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Leading During a Crisis: Explosion in Beirut, The Aline Kamakain Story

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Maureen Metcalf, ILI’s CEO and Founder, is a fellow of the International Leadership Association (ILA). In this role, ILA recommends 12-16 interviews for her radio show focusing on innovating leadership. The show focuses on balancing academic excellence in leadership with personal stories of high-impact leaders, thought leaders, and authors talking about their latest books and frameworks.

The following blog accompanies an interview with Aline Kamakian. This interview, specifically Aline’s Story, was very moving and inspiring. We encourage you to learn more about Aline by listening to her podcast, Thriving During Crisis: A Successful Middle Eastern Businesswoman. If you feel moved to donate during the holidays to a person or organization in Lebanon impacted by the recent explosions, please consider supporting Aline and her efforts to re-open Mayrig to provide jobs for 85 staff.

This is Aline Kamakian’s Story.

As someone who has a master’s degree in business, I recognize that we can learn things in school, from books and lectures, but there are things that only life teaches us.  Being a Lebanese of Armenian origin, I grew up with my grandparents embedded in the stories about my ancestors. Their stories about the resilience and ability to adapt and the respect and gratefulness to the country that accepted them conveyed the values I learned.

On 4 Aug 2020, Beirut was hit by a huge blast.

According to BBC reporting, “The blast that devastated large parts of Beirut in August was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history, experts say. The Sheffield University, UK, the team says a best estimate for the yield is 500 tons of TNT equivalent, with a reasonable upper limit of 1.1 kilotons. This puts it at around one-twentieth of the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945… The explosion was the result of the accidental detonation of approximately 2,750 tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate. The blast led to some 190 deaths, as well as more than 6,000 injuries.

My restaurant, our offices, my house and my car were all blown to pieces in just a second. The terrace outside of our meeting room looked out over the port just 300 meters further. We were having a management meeting. I don’t know how I survived, standing on the terrace, looking at the fire and fireworks in the port. The next thing I remember was standing over my financial controller and giving him CPR. I don’t know how I knew what to do, reflexes from when I was a girl scout? The blast had injured 25 employees, of which five were left with a permanent handicap. It destroyed most of the restaurant furniture and equipment. The building was still standing, but windows, doors, winter gardens were all shattered.

First, I needed to make sure all my employees were safe and had a roof over their heads. I had never felt a victim, but there was no way I could get back on my feet without external help. So, I decided to open a fundraising page to help us. One week after the blast, we started cooking over 1,000 meals per day in our central kitchen to be distributed among those who lost their homes. We prioritized, first comes the team, holding on to our values, generating income, moving on, and moving fast.

On the 4th of September, just one month after the blast, the restaurant opened its garden and kitchen again. While we were still working hard to repair and rebuild the inside of the restaurant. The first evening that the restaurant was again partly operational, the whole team had dinner on the Mayrig terrace.

Here is the reporting about the restaurant:

 

When 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate tore through Beirut, only a highway separated the city’s port where the explosives were stored from 282 Pasteur Street. This is where Mayrig, the famed Armenian restaurant known as much for its delectable sour cherry kebab as preserving Armenian culture in one of the diaspora’s strongholds, has stood since 2003.

Located in Beirut’s lively Gemmayzeh neighborhood in a building from when Lebanon was under Ottoman rule, the restaurant was destroyed.

It joined the rest of the city that stood in ruins, where over 170 people have died, thousands more injured, and an estimated 300,000 left homeless. The decimation the blast caused came on top of a Beirut that was already in political and economic crisis. The Lebanese pound was tumbling to shocking lows that have caused widespread poverty. Electricity and food shortages are the norms.

But the destruction of Mayrig stung beyond a crumbling building: around 85 families, whose livelihoods depended on the restaurant, were suddenly left jobless and homeless. Not a single staff member escaped unscathed, and some are still in critical condition.

And then there’s the other, more existential loss: the idea that an institution fighting to preserve and progress Armenian culinary heritage, which has always teetered on the brink of either being forgotten, denied, or erased, could disappear forever.

