imminent, let's startgoing.
So but yeah, I've got aquestion.
Gareth Morgan (14:06):
I've got a question for you, jay.
So now that you reflect on thatfive years down the line, how
was that, how relevant was thatcrisis manual to you?
And then the actual specificsof how this crisis COVID was
playing out?
Jay Johnson (14:26):
Yeah, I think one of the things it was relevant
and it was completely irrelevantright, because it was obviously
two very different crises.
But when some of the differentthings that we looked at was
like, okay, we need tostreamline, we need to manage,
we need to expect that we'regoing to have massive revenue
drops or that people are goingto panic.
We know that.
So we're going to have massiverevenue drops or that people are
going to panic.
We know that.
(14:46):
So we started putting messagesout to clients in advance hey,
we know something's coming, weknow this is here, we're going
to remain by your side, we'vegot you, so on and so forth.
And we knew that there was likeone of our part of our business
does marketing and the otherpart of our business does
training.
And that was actually alearning outcome that we got
from the recession was when onegoes up, the other often goes
(15:10):
down.
When the other goes down, theother goes up.
So we started saying training'sgonna take a hit Marketing.
If we're right, if we positionthis right, we can actually
position our clients to be wayahead of the game by the time
that this is all resolved andwhatever.
And we took a gamble on thatand it paid off.
So some of it worked.
(15:30):
Some of it was just like, okay,this is useless, this is
useless, this is useless, but atleast we started with something
.
I've felt yeah, that's a yeah.
No, I was just going to pointout pretty much where we where
we got to with the in the book.
Peter Willis (15:43):
We that and good point.
That's pretty much where we gotto in the book and this is
Gareth's experience in the city.
I think that you have plans,you need to have plans, you need
to think as much as you can inadvance, but reality always
surprises, and something we alsotalk about is how quickly and
quite devastatingly sometimesthe secondary crises arrive.
(16:06):
So what looks like we'rehearing stories of a virus, a
virus, a virus, a virus, andeverybody thinks are sickness,
death, actually because of thedecision to lock down, make
people stay at home.
You have all kinds of secondarycrises around unemployment,
people losing their businessesand so on, and those you
(16:29):
wouldn't have in your pandemicplan because they would be all
about the health concerns.
Jay Johnson (16:36):
Yep, well, and I think it was smart that you
brought in one of the things ofsupply chain.
You know and really thinkingabout your supply chain, your
network, your collaborators,your competitors, and what that
looks like in a world of hey, weall need to navigate a crisis
that's impacting all of us.
How can we work together?
(16:56):
Now, even though we werecompetitors last week versus and
you saw a number, I can tellyou from trainers and speakers
perspectives there was a lotmore collaboration amongst
trainers and speakers thatoccurred, you know, weeks,
months, whatever, after, thanany time in before in my career.
Peter Willis (17:15):
So yeah, Can I just say something about?
We're focusing on this sort ofwhat we call when the wave
begins to break, that moment ina crisis when you think, oh,
this is actually now reallygoing to happen.
Yeah, it's a sort of secondphase that we identify, and I
just want to say something aboutthe role of the leader.
(17:35):
In an organization, wherethere's quite a number of people
in the organization and theyhave a leader or a team of
leaders, one of the things thatwe regard as so important is
that the leader informs him orherself better than the best of
(17:56):
his employees.
You really have to know what isgoing on, so it's up to you to
go and reach out to expertswherever you can find them and
say look, I have a hunch, thisis going to be X.
Please tell me what you think,and then you can bring that back
to your team so that your teamis better informed than anybody
else, because in a crisis,there's so much uncertainty and
(18:19):
anxiety and people lean intotheir organization.
And people lean into theirorganization If it's a good
organization with a decentculture.
People expect to feel saferinside their organization than
days and be willing to talkabout it openly and not say no,
(18:48):
don't worry.
Don't worry, we'll have a planin a week's time.
You go back to your work, sothis sort of is the scanning and
learning, rapidly gettingknowledge and then being willing
to communicate and reassurepeople that this is going to be.
This is a crisis.
We're declaring a crisis, butwe're on it and we will talk to
(19:09):
you.
Gareth Morgan (19:11):
Let me add something there as well.
Jay and Peter, I think anotherpart of this wave begins to
break phase, and you weredescribing it in your own
circumstances there in March2020, jay was at some point.
