The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Leading Through Uncertainty with Peter Willis and Gareth Morgan

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 51

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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

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where, together, we are shaping the future of training and development. I'm really excited because it's the first time on the Talent Forge that we have two guests that are joining us today. I'd like to introduce Peter Willis and Gareth Morgan. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Hi, jay, great to be with you.

Jay Johnson:

So I always like to ask our guests how did you get involved and what brought you to where you're at? You are authoring a book on crisis, and I know that that's something that a lot of people in talent development and HR are dealing with on a daily basis how to lead through crisis. So let's get a little bit of your background. How did you get into this space? You go first, peter how to lead through crisis. So let's get a little bit of your background.

Gareth Morgan:

How did you get into this space?

Peter Willis:

Y ou go first, peter, yeah, okay, so I think we both got quite sort of long and detailed histories in sort of different but somewhat overlapping areas.

Peter Willis:

We overlap around the whole area of sustainability, climate change, resilience and so on, but Gareth more from a government perspective and me more from a sort of teaching, consulting perspective, working with business leaders.

Peter Willis:

But what really was the genesis of this book and our coming together to write it was that we both went through two major crises that afflicted our city, cape Town. The first one was a major sort of one in 500 year drought that hit us in 2016, right through to 2018. And Gareth was part of the leadership team in the city administration who was coping with that and strategizing it. And then, a couple of years later, as we all did, we went through the pandemic COVID and the city responded really well, and in both cases I raised some money and ran a project interviewing leaders who were involved in responding to the drought, because I'm very interested in leadership development and what it takes to lead well in difficult circumstances. So and Gareth himself is a leader and is surrounded by in my estimation because I live in the city very good leaders, so we found we had a lot of common interest in sharing some of the amazing insights and lessons that came out of those two major crises which we came through.

Jay Johnson:

That's pretty amazing, gareth, from your side.

Gareth Morgan:

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 scans the horizon, that plans for the future, sort of a 25 year horizons of planning and I, interestingly enough, which is relevant to the particular audience that's listening today, among other things, I lead strategic workforce planning actually in the city of Cape Town and leadership development, but I guess of the particular topic today, I also lead the resilience functions and the business continuity functions. I cut my teeth in this organization prior to becoming executive by playing senior leadership roles in the response to that rather existential crisis we dealt with in Cape Town, which was coming quite close to running out of water in 2017. And then, like all of us, covid, in the way we were responding to these very large crisis events, these slow-moving crises that were lasting months and, in the case of COVID, probably more than two years and Peter came to me through a connection and we only met each other in early 2018.

Gareth Morgan:

We discovered that we both liked reflecting on things that had happened in the leadership space and documenting those, and it took a few years further, but I kept on saying to Peter I can see patterns from how we responded to the day zero drought and COVID and interestingly enough, at least for me, I was saying it didn't matter so much what the actual crisis was, but that there were ways that leaders could build capabilities which would be useful for their regular mission but could be repurposed during crisis and perhaps we can talk about those in a little while but also that the phasing of crises are common, irrespective. So we're kind of rather agnostic about what the crisis is, that the leader is preparing for and put that into a framework, and Peter and I, over the course of just over a year, put this piece, this manuscript, together and then ultimately we had a piece of work and we're keen to share it with as many people as possible.

Jay Johnson:

I love this and I love the title of the book becoming because you know, when you 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 be the question I have, because I think that this is something that, no matter what your role is in an organization, whether you're in a senior leadership, whether you're in a manager role, whether you're in talent development, whether you're in HR, we hear the word crisis every single day.

Jay Johnson:

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 labeled crisis. Now that the ones that you're talking about, those are what I would most certainly consider. Those are big crises, right, like a drought. When we're looking at something like COVID, a global crisis, and before we get into, hey, how can we navigate some of these things? Can you help me understand, and maybe the audience how do you perceive what is an actual crisis when we're thinking about? You know, if we're in that position where our boss comes to us and says we have a sales crisis and we need a training for it. Is it really a crisis Like what is happening? How do we define this term? What are your thoughts?

Peter Willis:

Well, if I go first, the way we have focused because, yes, you're right that you can crisis is a very elastic term. You can wake up in the middle of the night and feel as though you're having a crisis because of 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 crises where, when you look around you, everybody is experiencing this crisis, the sort of crisis you're talking about, where your boss 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, it doesn't concern them.

Peter Willis:

We're talking about I mean, with the pandemic, it was a quite extraordinary experience, as you'll remember, where you looked around and you knew that everybody you met or spoke to was also experiencing the same crisis. So that's our kind of framework was also experiencing the same crisis. So that's our kind of framework. And I suppose the other thing I would say is that you know you're in a crisis when normal comes to a grinding halt. It's not a crisis if you know there's a problem coming. The crisis is when normal suddenly is completely disrupted and then everybody has to stop and say, oh, we have to do some completely different things now. Okay.