“Mayrig” means “mother” in Armenian. For the last 17 years, this woman-owned culinary institution has brought centuries-old recipes from inside the homes of the Armenian community in Lebanon to a restaurant enjoyed by both local and international patrons and built on those traditions to create new dishes. Staffed by the same Armenian mothers who have always led the preservation and passing down of food culture to future generations through their labor and knowledge, “Mayrig” was founded by Aline Kamakian.

Being at “Mayrig,” she said, is being alive.

Her grandparents, Armenian Genocide survivors, found refuge in Lebanon, becoming part of the Lebanese-Armenian diaspora, which now numbers over 150,000 and has contributed significantly to the social, political, and cultural life of the city while keeping Western Armenian heritage alive. Bourj Hammoud, one of the first places refugees settled, became the historic center of the Lebanese-Armenian community. The area was heavily impacted by the explosion.

Aline’s early Story

I was five years old when the war broke out in Lebanon. I have seen my father as an entrepreneur struggling to raise his family and keep us safe during the war. This taught us to be creative and find means under pressure and create solutions to the absence of necessary provisions such as electricity and water and fundamental civil human rights. For example, to open my restaurant in 2003, I had to build my water reservoirs, bring a generator to produce electricity, ensure the team’s transportation and basic needs, and find other locations during the war.

Preparation for Management During Crisis

In the war in 2006, we took three days to find a safe spot up in a mountain resort. This move made it possible to guarantee the continuity of the restaurant and the employees’ income. We had to build our reserve in fuel; bring walkie-talkies because there was no phone; secure a safe location for employees to sleep, and secure kitchen equipment from the kitchens of friends and family. We created a restaurant in 1-weeks’ time. The most important tools were: sharing information, make the team part of the decision making, delegate responsibilities. In these circumstances, it is about operating a restaurant and the security of the team. Almost half of them were living in dangerous areas. The team managed to work and did so without days off, without hours to rest to cover for the others. We agreed that we would see how to cover extra hours or vacation after we passed this crisis. We learned to adapt to respond to this disruption quickly. It turned out to be a right decision because it generated enough income to secure the salaries, and it offered the chance for the employees to continue working.

Every two years, we have a minor to big crisis that asks for our adaptation. In 2019 the revolution started after three years of financial difficulties and corruption scandals. The challenges were different and led to significant hardship.

  • The internal security was terrible; roads were blocked, breaking and burning buildings and public property.
  • The banking sector turned into an unpredictable mess. Lebanon was known for its strong banking sector and was the saving place for all the Lebanese diaspora. And suddenly, the banks stopped giving out money. There was a limitation on cash withdrawals and transfers. The impact was dramatic since Lebanon is mainly an importing country. Its own industries ae very limited and the country has very little raw materials.
  • Inflation towered: Lebanon rates now 3rd worldwide after Venezuela with an inflation rate of 365%. The challenge is that it is not just inflation but also inflation that the government doesn’t recognize. There is an official rate, a rate from the banks, and a black-market rate.
  • Covid-19 led to lockdowns in many countries; in Lebanon rules were not applied evenly over the whole territory as some political parties allowed their followers to disregard the rules. COVID spread fast in autumn, and governmental regulations are often contradictory from one week to the next, unequally applied and harmed first of all the whole Food and Beverage sector.
  • With a government that is corrupt, and incapable comes the explosion of 4 August. The government resigned, but since it hadn’t formed a new government yet, the old government continued in the same corrupt, incapable way.

How to lead in such a context?

University lectures didn’t teach us to navigate this type of crisis. I didn’t learn a to-do list.

In the restaurant business, never compromise on the quality. The challenges were to keep the quality. We couldn’t look at saving money during this catastrophic crisis. We were committed to living our values during the crisis.

  • We needed to keep the employees safe and secure cash. I created a pop-up project in Saudi Arabia and took part of my staff there for three months.
  • We were committed to maintaining food quality. The aim is to find the best product at the best price, not the cheapest product. We needed to keep the team quality-oriented, encourage sharing resources, information, and pay attention to finding the best ingredients.
  • I communicated very openly, explained the companies’ situation, and explained the difficulties of living in Saudi Arabia. We went as one team and worked together to maintain the team as in Lebanon, there was no income.