A leader also has to declarethat this is a crisis, and
that's a difficult thing to dobecause, of course, there are
(19:34):
going to be occasions when thoseweak early signals were
incorrect, and that could beembarrassing, but also a lot
could be lost if you don'tdeclare and it indeed is a
crisis.
It's a big moment, and I thinkour teams look to leaders to be
(19:56):
able to define something, to beable to say this is what it is.
I don't know everything at thispoint in time, but we're going
to get through this together.
Here are the initial things weare going to do and as we learn
more information, I will giveyou more information and we will
address the plan accordingly.
(20:17):
I think that sense-making is soimportant at the early stages.
Otherwise, organizations can bespinning wheels for a long
period of time and ultimatelylooking to someone else perhaps
a government or a localgovernment or another company or
something to offer someleadership in the sector, and
(20:38):
those are critical moments inthe early days of the crisis,
when getting as far as possibleahead of it is very, very
important.
Jay Johnson (20:47):
Yeah, and I like that addition, gareth, as I was
looking at the four phases ofthe crisis, with before the
crisis and the culturalreadiness, I know that, at least
in my company, one of thethings is I accept and I
encourage challenge, even as theCEO.
I want to be challenged.
(21:08):
I want somebody to tell me whyI'm wrong and I want to have a
discussion and a debate about it.
I don't shy away from that inany way.
You could have been in thecompany for two weeks, two
months, two years, two decades.
I want your voice and in someof the conversation in advance
and in that leadershipdecision-making.
And here's my question for youhow should we, as maybe leaders
(21:31):
or well, let's put it this way.
Let's go back to this theleader comes down and tells the
L&D team we have a sales crisisand we need solutions right now.
At what level is obviously theleader, the senior leader, the
CEO, whoever it is, leader bytitle versus?
(21:51):
How can I maybe step into aleadership role and say I'm not
sure that this really qualifiesas a crisis?
How do we create the conditionsfor some conversation around
that space when we feel likemaybe the leader is misjudged?
Is this actually a crisis or ifwe're in a leadership position.
(22:12):
How can we create theconditions of openness to say
what are your thoughts, team,what do you guys think on that?
Peter Willis (22:21):
Well, if I may, gareth, I'll just say that
that's the work of building aculture just like you described
in your business, where youwelcome the voice of anyone who
has a contribution.
To make me like if you were inthat situation where you felt
(22:46):
there was a leadership crisisand you walked into your L&D
team and said what are we goingto do?
We need a solution.
People would feel free to talkand you would work something out
fairly quickly.
It's when you haven't got thatculture and people are afraid of
losing status or their jobs orwhatever if they speak their
(23:09):
mind.
That and that's, I think,something we say quite strongly
in the book is you cannot buildculture in a crisis.
That has to be done beforehand,and it sounds like you've done
that work.
So I would think you know youcould check that box quite
strongly and say we're at leastnot going to be tiptoeing around
(23:31):
each other when we need to betalking frankly in the next
crisis.
Gareth Morgan (23:37):
Yeah.
So I agree with Peter entirely.
I think culture is built inpeacetime and certainly after a
crisis one can reflect onwhether the culture of an
organization has got more robustor more fragile.
But let me add to that a littlebit.
I think let's assume that it isa crisis.
(23:59):
Now a leader, in what we wouldcall the turbulence of the
crisis, which is sort of phasethree in our minds of a crisis,
that team dynamic is vitally,vitally important.
And here I think we have tomention a critical point which
(24:20):
we argue in our book, which weargue in our book, and that is
that in a crisis, a leader'sregular team let's imagine
several people around a leaderthat are most close to that
particular person that regularteam is not necessarily the
right team in a crisis.
(24:41):
Now, I guess differentorganizations are going to have
different configurations of howleadership teams work, but we've
got some ideas on what we callbreak the organogram in a crisis
, because a leader should beable to pick the right people
for that moment, and sometimesthat means having difficult
(25:03):
conversations with members ofyour regular team saying you
know, maybe this one stick itout.
There are lots of tasks to bedone.
Go and do those.
But I'm going to ask thisperson and this person and this
person who may be from adifferent part of the
organization, one or two levelsbelow, to actually step up in
this particular moment, becauseI don't think everyone is good
(25:26):
during crises.
The book is about becoming goodat crises from a point of view
of a leader or people who aspireto be leaders, but not everyone
is good.
So we've got some ideas inbreaking our diagram, putting
the right team in place, andwith that, jay, comes obviously
the ongoing teamwork andperformance management that
would be done in the context ofthat crisis.
