For every benefit to being a leader, there are just as many challenges—if not more. But challenges are not always bad news for leaders. They often create opportunities for growth and learning, especially when people respond to them thoughtfully.
Kellogg faculty offer advice to help leaders navigate several different challenging circumstances—from heated disagreements and hidden biases to major personal setbacks.
1. Don’t hesitate to make tough calls
At one multinational firm, there was a senior member of the leadership team who was brilliant but overly focused on himself. He created such a negative atmosphere for the team that it came to the attention of the company CEO. But the CEO, impressed with the senior member’s talent, hesitated to take corrective action for fear of losing out on the employee’s contributions.
“It’s something I see all the time—this hesitancy to change a situation before it’s too late,” says Sanja Khosla, an executive coach and a senior fellow and adjunct professor at the Kellogg School. In this case, “the failure is allowing [a toxic employee] the time to have a negative impact.”
When the situation came to a head, the CEO finally decided to fire the employee. But failing to properly address the issue in a timely manner resulted in significant costs, not just to team morale but to the CEO’s reputation as well.
Even when a leader falls short, Khosla still believes in the potential for redemption. The path forward usually entails acknowledging what the failure was and then demonstrating the lessons learned.
“Failure happens,” he says. “The question is, ‘What did you learn from it?’”
For this CEO, the hard lesson was “to act quickly and decisively” in addressing disruptive behavior—and to own up to his mistakes. Once he did, the team dynamics improved dramatically.
2. Reframe negative thoughts and labels
Craig Wortmann, a clinical professor of marketing at Kellogg, thought he knew what resilience was, having spent a lot of his career teaching it.
But then Wortmann found out he had cancer in his leg. That moment was the start of a “life quake”—an event that significantly disrupted his life’s narrative—forcing him to relearn what it meant to be resilient. He developed a process that helped guide him through that experience—one he hopes can help others get through the most challenging moments of their life, too.
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The first step Wortmann recommends leaders take is to identify key negative labels or thoughts and then reframe them positively. One of Wortmann’s early negative labels was, “I’ll never run again.” But he realized he could reframe that positively to, “I’ve never worn a prosthetic. Maybe the thing will let me dance. Maybe it’ll let me run. I don’t know.”
“At some point, you’ve got to wrangle your mind to a place that is more positive,” he says. “Not super positive—just a step in the right direction.”
The next step is to create goals that are realistically achievable. Wortmann recognized that, before he could even aspire to run, he first needed to learn how to walk again using his prosthesis. It helped that he had the support of his wife and children, who also held him accountable for his goals. “I didn’t need anybody to teach me how to walk,” he says. “I needed the nudge.”
Once leaders hit those early milestones, Wortmann recommends they recalibrate their initial goals into stretch goals that push them to be even better.
“That’s the final phase—it’s just not stopping at ‘[I’m] back,’ but saying, ‘Okay, I really took a hit. I’ve learned a lot of stuff, and now I’m going to turn it into something great.’”
3. Think big picture and be transparent about miscalculations
Leaders are often responsible for resolving issues that have no right or wrong answers, where both sides of the debate raise good points and bring out strong opinions. These scenarios offer no easy outs, and the decision leaders make may boil down to a value-based judgement.
Brooke Vuckovic, a clinical professor of leadership at the Kellogg School where she teaches moral complexity in leadership, offers several tips for people facing this kind of dilemma.
One strategy is to zoom out and take a big-picture view of the problem. If leaders can reframe a contested subject as a tension between two ideas or classic dilemmas—say, prioritizing the short term versus long term—then stakeholders may be able to talk about their dispute in a more-neutral way.
“The goal is to take it up a couple of levels from whatever the individuals’ positions are. … It tends to cool things off a little bit,” Vuckovic says.
Vuckovic also stresses the importance of finding trusted advisors before these kinds of disagreements arise. Leaders can draw invaluable perspectives from these relationships and encounter new solutions that don’t fall to either “camp” in the original disagreement.
Finally, Vuckovic believes it’s important for leaders to recognize the limits of their power and to own any miscalculations transparently.
“Those who can zoom out to constructively engage their team in dialogue, connect across the organization to reduce their blind spots, and respond with transparency when they miscalculate can steadily build a reputation as leaders who can handle the thorniest of values-based decisions,” she says.
4. In unfamiliar settings, listen, learn, and adapt
As professionals advance in their career, it’s not uncommon for them to leap from a familiar sector to a different, unfamiliar one.
According to Rob Apatoff, a clinical professor at the Kellogg School and associate dean for the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute and Corporate Alliances, the biggest hurdle in making that change is often not the work itself but fear—fear of stepping outside their comfort zone, of landing in a culture that does not fit, of starting over.
“It is always a risk restarting your career and building credibility at another company,” he says.
And so changing sectors shouldn’t be a knee-jerk decision. It takes proper timing as well as clarity about why making that commitment matters.
Once leaders make that decision, Apatoff suggests they take a rigorous dive into that sector’s dynamics as a first step. That includes learning not just everything about the business—from the new company’s processes to its top competitors—but its culture as well.
“You sure as heck better do your homework on that industry,” he says.
Then, before making any significant contributions and trying to prove themselves, Apatoff recommends newcomers prioritize humility. That includes actions like listening, adapting to the new company’s culture, and showing a concern for others’ success.
“You have to bring others in and share credit with them,” he says. “Even if you may already know the answer better than they do, you need them to be receptive to your ideas.”
5. Keep an eye open for hidden biases
For business leaders, confronting implicit bias both within themselves and within their organizations isn’t just optional—it’s an imperative, says Tessa Charlesworth, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Kellogg and director of the Change Lab.
Charlesworth shares several ways to identify and address implicit bias in the workplace to ensure an organization can thrive.
First, leaders need to reflect on their own biases and take accountability for them. A good place to start may be to take stock of any potential biases buried in their environment, operations, and decision-making. Next, they should find a trusted colleague to call them out on personal biases they may have missed.
“People don’t like changing their own minds, and it’s really uncomfortable to reflect on our failings and our blind spots,” Charlesworth says. “So find a buddy that you can trust is being honest and authentic, and have them start to challenge you on some of your beliefs or things you say in meetings.”
Leaders can also address biases by weaving diversity efforts into the very fabric of firm culture, using every opportunity to emphasize it as one of the organization’s core values. This can take a number of forms, including visual reminders, mission statements, and diversity efforts incorporated into the firm’s operations.
“All of those things are subtle organizational cues that, repeated often enough, become part of the fabric of the organization,” Charlesworth says.