Gareth Morgan:

Yeah, jay, I would add to that. Actually, in the book we lay out a number of conditions. We don't say that they all need to be met, but certainly a majority of them need to be met, and that includes there's no let up in the volume of difficult challenges, and people around you in the organization are anxious and the teams that would normally respond to the types of problems that are emerging are entirely overwhelmed. Some of those things I would regard, if you put them all together, probably suggest to the leader that we're in crisis.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and I like that because I think that term crisis is overused and, as I mentioned to you before, one of my degrees, one of my master's degrees, was in crisis communications and I oftentimes so. Communication really means a lot to me when I'm thinking about like, okay, how are we defining something? What are we looking at and is this really a crisis? Is this a organizational crisis? So I think we can all agree that the pandemic was a global crisis of epic proportions hopefully once in a lifetime, because I'm not ready to go through something like that again. Let me share with you sort of what happened with my position and when we were looking at it and we are starting to see the expansiveness of this and people were starting to talk and it was still rumor and there wasn't that much great information out there, so on and so forth.

Jay Johnson:

At one point in time, I remember looking at one of my business partners and saying it's going to be here in less than a week and it is going to be the most disruptive thing that we've had to deal with. Now my business was alive during the global recession, 2008, 2009, housing market crash, et cetera and I kind of just I don't know. I had this inkling that this was going to be bigger, and it was. You know, two weeks into it, we watched $200,000 worth of our revenue walk out the door because, well, no more speaking, no more training, no more events, no more any of those things, and I know that my brain went into full crisis mode. So talk me through that. What does that process look like in general, Because you've had the opportunity to have conversations with tons of leaders that have obviously gone through different things. What should we know about? When we kind of get that tingle in the back of our neck or we start to feel like this is going to be bad, what do we need to be thinking about?

Gareth Morgan:

Yeah. So I think you're talking, jay, there, about as you positioned yourself before the crisis hit you in the face. I mean, that sounds like a sort of a weak early signal of you as a leader, scanning the horizon and going. Something is happening here. Ideally, you probably want to get that feeling even a little bit before that. You probably want to get that feeling even a little bit before that, and I suspect you probably did, because I think we all knew that something was happening in the world around about sort of January of 2020. And we all started locking down around the world in March 2020. So that weak early signal is important. It's the curiosity that comes with it and it's those first discussions that you have with a team. It might not be the actual crisis team that you put together. It could just be your regular team.

Gareth Morgan:

We don't for a moment argue that your crisis team has to be your regular team. That's the time to start saying what could the impact of this be? What are the first decisions that we can start making Now? A lot of what we argue, peter and I, is around these capabilities that we think are best built during peacetime, and, if you don't mind, let me just sort of mention them quickly because it might help the rest of the conversation, but they include, for example, supply chain adaptability, the quality of your data systems, the quality of your ICT infrastructure, your collaboration and partnerships those that exist because they become very important during a crisis.

Gareth Morgan:

Sometimes, even your competitors are actually really good collaborators during crisis, and communication protocols are all important. A leader would have hopefully thought through a lot of that the capabilities and stress test those, because those will often become the foundations of whatever you decide to do. When you then get into the case of, okay, what is my strategy going to be? What is the data that I'm going to be watching and in your case, you immediately reference revenue I guess cash is such a big thing during crises and trying to keep cash flow at any point in time during that, and then, of course, getting into things like who are the right people to put around me those are the first things you would be able to put together as a leader during those early days of a crisis.

Jay Johnson:

And it's funny because you're absolutely right. It was when we heard the first thing about this in January and I can tell you in the US there was a lot of people saying it's not going to get to us, we're going to handle it. And a lot of arrogance and a lot of sort of the independence came out and we started to dust off in January our crisis manual that we had put together after the recession Cause, when the recession hit and we were alive as a business for like I don't know six, seven months, we got baptized real early, survived that and afterwards put together a nice crisis communication plan, a manual, a strategy, et cetera. We pulled that out in January it was March when I was like no, this is imminent, let's start going. So but yeah, I've got a question.

Gareth Morgan:

I've got a question for you, jay. So now that you reflect on that five years down the line, how was that, how relevant was that crisis manual to you? And then the actual specifics of how this crisis COVID was playing out?

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, I think one of the things it was relevant and it was completely irrelevant right, because it was obviously two very different crises. But when some of the different things that we looked at was like, okay, we need to streamline, we need to manage, we need to expect that we're going to have massive revenue drops or that people are going to panic. We know that. So we're going to have massive revenue drops or that people are going to panic. We know that. So we started putting messages out to clients in advance hey, we know something's coming, we know this is here, we're going to remain by your side, we've got you, so on and so forth.