(25:47):
And part of that, I would argue, is that kind of robust
feedback looking at the dataregularly, what is changing,
what new information is comingat us.
And, as you say and I agreewith you, I also like this, as a
leader, asking people tochallenge the assumptions.
Like this, as a leader, askingpeople to challenge the
assumptions, challenge theexisting strategy and to test it
(26:12):
regularly to ensure thatwhatever path is being chosen is
as robust as possible to getyou safely out of the crisis.
Jay Johnson (26:16):
I love what you said there and it totally took
me to if you've ever seen any ofthe Godfather movies and at one
point in time he's, you know,he fires his conciliary and he
says he's not a wartimeconciliary.
And you know, it's just such aninteresting thing because for
some reason, even in my youngerdays, that stuck with me and
(26:37):
it's always been like, okay,who's my number two?
And I've had number twos thatare great in crisis and I've had
number twos that are great incrisis and I've had number twos
that you're not a wartimeconciliary.
It's time to bring somebodyelse into this space.
So I mean, that definitelylands quite strongly for me.
Now I'm thinking about this andagain, I love this framework and
(26:59):
I love this conversationbecause I think as an
organization, especially an, youknow, an HR person, they
experience crises.
All right, how would yourecommend like let's, let's put
it into the mindset of we're inour day to day here, okay, and
you know, obviously there's the,the different phases before the
(27:20):
crisis, the way it begins tobreak the turbulence, the
recovery, learning andtransformation.
And I'm not trying to skipahead to the recovery, learning
and transformation.
I'm trying to say we'repre-before the crisis.
They know there's going to beanother one coming.
What should we be doing now asHR teams, leadership teams,
(27:41):
management teams, training teams, coaches, teams, leadership
teams, management teams,training teams, coaches.
How do we prepare now for whatwe can't necessarily anticipate
before the crisis?
Gareth Morgan (27:54):
So I've got a couple of ideas.
Peter Willis (27:57):
You go.
Gareth Morgan (27:57):
You can go, yeah.
So I mean HR practitioners andtalent professionals, you know,
have so many tools in theirtoolbox and I would argue some
of those tools aren'tnecessarily as up to date as
they should be at any point intime.
And getting some of the basicsright and making sure that those
(28:20):
are in place, I think, would bepart of peacetime work.
Now, I think the great argumenthere is these things are always
good for the regular mission ofthe business, but if they are
not done properly, they becomeareas of serious weakness during
crisis.
So I would think, for example,around some of those things that
(28:40):
good organizations have all thetime, like good workforce
development plans for differentdivisions, ensuring that those
are as up-to-date as possibleand are future-focused.
Excellent succession planning atall times is vitally important.
Possibly, I would say, havingaccess to short-term or
(29:06):
temporary mechanisms to bring onmore people into your
organization.
Can that be done quickly?
Would you, for example, in acrisis, need a certain number of
skills that you don'tnecessarily have Now?
I'm not saying you would knowwhat those are, but do you have
procurement vehicles in placewhere you can bring on temporary
(29:27):
talent that you wouldn'tnecessarily do Now?
These are all good things tohave in place at any particular
point in time.
Comms protocols are very, veryimportant.
Peacetime the regular missionof the talent management or HR
divisions of an organizationhaving good and regular contact
(29:54):
with the broader organization inpeacetime can be leveraged a
lot during a crisis.
The trust that has been builtduring peacetime can be really,
really sweated during a crisis.
Those are some of my initialideas.
Jay Johnson (30:04):
I love that, Gareth Peter, what do you?
Peter Willis (30:07):
think I've had an idea while we've been talking,
which is that it comes from yourpoint at the beginning, jay,
about crises happening all thetime In any organization.
You could point to a crisis anyminute of the day, and I would
say that if you are a farsightedHR manager or talent officer,
(30:36):
you can see these mini crises asyour raw material for testing
things like trust.
You mentioned it just now,gareth.
Trust is probably I would argueperhaps the most important
element of culture that's goingto get you through a crisis.
Well, and if you are anorganization that's constantly
(30:56):
having crises and a feature ofthe crises is that people are
not trusting each other andthey're therefore splitting
apart rather than workingtogether then you're going to
have to think how do we startbuilding trust?
Small, small, then get itbigger, and so on.
That's another wholeconversation, but I would use
these mini crises Don't sort oftry to swap them out of the way.
Jay Johnson (31:19):
So practice on the smaller fish before the big fish
enters the pond.
