Peter Baines OAM shares what the pressure cooker environment of disaster response can teach Australian executives about leading teams through uncertainty.
Matt Lovell
Senior Regional Sales Director
Workday ANZ
Audio also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Most executives will never find themselves coordinating an international response to a natural disaster. But the leadership conditions Peter Baines OAM describes are more familiar than they might first appear.
Incomplete information. Conflicting priorities. Upset people looking for direction. Decisions that cannot wait for perfect data. And circumstances changing faster than established processes can accommodate.
Peter has experienced those conditions at their most extreme. As a former senior NSW Police commander and international disaster management specialist, he has worked in the aftermath of disasters in Bali, Thailand and Japan.
As he said when he joined me on the Future of Work: Australia podcast, the work may be different, but many of the leadership challenges are the same. “Crisis is just the critical testing ground for leadership,” he says.
With the business landscape buffeted by random shocks and increasing levels of uncertainty, here are Peter’s practical tips for leaders responding to situations they cannot control.
Making the wrong decision can be better than making no decision at all.
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When something goes wrong, our instinct is often a knee-jerk response. But Peter argues that, before rushing to change things, leaders need to first “take that time to learn and to listen and understand what's going on”.
When early information is incomplete, Peter says leaders need to establish facts, create clarity, determine what needs immediate action, establish ownership and keep communicating as the picture changes.
As he puts it, “Action without understanding can create a second crisis.”
Then, once you understand enough to act, start making decisions – fast. Even if you don’t have perfect information.
At the Workday Elevate Leaders Forum this year, Peter spoke about how, during the response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand, 450 forensic specialists arrived from 36 countries.
There was no predetermined international structure governing who would lead the forensic response. But Peter says the Australians were seen as leaders because they took action quickly. “When the Australians started taking action, people just followed.”
Peter advises organisational leaders not to wait for total certainty. In fact, he believes making the wrong decision can be better than making no decision at all.
Once a decision has been made, leaders can always reassess and move in another direction. “In contrast, paralysis gives your team nothing to work with,” he says.
This requires a particular kind of courage. You need to make the best decision available with the information at hand, be clear about why it has been made and remain willing to adjust if new facts emerge.
Never underestimate the power of showing up in person.
Your energy has a direct effect on the people around you. Or, as Peter puts it, “leaders bring the weather.”
That doesn't mean performing relentless optimism. Honesty is essential. But people will watch how you react to bad news for cues about how they should respond.
You may not be able to control the pressure your teams are under. But you do influence the emotional and operational tone in which they respond to it. “The biggest asset that you can have arriving is a level of calmness,” says Peter.
And never underestimate the power of showing up in person.
Peter talks about how, after the 2011 tsunami in Japan, in one fishing community, the local leader’s home was one of the few that had not been destroyed. But, every night, he joined displaced members of his community for dinner.
“He didn't bring about any real change to the challenges they faced,” explains Peter, “But his physical presence demonstrated to the community, he understood and he cared.”
That idea translates directly to organisational leadership. When teams are under intense pressure, leadership cannot be conducted through emails and town halls. Get to the front line and stand beside people.
“Leave the office, leave the laptop, leave the spreadsheets and go and spend time with the teams,” Peter says.
Leadership through uncertainty requires communicating before you have the complete picture, without pretending you know more than you do.
Peter offers a practical framework. Tell people, “This is what we know. This is what we don't know. This is what we are doing. And this is when we will update you again.”
He says response teams used this framework in the aftermath of the Bali bombings.
Families were frustrated by the lengthy victim identification process.
Rather than asking grieving people to ‘trust the process’, they brought everyone together and explained what was happening, why forensic identification took time and how they would make it certain.
“When those people left the hotel that day, we didn't mend their broken hearts. But they left with an understanding and an appreciation of what we were doing,” recalls Peter. He sums up the lesson: “If you give them information, you get understanding.”
For leaders managing significant organisational change, it’s tempting to withhold difficult or incomplete information until you have a polished answer. But silence creates a vacuum – and people fill vacuums with assumptions.
There are some moments where the only thing we can control is our response.
Perhaps the most broadly useful leadership lesson from my conversation with Peter was a simple but powerful mindset shift: accept what you cannot change.
He says that while preparing for a 1,400-kilometre run through Thailand, he kept repeating the mantra: “Whatever the conditions, they are my favourite.” He stopped wasting energy on railing against circumstances beyond his control.
The same principle applies to business. An economic downturn. Changing customer behaviour. A new competitor. A technology shift.
Leaders can spend enormous amounts of time focusing on – or letting teams talk about – why those conditions are difficult. None of that changes anything.
As Peter says, there are some moments where the only thing we can control is our response. That response is where crisis leadership begins.
You can listen and understand even when the environment is chaotic. You can communicate honestly even when information is incomplete. You can make an imperfect decision, knowing it’s better than no decision at all.
You can show up and remain visibly calm when the circumstances are difficult and the conversation is uncomfortable. And you can give your people enough clarity and confidence to keep moving.
As Peter says, “In a crisis, people don't need leaders who pretend to have all the answers. They need leaders who are prepared to stand in the uncertainty with them.”
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