Jay Johnson:

And we knew that there was like one of our part of our business does marketing and the other part of our business does training. And that was actually a learning outcome that we got from the recession was when one goes up, the other often goes down. When the other goes down, the other goes up. So we started saying training's gonna take a hit Marketing. If we're right, if we position this right, we can actually position our clients to be way ahead of the game by the time that this is all resolved and whatever. And we took a gamble on that and it paid off. So some of it worked. Some of it was just like, okay, this is useless, this is useless, this is useless, but at least we started with something. I've felt yeah, that's a yeah.

Jay Johnson:

No, I was just going to point out pretty much where we where we got to with the in the book.

Peter Willis:

We that and good point. That's pretty much where we got to 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 in advance, but reality always surprises, and something we also talk about is how quickly and quite devastatingly sometimes the secondary crises arrive. So what looks like we're hearing stories of a virus, a virus, a virus, a virus, and everybody thinks are sickness, death, actually because of the decision to lock down, make people stay at home. You have all kinds of secondary crises around unemployment, people losing their businesses and so on, and those you wouldn't have in your pandemic plan because they would be all about the health concerns.

Jay Johnson:

Yep, well, and I think it was smart that you brought in one of the things of supply chain. You know and really thinking about your supply chain, your network, your collaborators, your competitors, and what that looks like in a world of hey, we all need to navigate a crisis that's impacting all of us. How can we work together? Now, even though we were competitors last week versus and you saw a number, I can tell you from trainers and speakers perspectives there was a lot more collaboration amongst trainers and speakers that occurred, you know, weeks, months, whatever, after, than any time in before in my career.

Peter Willis:

So yeah, Can I just say something about? We're focusing on this sort of what we call when the wave begins to break, that moment in a crisis when you think, oh, this is actually now really going to happen. Yeah, it's a sort of second phase that we identify, and I just want to say something about the role of the leader. In an organization, where there's quite a number of people in the organization and they have a leader or a team of leaders, one of the things that we regard as so important is that the leader informs him or herself better than the best of his employees. You really have to know what is going on, so it's up to you to go and reach out to experts wherever you can find them and say look, I have a hunch, this is going to be X. Please tell me what you think, and then you can bring that back to your team so that your team is better informed than anybody else, because in a crisis, there's so much uncertainty and anxiety and people lean into their organization.

Peter Willis:

And people lean into their organization If it's a good organization with a decent culture. People expect to feel safer inside their organization than days and be willing to talk about it openly and not say no, don't worry. Don't worry, we'll have a plan in a week's time. You go back to your work, so this sort of is the scanning and learning, rapidly getting knowledge and then being willing to communicate and reassure people that this is going to be. This is a crisis. We're declaring a crisis, but we're on it and we will talk to you.

Gareth Morgan:

Let me add something there as well.

Gareth Morgan:

Jay and Peter, I think another part of this wave begins to break phase, and you were describing it in your own circumstances there in March 2020, jay was at some point.

Gareth Morgan:

A leader also has to declare that this is a crisis, and that's a difficult thing to do because, of course, there are going to be occasions when those weak early signals were incorrect, and that could be embarrassing, but also a lot could be lost if you don't declare and it indeed is a crisis.

Gareth Morgan:

It's a big moment, and I think our teams look to leaders to be able to define something, to be able to say this is what it is. I don't know everything at this point in time, but we're going to get through this together. Here are the initial things we are going to do and as we learn more information, I will give you more information and we will address the plan accordingly. I think that sense-making is so important at the early stages. Otherwise, organizations can be spinning wheels for a long period of time and ultimately looking to someone else perhaps a government or a local government or another company or something to offer some leadership in the sector, and those are critical moments in the early days of the crisis, when getting as far as possible ahead of it is very, very important.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and I like that addition, gareth, as I was looking at the four phases of the crisis, with before the crisis and the cultural readiness, I know that, at least in my company, one of the things is I accept and I encourage challenge, even as the CEO. I want to be challenged. I want somebody to tell me why I'm wrong and I want to have a discussion and a debate about it. I don't shy away from that in any way. You could have been in the company for two weeks, two months, two years, two decades. I want your voice and in some of the conversation in advance and in that leadership decision-making.

Jay Johnson:

And here's my question for you how should we, as maybe leaders or well, let's put it this way. Let's go back to this the leader comes down and tells the L&D team we have a sales crisis and we need solutions right now. At what level is obviously the leader, the senior leader, the CEO, whoever it is, leader by title versus? How can I maybe step into a leadership role and say I'm not sure that this really qualifies as a crisis? How do we create the conditions for some conversation around that space when we feel like maybe the leader is misjudged? Is this actually a crisis or if we're in a leadership position. How can we create the conditions of openness to say what are your thoughts, team, what do you guys think on that?