Gareth Morgan (31:23):
No practice on the smaller fish before the big
fish enters the pond.
Jay Johnson (31:25):
No, I love that.
That's that.
It's.
That's great real worldlearning and that's definitely
something that I think is apowerful takeaway.
Let me ask a couple of questionsas it relates to and I'm going
to tie this into something thatI know that a lot of people in
the workforce development spaceare dealing with fear.
Okay, it's prevalent fear thatour budget's going to get cut,
(31:49):
fear that we're going to be letgo.
I mean, I part of the reasonthat I started the Talent Forge
podcast was because I got realtired of seeing a number of my
friends on LinkedIn saying I'mopen for work because my company
literally just cut the entiretalent development portion out
and has replaced it withLinkedIn pulse, um, which I have
(32:09):
plenty of opinions on, butthere's a there's, there's a lot
of fear in a number ofdifferent spaces and obviously
when we're in a crisis, we're infear mode.
I mean our limbic system goesmy background's in behavioral
science, neuro neuro.
I mean our limbic system goesmy background's in behavioral
science, neuroscience,neurobiology.
Well, guess what?
Your cortisol, adrenaline,norepinephrine none of which you
(32:35):
actually have control over inthe moment autonomic responses
that end up occurring.
However, we can subvert themwith neocortical action, et
cetera, and particular things,but we're in the middle of this
crisis.
Whether I'm in a leadershipposition, whether I'm in the,
you know, in the talentdevelopment space, that fear is
fear.
How can we be better?
How can we become somebody whonot only can be potentially
(32:59):
motivated by the fear, takeaction in spite of the fear,
manage the fear and keep us frommoving into a place of
paralysis?
I know that the book speaksquite a bit to this and I'd love
to get your perspectives abouthow do we deal with this fear
concept, because a lot of peopleare living in fear every single
(33:20):
day of their life.
I think this transcends evenjust crisis.
How do we navigate of theirlife.
Peter Willis (33:27):
I think this transcends even just crisis.
How do we navigate?
Well, I definitely have athought on this and I'm so, so
delighted you bring it up,because I think this is not just
in the workplace.
You can guarantee that a lot ofpeople are living with anxiety
and fear, but I think around ourcountries, around the world,
it's becoming almost an epidemicof anxiety, and the answer
(33:47):
actually is from the perspectiveof leadership.
I think the answer isrelatively simple, which is that
you, as the leader you're theonly person you really have any
control over.
You need to, by whatever means,with whatever help you can
muster, you need to becomefriends with your fear and your
(34:11):
anxieties, because, to theextent that you are not doing
that, you are going to bewalking around exporting your
anxiety onto other people,unawares, people unawares, and
(34:31):
what people most want in acrisis from their leadership is
a sense of calm that this is notthe end of the world.
And I am not terrified, I'mhyper alert and I'm concerned
Absolutely, but I'm not fallingapart.
Jay Johnson (34:43):
Don't pull that panic button out and start
slamming it on the table.
Peter Willis (34:47):
No, no, no, no and seriously, if you can't do that
, get to a therapist inpeacetime, fast.
And just like Gaira saidearlier, you'll get plenty of
rewards, whether there's acrisis or not, by learning to
embrace your fear and livethrough it and not be mastered
(35:08):
by it.
Jay Johnson (35:12):
Gareth, anything to add on that question?
Gareth Morgan (35:16):
Yeah, I mean, the point is we look at it through
the lens of the leader, andPeter, I think, has given a lot
of content there.
It is the job of the leader tobe able to help manage the
anxieties of a team duringcrisis.
You gave a very particularexample, I guess, in the talent
(35:37):
space, and I don't have a lot ofcontent to be able to respond
to that in particular.
But in a crisis, it is okay fora leader to be able to say
every now and again I don't knoweverything either.
Take time out, get help.
Let's create time for learningand reflection, and sharing.
(36:01):
All of that is vitallyimportant.
I have no doubt and I've seen itdone and I've been in
leadership teams where I havehad these roles during these
large-scale crises that we'veexperienced in my own city, in
(36:22):
my own city, and they have beenincredibly effective at managing
fear not entirely eradicatingit, certainly not, but being
able to one ensure that everyoneknows that everyone is going
through something and that thereare ways to talk about it and
there are ways to process it.
And, importantly, it'simportant for the leader to be
able to articulate somethingvery brave, and that is that we
(36:46):
will get through this together,there is an end to this crisis,
and that's why we are heretogether, we are trying to
navigate it.
