Effective Leadership in Uncertain Times: Leadership in Uncertainty, #1

By Matt Rawlins

A multinational company had 30 different locations around the world that were in trouble. The CEO didn't know what to do so he hired a team of consultants to work with each location to figure out what was wrong. The consultants traveled to each location and what they found was that someone there already had the answer; the leader just didn't know how to get it from them.

Leadership is ultimately about engaging people. This short book works with three questions to help leaders be effective in engaging others in the midst of uncertainty.

1) What is the starting point for leadership in the midst of uncertainty?

2) How do you get to the heart of the issue to build a strong foundation for working relationships?

3) How does an effective leader frame his or her organizational development?

If you use these questions and tools to frame your relationships, I guarantee: you will be more effective in whatever you do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amuzement Publications
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215944622

Book preview

The Journey

I have struggled with leadership my whole life. My struggle has not been whether I can do it—for whatever reason, I have not lacked confidence—but rather, how to do it. In my youth, I assumed that once I reached this stage of life (56 years old), I would have figured it all out. Instead, I’m thinking: maybe next year...

Despite still having a lot of questions, some of the mist has lifted. I have learned that one person can never really figure it out in the sense of always knowing the right thing to do. Yet all leaders can develop an effective focus that will serve them well in a variety of circumstances.

Let me first explain a bit of my story: I started on this journey at age 20 when I moved overseas as a volunteer. I lived on the small island of Saipan and worked with young people. We had islanders from all the Micronesian Islands there: Marshalese, Trukese, Yapese, and local Chamarros. I learned to love these wonderful people. I led a training program for the local church, and we had a local farm and a coffee house as a place to hang out. My work there, especially in leadership, exposed me and showed me how much I didn’t know. Uncertainty seemed the main staple of my diet. Time continued to expose more and more of my inadequate ways. Working with so many people from different cultures, without paid staff, requiring personal connections in order to accomplish tasks, left me feeling at a loss. After a year in Hong Kong and then five years in charge of a large non-profit in Singapore, I hit the wall with more questions about leadership than I thought it wise to live with. How could anyone feel so vulnerable, with so many questions about life, and still be in leadership?

So I took a break and hit the books, and I discovered my motivation. I found out that I am wired to explore complex issues as deeply as I can, and to get to the foundation or the essence of each matter. I looked up the word radical and discovered to my surprise that its original Latin meaning is to get to the root of a thing, or going to the origin, the essence. We may have other meanings that we attach to the word radical, and so it is only in this older sense that this booklet concerns radical leadership. In it, we examine the question: How do you get to the essence of leadership?

I studied and read all I could on such subjects as: Chaos theory and organizational growth, leadership, personality, learning styles, NLP, psychology, and communication models. I