Peter Willis:

Well, if I may, gareth, I'll just say that that's the work of building a culture just like you described in your business, where you welcome the voice of anyone who has a contribution. To make me like if you were in that situation where you felt there was a leadership crisis and you walked into your L&D team and said what are we going to do? We need a solution. People would feel free to talk and you would work something out fairly quickly. It's when you haven't got that culture and people are afraid of losing status or their jobs or whatever if they speak their mind. That and that's, I think, something we say quite strongly in the book is you cannot build culture in a crisis. That has to be done beforehand, and it sounds like you've done that work. So I would think you know you could check that box quite strongly and say we're at least not going to be tiptoeing around each other when we need to be talking frankly in the next crisis.

Gareth Morgan:

Yeah. So I agree with Peter entirely. I think culture is built in peacetime and certainly after a crisis one can reflect on whether the culture of an organization has got more robust or more fragile. But let me add to that a little bit. I think let's assume that it is a crisis. Now a leader, in what we would call the turbulence of the crisis, which is sort of phase three in our minds of a crisis, that team dynamic is vitally, vitally important.

Gareth Morgan:

And here I think we have to mention a critical point which we argue in our book, which we argue in our book, and that is that in a crisis, a leader's regular team let's imagine several people around a leader that are most close to that particular person that regular team is not necessarily the right team in a crisis. Now, I guess different organizations are going to have different configurations of how leadership teams work, but we've got some ideas on what we call break the organogram in a crisis, because a leader should be able to pick the right people for that moment, and sometimes that means having difficult conversations with members of your regular team saying you know, maybe this one stick it out. There are lots of tasks to be done. Go and do those. But I'm going to ask this person and this person and this person who may be from a different part of the organization, one or two levels below, to actually step up in this particular moment, because I don't think everyone is good during crises.

Gareth Morgan:

The book is about becoming good at crises from a point of view of a leader or people who aspire to be leaders, but not everyone is good. So we've got some ideas in breaking our diagram, putting the right team in place, and with that, jay, comes obviously the ongoing teamwork and performance management that would be done in the context of that crisis. And part of that, I would argue, is that kind of robust feedback looking at the data regularly, what is changing, what new information is coming at us. And, as you say and I agree with you, I also like this, as a leader, asking people to challenge the assumptions. Like this, as a leader, asking people to challenge the assumptions, challenge the existing strategy and to test it regularly to ensure that whatever path is being chosen is as robust as possible to get you safely out of the crisis.

Jay Johnson:

I love what you said there and it totally took me to if you've ever seen any of the Godfather movies and at one point in time he's, you know, he fires his conciliary and he says he's not a wartime conciliary. And you know, it's just such an interesting thing because for some reason, even in my younger days, that stuck with me and it's always been like, okay, who's my number two? And I've had number twos that are great in crisis and I've had number twos that are great in crisis and I've had number twos that you're not a wartime conciliary. It's time to bring somebody else into this space. So I mean, that definitely lands quite strongly for me.

Jay Johnson:

Now I'm thinking about this and again, I love this framework and I love this conversation because I think as an organization, especially an, you know, an HR person, they experience crises. All right, how would you recommend like let's, let's put it into the mindset of we're in our day to day here, okay, and you know, obviously there's the, the different phases before the crisis, the way it begins to break the turbulence, the recovery, learning and transformation. And I'm not trying to skip ahead to the recovery, learning and transformation. I'm trying to say we're pre-before the crisis. They know there's going to be another one coming. What should we be doing now as HR teams, leadership teams, management teams, training teams, coaches, teams, leadership teams, management teams, training teams, coaches. How do we prepare now for what we can't necessarily anticipate before the crisis?

Gareth Morgan:

So I've got a couple of ideas.

Peter Willis:

You go.

Gareth Morgan:

You can go, yeah. So I mean HR practitioners and talent professionals, you know, have so many tools in their toolbox and I would argue some of those tools aren't necessarily as up to date as they should be at any point in time. And getting some of the basics right and making sure that those are in place, I think, would be part of peacetime work. Now, I think the great argument here is these things are always good for the regular mission of the business, but if they are not done properly, they become areas of serious weakness during crisis. So I would think, for example, around some of those things that good organizations have all the time, like good workforce development plans for different divisions, ensuring that those are as up-to-date as possible and are future-focused.

Gareth Morgan:

Excellent succession planning at all times is vitally important. Possibly, I would say, having access to short-term or temporary mechanisms to bring on more people into your organization. Can that be done quickly? Would you, for example, in a crisis, need a certain number of skills that you don't necessarily have Now? I'm not saying you would know what those are, but do you have procurement vehicles in place where you can bring on temporary talent that you wouldn't necessarily do Now? These are all good things to have in place at any particular point in time. Comms protocols are very, very important. Peacetime the regular mission of the talent management or HR divisions of an organization having good and regular contact with the broader organization in peacetime can be leveraged a lot during a crisis. The trust that has been built during peacetime can be really, really sweated during a crisis. Those are some of my initial ideas.