This crisis, and that's why weare here together.
We are trying to navigate it.
If a leader has such degree ofuncertainty or fear themselves
and isn't able to articulatesome degree of clarity during
(37:07):
these moments, that team is notgoing to function optimally at
all and it might result invarious forms of trauma and fear
cycling and spiraling even more.
Jay Johnson (37:20):
So, yeah, I love this and I really like how you
said, peter, becoming friendswith your fear, because I think
oftentimes we try to reject it,deny it, push it away, and
that's not how we would treat afriend.
So shifting into this sort oflike let's become friends, let's
figure this out.
And then I really appreciatethat sort of direction.
Gareth is when it's like okay,I have a fear, and usually our
(37:42):
fears are because we fear thatwe don't have the resources to
overcome whatever challenge orbarrier that's coming so being
able to say, as a leader and Iremember very clearly I looked
at my team at one point in timeand said here's what I know and
here's what I don't know.
And I'm asking your help.
I don't know what this is goingto look like, where this is
(38:03):
going to go.
I don't know if we're going tohave to shift X, y and Z or
we're going to have to drop this, but I do know that we've
survived something like thisbefore.
We're going to survive this andthis is not going to last
forever.
I do remember saying almostthose exact words, so I kind of
feel a little validated.
Guys, that's really nice.
Peter Willis (38:23):
You should.
Jay Johnson (38:24):
I was scared to say that.
And here's why and this ismaybe where I'd like you to dig
into this conversation I wasafraid to tell my team things
that I was afraid of and that Ididn't know.
And then, honestly, it was amoment of I realized the value
(38:44):
that came from that afterwards,because there was a huge value
in sharing that vulnerability.
There was a huge value in howmy team reacted and responded,
but I felt, as the leader, likeI can't tell them.
I don't know.
I can't tell them.
You know, I don't have all ofthe answers right now, and I
think a lot of leaders, I thinka lot of people in general, have
(39:06):
a fear of saying here's what Iknow and here's what I don't
know.
Yeah, I'm going to try to findout, we're going to find out
together, but let's talk aboutthat because I do think that
that is a huge human thing ishow can I announce what I would
maybe internally perceive as myvulnerability, my weakness, my
(39:26):
lack of knowledge?
Where does that show up in thiskind of crisis for leadership
conversation?
Peter Willis (39:40):
conversation.
We should have involved you inwriting this book, jay.
You're spot on.
We could invite you over toCape Town for coffee and do
volume two.
I like it.
This is we're back in the realmof culture here, because if you
have a culture wherevulnerability is allowed, then
you're well over halfway thereto being able, in a crisis, to
(40:03):
keep changing plans withoutshame.
I want to introduce this wordshame, because we talk about
fear and anxiety and I thinkshame comes along with it,
particularly if you have beenall the way through school and
through university and so on,collecting awards for knowing
(40:23):
stuff.
And then you get to a placewhere a moment in a crisis,
where you realize that you don'tknow, but people are expecting
you to know, and then there's areal risk that, because of the
potential shame, you will dodgethat and you will find excuses,
(40:43):
or you'll blame somebody else,or you'll try to look strong
when actually you're feelingweak.
And one of the points we makein the book is that people will
not be fooled.
Your people know, particularlyif you've been leading them for
just.
If you're the CEO for the lastweek, they won't know you yet,
but if you've been around for alittle while they know when
(41:05):
you're not yourself.
So you might as well give uptrying to put on a front of okay
, I've got this, because peoplewill see through it and even if
only half of them do, they willtell the other half no, no, he's
faking it.
So, um, we're talking aboutintegrity, honesty and these are
(41:25):
things that make a wonderfulcompany to work in anyway during
peacetime, and they aremassively reassuring when
uncertainty stalks the corridors.
Gareth Morgan (41:39):
Just to add to that.
I agree with Peter entirelythere.
Let me add something from adifferent angle there.
So the leader may not knoweverything and may have major
degree of anxiety about it, butthe one thing that I do think
the leader needs to do in theseparticular moments is to process
their thoughts, what they doknow and what they don't know,
(42:04):
and to be able to put that intosome framework to be able to
present to his or her team, tobe able to say this is how I am
thinking about it, so that ateam still gets a sense of
putting different ideas togetherthat tell some degree of a
story.
It may not be the right storyfor the crisis where it is at
(42:27):
that point in time, but it'smuch easier for a team to be
able to respond to thatframework of what the leader
thinks is going on, because thenthe team can say you know what,
I agree with that, that andthat I think you are wrong on
that.
