Last week – the Brexit melodrama continued unabated and with the Conservative party leadership race not lacking individuals that purport to be able future PM’s, things are getting noisier. Indeed, the leading contender has referred to the situation as cacophonous
This week’s Brexit management lesson:
Managers and leaders – daily, face a continuum of management challenges and the accompanying noises. From the very quiet, quiet, a bit noisy, very noisy, all the way to the ear-splitting, raucous noise
Polarised debates – like Brexit has proven to be over the last three years, typically bring about division, overt disagreements, attacks on opposing views, a tendency to do everything to prove that you are right and painting your competitors as characters that are deluding the public or a defined stakeholder group. It’s a typical smear and stress-testing environment for the leaders
It doesn’t matter where you practice your leadership – Church, home, social-circles, company, etc. as long as you are leading/managing others, you face such situations
When handling noise, whether caused by outsiders or individuals in the same leadership space, the reaction from one person to the other is different
It could be any of:
1. Burying your head in the sand; keeping away from the noise and keep doing what you believe is right. This comes with the risk of being considered brash, arrogant and out of touch with reality and may bolster the opposition
2. Confront the noise; put your case on the table for all to see, and defend what you believe in. In effect, this approach tries to win over the dissenting voices and have them buy into your individual position
3. Mitigate the cacophonous environment by reaching out to those whose ideas are close to yours, and work out some kind of coalition against the others. This trick is used in the for-profit sector to gain market advantage against competitors, take out rivals, etc
The choice of how to deal with a noisy environment is yours to make, but we certainly discourage option 1 above
See you next week for yet another one of the Effectiveness lab’s Brexit leadership lessons
Gabazira's blog 
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