Jay Johnson:

I love that, Gareth Peter, what do you?

Peter Willis:

think I've had an idea while we've been talking, which is that it comes from your point at the beginning, jay, about crises happening all the time In any organization. You could point to a crisis any minute of the day, and I would say that if you are a farsighted HR manager or talent officer, you can see these mini crises as your raw material for testing things like trust. You mentioned it just now, gareth. Trust is probably I would argue perhaps the most important element of culture that's going to get you through a crisis. Well, and if you are an organization that's constantly having crises and a feature of the crises is that people are not trusting each other and they're therefore splitting apart rather than working together then you're going to have to think how do we start building trust? Small, small, then get it bigger, and so on. That's another whole conversation, but I would use these mini crises Don't sort of try to swap them out of the way.

Jay Johnson:

So practice on the smaller fish before the big fish enters the pond.

Gareth Morgan:

No practice on the smaller fish before the big fish enters the pond.

Jay Johnson:

No, I love that. That's that. It's. That's great real world learning and that's definitely something that I think is a powerful takeaway.

Jay Johnson:

Let me ask a couple of questions as it relates to and I'm going to tie this into something that I know that a lot of people in the workforce development space are dealing with fear. Okay, it's prevalent fear that our budget's going to get cut, fear that we're going to be let go. I mean, I part of the reason that I started the Talent Forge podcast was because I got real tired of seeing a number of my friends on LinkedIn saying I'm open for work because my company literally just cut the entire talent development portion out and has replaced it with LinkedIn pulse, um, which I have plenty of opinions on, but there's a there's, there's a lot of fear in a number of different spaces and obviously when we're in a crisis, we're in fear mode. I mean our limbic system goes my background's in behavioral science, neuro neuro. I mean our limbic system goes my background's in behavioral science, neuroscience, neurobiology. Well, guess what? Your cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine none of which you actually have control over in the moment autonomic responses that end up occurring.

Jay Johnson:

However, we can subvert them with neocortical action, et cetera, and particular things, but we're in the middle of this crisis. Whether I'm in a leadership position, whether I'm in the, you know, in the talent development space, that fear is fear. How can we be better? How can we become somebody who not only can be potentially motivated by the fear, take action in spite of the fear, manage the fear and keep us from moving into a place of paralysis? I know that the book speaks quite a bit to this and I'd love to get your perspectives about how do we deal with this fear concept, because a lot of people are living in fear every single day of their life. I think this transcends even just crisis. How do we navigate of their life.

Peter Willis:

I think this transcends even just crisis. How do we navigate? Well, I definitely have a thought 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 of people are living with anxiety and fear, but I think around our countries, around the world, it's becoming almost an epidemic of anxiety, and the answer actually is from the perspective of leadership. I think the answer is relatively simple, which is that you, as the leader you're the only person you really have any control over. You need to, by whatever means, with whatever help you can muster, you need to become friends with your fear and your anxieties, because, to the extent that you are not doing that, you are going to be walking around exporting your anxiety onto other people, unawares, people unawares, and what people most want in a crisis from their leadership is a sense of calm that this is not the end of the world. And I am not terrified, I'm hyper alert and I'm concerned Absolutely, but I'm not falling apart.

Jay Johnson:

Don't pull that panic button out and start slamming it on the table.

Peter Willis:

No, no, no, no and seriously, if you can't do that, get to a therapist in peacetime, fast. And just like Gaira said earlier, you'll get plenty of rewards, whether there's a crisis or not, by learning to embrace your fear and live through it and not be mastered by it.

Jay Johnson:

Gareth, anything to add on that question?

Gareth Morgan:

Yeah, I mean, the point is we look at it through the lens of the leader, and Peter, I think, has given a lot of content there. It is the job of the leader to be able to help manage the anxieties of a team during crisis. You gave a very particular example, I guess, in the talent space, and I don't have a lot of content to be able to respond to that in particular. But in a crisis, it is okay for a leader to be able to say every now and again I don't know everything either. Take time out, get help. Let's create time for learning and reflection, and sharing. All of that is vitally important.

Gareth Morgan:

I have no doubt and I've seen it done and I've been in leadership teams where I have had these roles during these large-scale crises that we've experienced in my own city, in my own city, and they have been incredibly effective at managing fear not entirely eradicating it, certainly not, but being able to one ensure that everyone knows that everyone is going through something and that there are ways to talk about it and there are ways to process it. And, importantly, it's important for the leader to be able to articulate something very brave, and that is that we will get through this together, there is an end to this crisis, and that's why we are here together, we are trying to navigate it. This crisis, and that's why we are here together. We are trying to navigate it. If a leader has such degree of uncertainty or fear themselves and isn't able to articulate some degree of clarity during these moments, that team is not going to function optimally at all and it might result in various forms of trauma and fear cycling and spiraling even more.