Let's go and find another pieceof information.
I think the worst case scenarioif the leader is just
(42:50):
presenting a whole bunch ofrandom, chaotic ideas, overly
describing what is going on,without any data points, and
hence adding to the anxiety,that sense of I'm able to talk
about this even if it is theearly days, and then help me on
(43:10):
the journey.
That's the vulnerability partof it that leader is able to get
through that moment, I wouldargue, much better than simply
existing in fear and allowing,as Peter to say, to be exposed
to the team as someone who isprobably not quite up for this
moment.
Jay Johnson (43:31):
There's a lot of wisdom in both of what you said
and I can actually remember,looking back and thinking about
some of the leaders, that I andI never really reflected on a
number of other leaders'behaviors.
That's why I'm really lovingthis conversation.
But I remember, you know, kindof watching some people go into
that panic mode and just a shiftin the wind, every you know
(43:54):
here's 50 things, and it waslike there is no consistency,
there's no, and all it was doingwas it felt like they were
dodging.
It felt like they weren'tactually, they were just saying
stuff and not being transparent.
It felt like there was no plan,even though they were iterating
.
Oh, we've got all these plans,there's all these things.
(44:14):
It's like, okay, realistically,you couldn't have done that
pre-COVID.
How are you going to plan to dothat now?
I mean, you're right, it waspretty obvious, even though they
weren't my leader, it waspretty obvious that they were
grasping at every potentialstraw.
So this is, and again, I reallyadmire the work that you're
(44:36):
doing on these different things.
I want to get to one other kindof area and I think that this
is really important, especiallyfor the people in the talent
development world.
Phase four you're talkingrecovery, learning and
transformation.
Right it through.
(44:57):
We made it through all theturbulence.
We made it through the you know, you, you've.
How do we even think about this?
As a leader, as a company, asan organization, as you know,
some kind of entity?
What do we do to really say,okay, because we, we have
transformed.
Every human being on thisplanet that was alive during
covid transformed in some way,shape or form.
Whether they acknowledge thator not, everyone is different.
(45:17):
Now, the cognitiveneuroscientific studies that are
going to show how our brainsliterally evolved in less than
two years is going to be aninteresting thing.
So, with that being said, whatdo we need to be thinking about
in that recovery, learning,transformation stage?
Peter Willis (45:37):
Well, can I make a start, gareth?
For me, the first thing to say,before you can encourage people
to learn and reflect, the thingthat I learned after both the
drought and the pandemicparticularly I noticed it after
the drought, interviewingleaders in Cape Town was that
when the drought was declaredover and we were safe, all these
(46:01):
people were told oh, by the way, your in-tray is over there and
it's rather full because youknow you've been busy for the
last year or two, but thesethings are waiting to be dealt
with.
And, being sort of decentleaders, they said, oh right,
yeah, I'd better get on with myin-trade.
And so many of them got sickbecause they simply were
exhausted by the stress ofmanaging this abnormal crisis
(46:26):
and they went off sick, some ofthem for weeks.
And so I think and I'm afraid myconversations with senior city
managers reflected this in thatno, actually we didn't think to
pause and really give people achance to talk about what
they've been through, kind ofdecompress, maybe give out some
(46:46):
awards you know they don't haveto mean a lot, but the context
means a lot for saying this isover now, well done.
And then you're in a spacewhere you can get into little
groups, almost like focus groups, and say what went really well,
what didn't go so well, whatgoals do we take forward from
(47:08):
this and so on.
Those kinds of simpleconversations and I bet they
would be incredibly livelyconversations because people
feel a whole lot when they're inthese crisis situations, but
people don't usually get asked.
Jay Johnson (47:28):
There's so much wisdom in that, peter.
And just from a neurobiologicallevel, cortisol, adrenaline and
norepinephrine actually canhave the impact of keeping
sickness away and everythingelse.
And there's some pretty coolstudies like, uh, soldiers are
often, uh, the amount ofsoldiers that get sick while on
deployment is actually very low.
(47:50):
And they're eating well, they'renot sleeping well, they're not
doing all the things that theirbody should be doing, and yet
the rates of infections or anyof infectious disease super,
super low.
Until they come home on leavethat first week, coming back,
they are sick.
It's almost like everything iscaught up to them.
(48:11):
Why?
Because the human body wants tosurvive, and when we're in
survival mode, well guess what?
