“If you can keep your head about you when all others are losing theirs…”
Excerpt from “If” by Rudyard Kipling.
Call it grace under pressure, steadiness, calm — for leaders, there’s much to be said about plain old unflappability.
Perhaps the events of Sept. 11 raised our sensitivities to the importance of cool-headed and quick decision-making in times of crisis. We hear that theme that running through heroic stories of that dark day.
Cool heads matter in newsrooms, too.
In Canada recently to address the Radio-TV News Directors convention on the lessons of Sept. 11 for journalists, I asked audience members to share their best practices in covering the story. One of the news executives in the room remarked that he was struck by the importance of calm leadership and communication as they mobilized coverage. “The staff takes its cues from us,” he said. If leaders flail and struggle, what message does that send employees?
Believe me, the staff gets those messages.
Shortly after that Canadian conference, I spent a week with 17 newsroom managers at a Poynter leadership seminar. A key part of their week in St. Pete involved reading feedback from their newsroom colleagues about their leadership strengths, weaknesses, and challenges.
At least five of the participants were saluted by subordinates for their ability to stay cool in stressful times. Mind you, the writers weren’t prompted about “calm” in the questionnaire. They brought it up on their own.
Here are quotes from newsroom staffers about their managers:
• “She…has a very calm demeanor, even in tense situations, she maintains a steady voice and calming presence.”
• “He rarely becomes rattled, even under the most intense pressure; a definite leadership strong point.”
• “He has the rare ability to make a tense situation relaxed because he finds a way to depersonalize conflict, and he frequently even manages to inject humor and energy and turn a nasty incident into a chance for positive change for all. He’s pretty unflappable.”
• “She has an amazing ability to stay calm at all times. I feel (her) strongest skill is being able to remain calm and focused when things are going crazy in this newsroom.”
• “He stays calm, thinks on his feet and helps to mobilize (and in some cases calm) others around him. Because he is rarely rattled, he can talk well with most everyone he deals with. He is not a ‘screamer’ but speaks with authority and therefore people listen.”
The cool-under-fire managers were different in many ways. They came from varied newsrooms: newspaper, TV, and wire service. Some were introverts, some extroverts. Some men, some women. Some were wise-cracking and funny, others more serious and straightforward. None of them was perfect; each had other management challenges to work on.
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But why, I asked them, did so many newsroom employees single out “calm under crisis” as a point of praise for leaders?
We talked about the growing pressure of covering big stories with tighter resources, of stress levels in newsrooms, and of past managers who taught by poor example.
One participant shared the frustration journalists endure when the big story breaks and some bosses charge in, agitated and unfocused. Her newsroom wags call this “the dance of the knuckleheads” — typified by no small amount of bumping into one another and lots of changes in direction. Dealing with such dances in her past , she was determined to be calm and confident in crisis when her turn came to lead.
Interestingly, all of the unflappable managers had something else in common: their colleagues gave them high marks for journalistic skills and for understanding the newsroom’s systems and roles. That knowledge helped them make quick — and correct — calls. It isn’t enough to be calm. You have to be smart and prepared, too.
Clearly, keeping a cool head in crisis is a management competence to cultivate. Never dance like a knucklehead. But do keep an eye on the pace and tempo of the organization, and don’t let calm turn into complacency.
When I hired middle managers, I often told them: our job is to be calm when everyone else is nervous — and get nervous when they all get too calm.
And by the way, Kipling — the Nobel Prize winner who wrote “If” — was a poet and novelist who wrote about war, adventure and imperialism. But before all that, he did time as a newspaper reporter and editor. That must have been where he discovered “keeping your head about you when all others are losing theirs…”