Jay Johnson:

So, yeah, I love this and I really like how you said, peter, becoming friends with your fear, because I think oftentimes we try to reject it, deny it, push it away, and that's not how we would treat a friend. So shifting into this sort of like let's become friends, let's figure this out. And then I really appreciate that sort of direction. Gareth is when it's like okay, I have a fear, and usually our fears are because we fear that we don't have the resources to overcome whatever challenge or barrier that's coming so being able to say, as a leader and I remember very clearly I looked at my team at one point in time and said here's what I know and here's what I don't know. And I'm asking your help.

Jay Johnson:

I don't know what this is going to look like, where this is going to go. I don't know if we're going to have 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 this before. We're going to survive this and this is not going to last forever. I do remember saying almost those exact words, so I kind of feel a little validated. Guys, that's really nice.

Peter Willis:

You should.

Jay Johnson:

I was scared to say that. And here's why and this is maybe where I'd like you to dig into this conversation I was afraid to tell my team things that I was afraid of and that I didn't know. And then, honestly, it was a moment of I realized the value that came from that afterwards, because there was a huge value in sharing that vulnerability. There was a huge value in how my team reacted and responded, but I felt, as the leader, like I can't tell them. I don't know. I can't tell them.

Jay Johnson:

You know, I don't have all of the answers right now, and I think a lot of leaders, I think a lot of people in general, have a fear of saying here's what I know and here's what I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to try to find out, we're going to find out together, but let's talk about that because I do think that that is a huge human thing is how can I announce what I would maybe internally perceive as my vulnerability, my weakness, my lack of knowledge? Where does that show up in this kind of crisis for leadership conversation?

Peter Willis:

conversation. We should have involved you in writing this book, jay. You're spot on. We could invite you over to Cape Town for coffee and do volume two. I like it.

Peter Willis:

This is we're back in the realm of culture here, because if you have a culture where vulnerability is allowed, then you're well over halfway there to being able, in a crisis, to keep changing plans without shame.

Peter Willis:

I want to introduce this word shame, because we talk about fear and anxiety and I think shame comes along with it, particularly if you have been all the way through school and through university and so on, collecting awards for knowing stuff.

Peter Willis:

And then you get to a place where a moment in a crisis, where you realize that you don't know, but people are expecting you to know, and then there's a real risk that, because of the potential shame, you will dodge that and you will find excuses, or you'll blame somebody else, or you'll try to look strong when actually you're feeling weak. And one of the points we make in the book is that people will not be fooled. Your people know, particularly if you've been leading them for just. If you're the CEO for the last week, they won't know you yet, but if you've been around for a little while they know when you're not yourself. So you might as well give up trying to put on a front of okay, I've got this, because people will see through it and even if only half of them do, they will tell the other half no, no, he's faking it. So, um, we're talking about integrity, honesty and these are things that make a wonderful company to work in anyway during peacetime, and they are massively reassuring when uncertainty stalks the corridors.

Gareth Morgan:

Just to add to that. I agree with Peter entirely there. Let me add something from a different angle there. So the leader may not know everything and may have major degree of anxiety about it, but the one thing that I do think the leader needs to do in these particular moments is to process their thoughts, what they do know and what they don't know, and to be able to put that into some framework to be able to present to his or her team, to be able to say this is how I am thinking about it, so that a team still gets a sense of putting different ideas together that tell some degree of a story.

Gareth Morgan:

It may not be the right story for the crisis where it is at that point in time, but it's much easier for a team to be able to respond to that framework of what the leader thinks is going on, because then the team can say you know what, I agree with that, that and that I think you are wrong on that. Let's go and find another piece of information. I think the worst case scenario if the leader is just presenting a whole bunch of random, 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 the early days, and then help me on the journey. That's the vulnerability part of it that leader is able to get through that moment, I would argue, much better than simply existing in fear and allowing, as Peter to say, to be exposed to the team as someone who is probably not quite up for this moment.

Jay Johnson:

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 and I never really reflected on a number of other leaders' behaviors. That's why I'm really loving this conversation. But I remember, you know, kind of watching some people go into that panic mode and just a shift in the wind, every you know here's 50 things, and it was like there is no consistency, there's no, and all it was doing was it felt like they were dodging. It felt like they weren't actually, 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. It's like, okay, realistically, you couldn't have done that pre-COVID. How are you going to plan to do that now? I mean, you're right, it was pretty obvious, even though they weren't my leader, it was pretty obvious that they were grasping at every potential straw. So this is, and again, I really admire the work that you're doing on these different things. I want to get to one other kind of area and I think that this is really important, especially for the people in the talent development world.