It's almost as though we'rejust like nope, put that, put
that in the back shelf, backshelf back shelf, and then it
all needs to catch up, yeah.
You know.
So I love that you say allright, let's pause, let's take
some time, let's reflect and,you know, get healthy some
(48:34):
self-care, maybe some, you know,recognition.
I think that's beautiful.
That's really well said, gareth.
What else?
Gareth Morgan (48:42):
I want to emphasize a point that Peter
mentioned, but to make it alittle bit more explicit.
It is important for the leaderto declare the crisis over.
In so many cases, it can justbe phased out or assumed to be
(49:03):
over.
It's an important moment.
I think it links to yourprevious point, jay.
It allows for that relief andthere are consequences and, as
you say, people may very wellget sick, but they can also use
those moments to rebirth and getreally, really healthy and
balanced again.
But don't take it for granted.
(49:24):
It must be declared over, ofcourse, but I want to emphasize
that point and, yes, a littlebit of time, but banking the
learnings while they are stillwarm is also very, very
important, so not drag it outunnecessarily.
(49:46):
So there's a really goodbalance of just the right amount
of time to wait and thenbanking those learnings.
And then, importantly, as Petersaid, what worked well and what
didn't work well.
I think we also need to look atthe structures that were
created during the crisis,bearing in mind in the way we're
suggesting a leader should work.
(50:07):
We've now broken the organogramor the organogram has been
significantly adjusted duringthe crisis.
It's a good moment to say whatworked and should we keep any of
this for our regular mission?
All of that is very, veryimportant.
Jay Johnson (50:22):
Yeah, and Peter, I didn't mean to cut you.
Did you have somethingadditional?
I wanted to make sure I createdspace for that.
Peter Willis (50:28):
Oh, I probably got tons of additional things
straight out of my head.
That's very good.
Jay Johnson (50:35):
So let me ask kind of a follow up question to that,
and I'll use COVID as theexample here, because there was
points and times when and I'mgoing to say strictly from even
just America's standards, thatthere was states that said this
crisis is over, and it was July2020.
(50:58):
There were states that saidthis crisis is still ongoing and
it's December of 2020.
Let alone when you get to therest of the world where maybe
the United States I could saythe way that I would have looked
at the crisis really came toconclusion probably January,
february of 2021.
(51:19):
A lot of the elderly started toget vaccinations and things
like that and so on and so forth.
And I'm not going to get into adebate about the good, the bad,
the ugly or what the timeframeis.
What happens when a leaderpotentially says, okay, the
crisis is over, and maybe it is,maybe it is for 60% of the
(51:41):
people, 70% of the people.
But at the beginning of ourconversation we had said, okay,
a crisis is something thataffects everybody in an
organization or everybody in amunicipality or whatever else.
There's going to be lastingeffects.
There's going to be some peoplethat may not see the crisis is
over.
There's immunocompromisedpeople, example, and that's
still a major crisis, orpotential crisis for them, and
(52:04):
large events are still.
You know, behavior is shifted.
How do we navigate?
How do we make that decisionlike?
What does that look like?
Is it okay well, 80 percent ofthe people are no longer
affected.
Crisis over it's now only 20percent.
Or is it now okay well, 80% ofthe people are no longer
affected.
Crisis over it's now only 20%.
Or is it now the crisis is done, when we really have gotten
everybody back into a new normal?
What does that look like to you?
Gareth Morgan (52:27):
So I remember those moments and, as you say,
it was different.
In different parts of the worldthere was a lot of political
decision making.
I think in different parts ofthe world there was a lot of
political decision-making.
I think in different parts ofthe world you could see it and
there was a tension in manycases between politicians and
epidemiologists and we could allfeel it.
It was new for many people, andeven people not in leadership
(52:50):
positions, I think, werelearning to critique what was
going on and think were learningto critique what was going on,
and many people were becomingsort of mini experts.
On this, the best way I canargue it is to argue it from a
framework point of view.
I would suggest that manypeople made some big mistakes in
opening up too quickly, but Iwould also probably argue that
(53:12):
there were big mistakes indragging it out too long and
that probably the answer wassomewhere in between.
I would argue and COVID is theexample that you're using but we
would have had to the best wayto do it is have some sense of
what is a goal of a number ofpeople that we are able to have
(53:34):
a solution for, to look afterwhich who are most vulnerable in
this particular case,immunocompromised comorbidities,
elderly and all of that and beable to ensure that there are
solutions for that group ofpeople.