Jay Johnson:

Phase four you're talking recovery, learning and transformation. Right it through. We made it through all the turbulence. We made it through the you know, you, you've. How do we even think about this? As a leader, as a company, as an 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 this planet that was alive during covid transformed in some way, shape or form. Whether they acknowledge that or not, everyone is different. Now, the cognitive neuroscientific studies that are going to show how our brains literally evolved in less than two years is going to be an interesting thing. So, with that being said, what do we need to be thinking about in that recovery, learning, transformation stage?

Peter Willis:

Well, can I make a start, gareth? For me, the first thing to say, before you can encourage people to learn and reflect, the thing that I learned after both the drought and the pandemic particularly I noticed it after the drought, interviewing leaders in Cape Town was that when the drought was declared over and we were safe, all these people were told oh, by the way, your in-tray is over there and it's rather full because you know you've been busy for the last year or two, but these things are waiting to be dealt with. And, being sort of decent leaders, they said, oh right, yeah, I'd better get on with my in-trade. And so many of them got sick because they simply were exhausted by the stress of managing this abnormal crisis and they went off sick, some of them for weeks.

Peter Willis:

And so I think and I'm afraid my conversations with senior city managers reflected this in that no, actually we didn't think to pause and really give people a chance to talk about what they've been through, kind of decompress, maybe give out some awards you know they don't have to mean a lot, but the context means a lot for saying this is over now, well done. And then you're in a space where you can get into little groups, almost like focus groups, and say what went really well, what didn't go so well, what goals do we take forward from this and so on. Those kinds of simple conversations and I bet they would be incredibly lively conversations because people feel a whole lot when they're in these crisis situations, but people don't usually get asked.

Jay Johnson:

There's so much wisdom in that, peter. And just from a neurobiological level, cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine actually can have the impact of keeping sickness away and everything else. And there's some pretty cool studies like, uh, soldiers are often, uh, the amount of soldiers that get sick while on deployment is actually very low.

Jay Johnson:

And they're eating well, they're not sleeping well, they're not doing all the things that their body should be doing, and yet the rates of infections or any of infectious disease super, super low. Until they come home on leave that first week, coming back, they are sick. It's almost like everything is caught up to them. Why? Because the human body wants to survive, and when we're in survival mode, well guess what? It's almost as though we're just like nope, put that, put that in the back shelf, back shelf back shelf, and then it all needs to catch up, yeah.

Jay Johnson:

You know. So I love that you say all right, let's pause, let's take some time, let's reflect and, you know, get healthy some self-care, maybe some, you know, recognition. I think that's beautiful. That's really well said, gareth. What else?

Gareth Morgan:

I want to emphasize a point that Peter mentioned, but to make it a little bit more explicit. It is important for the leader to declare the crisis over. In so many cases, it can just be phased out or assumed to be over. It's an important moment. I think it links to your previous point, jay. It allows for that relief and there are consequences and, as you say, people may very well get sick, but they can also use those moments to rebirth and get really, really healthy and balanced again. But don't take it for granted.

Gareth Morgan:

It must be declared over, of course, but I want to emphasize that point and, yes, a little bit of time, but banking the learnings while they are still warm is also very, very important, so not drag it out unnecessarily. So there's a really good balance of just the right amount of time to wait and then banking those learnings. And then, importantly, as Peter said, what worked well and what didn't work well. I think we also need to look at the structures that were created during the crisis, bearing in mind in the way we're suggesting a leader should work. We've now broken the organogram or the organogram has been significantly adjusted during the crisis. It's a good moment to say what worked and should we keep any of this for our regular mission?

Gareth Morgan:

All of that is very, very important.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and Peter, I didn't mean to cut you. Did you have something additional? I wanted to make sure I created space for that.

Peter Willis:

Oh, I probably got tons of additional things straight out of my head. That's very good.

Jay Johnson:

So let me ask kind of a follow up question to that, and I'll use COVID as the example here, because there was points and times when and I'm going to say strictly from even just America's standards, that there was states that said this crisis is over, and it was July 2020. There were states that said this crisis is still ongoing and it's December of 2020. Let alone when you get to the rest of the world where maybe the United States I could say the way that I would have looked at the crisis really came to conclusion probably January, february of 2021. A lot of the elderly started to get vaccinations and things like that and so on and so forth. And I'm not going to get into a debate about the good, the bad, the ugly or what the timeframe is.

Jay Johnson:

What happens when a leader potentially says, okay, the crisis is over, and maybe it is, maybe it is for 60% of the people, 70% of the people. But at the beginning of our conversation we had said, okay, a crisis is something that affects everybody in an organization or everybody in a municipality or whatever else. There's going to be lasting effects. There's going to be some people that may not see the crisis is over. There's immunocompromised people, example, and that's still a major crisis, or potential crisis for them, and large events are still. You know, behavior is shifted. How do we navigate? How do we make that decision like? What does that look like? Is it okay well, 80 percent of the people are no longer affected. Crisis over it's now only 20 percent. Or is it now okay well, 80% of the 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:

So I remember those moments and, as you say, it was different. In different parts of the world there was a lot of political decision making. I think in different parts of the world there was a lot of political decision-making. I think in different parts of the world you could see it and there was a tension in many cases between politicians and epidemiologists and we could all feel it. It was new for many people, and even people not in leadership positions, I think, were learning to critique what was going on and think were learning to critique what was going on, and many people were becoming sort of mini experts.

Gareth Morgan:

On this, the best way I can argue it is to argue it from a framework point of view. I would suggest that many people made some big mistakes in opening up too quickly, but I would also probably argue that there were big mistakes in dragging it out too long and that probably the answer was somewhere in between. I would argue and COVID is the example that you're using but we would have had to the best way to do it is have some sense of what is a goal of a number of people that we are able to have a solution for, to look after which who are most vulnerable in this particular case, immunocompromised comorbidities, elderly and all of that and be able to ensure that there are solutions for that group of people. That ensures that where the virus is most dangerous is an area where there is the most significant safety. Now I think you could use that in other crises.

Gareth Morgan:

What I guess I'm saying is what is the goal? How would we know if we get there? So that's a data issue. It probably also relates to an ICT. Is your infrastructure good enough to be able to tell you that and then to be able to measure that? But also, here's the trick and this was what COVID was doing was looking for the other signals in the system that are interfering with the current strategy, because, you'll recall, during COVID, our health authorities were then constantly intersecting new strains of the virus. Now, that took a while to work out what were the impacts of this.

Gareth Morgan:

This one was moving quicker, this one was more dangerous. So it's a very, very dynamic process at all points in time. So I would argue strategy framework, good data and a sense of the crisis is over when we reach that point. But that doesn't mean that you aren't constantly cycling through new information. That would probably need to move that every now and again.

Jay Johnson:

So, being adaptable in that a little bit.

Peter Willis:

Yeah, okay, yeah, and I would just pick up. There was another angle, do you remember, as we came out of the pandemic, which was the do people have to come back to the office? And what if they don't want to? And they have quite strong arguments why they shouldn't, and so on.

Peter Willis:

And I think, from a leader's point of view, my strong instinct is that you have to be as flexible as possible, while remaining clear about what is our mission here, Because our mission is not to make everybody feel super comfortable in their bedroom. Our mission is to provide products or services or run a government, but we're not tyrants either, because that breaks the whole culture. So it just means you have to have a lot more conversations around the margins of the people who are saying whoa, whoa, whoa. You may say it's over, but and I'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. We can't just sorry, crisis is over back in the office. We didn't see a huge amount of that from the better run firms anyway.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, seeing a little bit more of it now, five years later, people getting you're getting back to the office five days a week, even some of the bigger companies, but I think most people see the crisis as is pretty well over. But I think it's really fascinating and I think that you know, especially in the world of workforce development, we've had a number of well, quite frankly, what would be considered crisis? A quiet quitting crisis, a, you know, a workforce shortage crisis? I know trainers and talent development leaders have dealt with a number of different places macro crises, let alone some of the micro crises that may be occurring inside of each of their organizations. I just want to say thank you. This was an incredible conversation and, honestly, like thinking about the four phases, how we can really navigate and adapt, how we can shift our leadership, whether we have a CEO title or whether we're in a different place. I think that's really valuable. If our, if our teams, if our listeners wanted to get in touch with you, how would they reach out to you?

Peter Willis:

Well, we have a website for the book we wrote, which is wwwbecominggoodatcrisescoza, because we're proudly South African, so we'll put that, I presume, in the notes that go with this podcast, and you'll find how to contact us there and we would love to hear from you. And you'll find how to contact us there and we would love to hear from you. And you can get the book through Amazon. Have you heard of Amazon? Is that a little bookshop near you?

Jay Johnson:

So far going through a crisis of getting five days a week back in the office.

Peter Willis:

There you go. We would love you to buy the book. What you haven't said, perhaps, is that it's a very short read. We designed it specifically to be read on a sort of a plane trip across country, and we reckon it's a two-hour read.

Jay Johnson:

People seem to like it, yes, and I have had the privilege of reading through a good portion of it and I've really enjoyed it, and I think that there's some great tips and tactics for navigating crisis, which all of us will, and have these conversations with leaders, which I think has really brought some incredible insights into this world of crisis. So thank you both for being here and for sharing your wisdom and experience.

Peter Willis:

What a pleasure.

Jay Johnson:

Thank you so much, jay. Thank you for having us. I really enjoyed this. It's been my pleasure. So and thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where, together, we're shaping the future.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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