That ensures that where thevirus is most dangerous is an
area where there is the mostsignificant safety.
(53:56):
Now I think you could use thatin other crises.
What I guess I'm saying is whatis the goal?
How would we know if we getthere?
So that's a data issue.
It probably also relates to anICT.
Is your infrastructure goodenough to be able to tell you
that and then to be able tomeasure that?
But also, here's the trick andthis was what COVID was doing
(54:18):
was looking for the othersignals in the system that are
interfering with the currentstrategy, because, you'll recall
, during COVID, our healthauthorities were then constantly
intersecting new strains of thevirus.
Now, that took a while to workout what were the impacts of
this.
This one was moving quicker,this one was more dangerous.
So it's a very, very dynamicprocess at all points in time.
(54:42):
So I would argue strategyframework, good data and a sense
of the crisis is over when wereach that point.
But that doesn't mean that youaren't constantly cycling
through new information.
That would probably need tomove that every now and again.
Jay Johnson (55:01):
So, being adaptable in that a little bit.
Peter Willis (55:03):
Yeah, okay, yeah, and I would just pick up.
There was another angle, do youremember, as we came out of the
pandemic, which was the dopeople have to come back to the
office?
And what if they don't want to?
And they have quite strongarguments why they shouldn't,
and so on.
And I think, from a leader'spoint of view, my strong
(55:25):
instinct is that you have to beas flexible as possible, while
remaining clear about what isour mission here, Because our
mission is not to make everybodyfeel super comfortable in their
bedroom.
Our mission is to provideproducts or services or run a
government, but we're nottyrants either, because that
(55:52):
breaks the whole culture.
So it just means you have tohave a lot more conversations
around the margins of the peoplewho are saying whoa, whoa, whoa
.
You may say it's over, but andI'm looking after an elderly
mother, et cetera, et cetera,all those cases.
But I think a good leader says,okay, this is another thing we
have to deal with.
(56:13):
We can't just sorry, crisis isover back in the office.
We didn't see a huge amount ofthat from the better run firms
anyway.
Jay Johnson (56:23):
Yeah, seeing a little bit more of it now, five
years later, people gettingyou're getting back to the
office five days a week, evensome of the bigger companies,
but I think most people see thecrisis as is pretty well over.
But I think it's reallyfascinating and I think that you
know, especially in the worldof workforce development, we've
(56:45):
had a number of well, quitefrankly, what would be
considered crisis?
A quiet quitting crisis, a, youknow, a workforce shortage
crisis?
I know trainers and talentdevelopment leaders have dealt
with a number of differentplaces macro crises, let alone
some of the micro crises thatmay be occurring inside of each
(57:06):
of their organizations.
I just want to say thank you.
This was an incredibleconversation and, honestly, like
thinking about the four phases,how we can really navigate and
adapt, how we can shift ourleadership, whether we have a
CEO title or whether we're in adifferent place.
I think that's really valuable.
If our, if our teams, if ourlisteners wanted to get in touch
(57:28):
with you, how would they reachout to you?
Peter Willis (57:32):
Well, we have a website for the book we wrote,
which iswwwbecominggoodatcrisescoza,
because we're proudly SouthAfrican, so we'll put that, I
presume, in the notes that gowith this podcast, and you'll
find how to contact us there andwe would love to hear from you.
And you'll find how to contactus there and we would love to
(57:56):
hear from you.
And you can get the bookthrough Amazon.
Have you heard of Amazon?
Is that a little bookshop nearyou?
Jay Johnson (58:02):
So far going through a crisis of getting five
days a week back in the office.
Peter Willis (58:09):
There you go.
We would love you to buy thebook.
What you haven't said, perhaps,is that it's a very short read.
We designed it specifically tobe read on a sort of a plane
trip across country, and wereckon it's a two-hour read.
Jay Johnson (58:29):
People seem to like it, yes, and I have had the
privilege of reading through agood portion of it and I've
really enjoyed it, and I thinkthat there's some great tips and
(58:51):
tactics for navigating crisis,which all of us will, and have
these conversations with leaders, which I think has really
brought some incredible insightsinto this world of crisis.
So thank you both for beinghere and for sharing your wisdom
and experience.
Peter Willis (59:06):
What a pleasure.
Jay Johnson (59:07):
Thank you so much, jay.
Thank you for having us.
I really enjoyed this.
It's been my pleasure.
So and thank you, audience, fortuning into this episode of the
Talent Forge, where, together,we're shaping the future.
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