My goal was to jump on opportunities that would allow me to take care of my family and my team! I didn’t have all the info, but the circumstances required me to keep going. I knew I needed to be transparent, genuine, honest, and always make values-based decisions. In this case, I was focused on my team’s safety, health, and economic well-being.

Again I did the same thing: first comes the team, holding on to your values, generating income, moving on and moving fast.

 

Aline Kamakian acted in the best interest of her team during the most challenging experience of her life. She truly exemplifies someone who is living her values! She supports the families of the employees who are unable to work and who continue to require significant medical treatment. During our call, she deeply inspired me as a leader and person who acted as her best self during this crisis. We often look to movies for superheroes. I believe Aline is a real-life superhero. Her actions inspire and invite all of us to act with courage, integrity, and selflessness. To support her campaign, please consider donating to the Mayrig Family Go Fund Me campaign.

 

About the Author

Aline Kamakain began her career as an insurance broker at the age of 18 to put herself through college. She graduated with a double major in Masters in Finance and Marketing, Aline’s skills as an insurance broker allowed her to build one of Lebanon’s top 9 Brokerage Firms. All through her successes, Aline never forgot her love for food but most importantly she never forgot her Armenian roots. In June 2003, she opened “Mayrig” an avant guardiste traditional Armenian restaurant to introduce to all those who appreciate homely, healthy and tasty food, the forgotten flavors of Ancient Armenia. Aline was also voted Women Entrepreneur of the Year 2014 in the Brilliant Lebanese Awards. She is a board member of the Lebanese Franchise Association as well as a board member of the Lebanese League of Woman in Business and a successful candidate of the 2014 Vital Voices Fellowship Program.

Photo by rashid khreiss on Unsplash

 

What’s “The Arena” Performance 101?

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This week’s podcast features Brian Ferguson, Founder and CEO of Arena Labs, High Performance Medicine: Healthcare and Innovation. The blog was previously published on the Arena Labs blog.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

–THEODORE ROOSEVELT, CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC, 1910

 

If you want to be in the Arena, you don’t get there by way of drifting through life.

The Arena is a place of action, and yet it is consciousness that defines its nature: to have an Arena in the first place, you need to have intently decided: This. This is the thing I will show up for. The thing that puts my most cherished values into action. The thing around which I will design my life so that I will not only show up well but show up better and better each time.

The Arena is the space for that thing, for the body doing that thing. It’s a context for risk. People act differently in different contexts. Think of yourself in different spaces. What are the contexts in which you are raucous, loud? What are the contexts in which you are reserved, quiet? What are the contexts in which you have swagger? (Ok silly question, you always have swagger.) When it comes to developing excellence, context is an interesting thing. What happens in one context has everything to do with how far you can go in another, some of which is predictable, and a lot of which as unexpected as it is tied to the very best of our unique human nature.

The Arena is there so that you can ask, and test: how far can we go?

The rules of the Arena are established so you can accept and fully take the risk with and for others­–the only way to tap human potential­–and play all-out while holding the sanctity of safety.

Performance is the knowledge deployed in the Arena. As Kristen Holmes describes, “performance is the science of human thriving.” It has three key aspects:

  1. The identification of the internal and environmental conditions that catalyze individuals and teams to play at their best.
  2. The understanding of the physiology of stress and fear and anxiety, and of our interdependence with others.
  3. The disposition to apply this science in one’s own body and lifeworld so to catalyze growth.

Performance knowledge springs from across sectors concerned with bodies and the care for human life. In recent years, a revolution in this knowledge has been driven by research and applied science in athletics, the military, and the performing arts.

At the end of the day, performance is a mindset: the humility of the expert learner. It is the trust in a collective’s ability to perform at its very best by nature of its diversity. It is deep curiosity about human nature, rigor in applying findings. It is a love of humans and what we might be able to do when we are working from the very best of our nature. And it is the wisdom to know that what you can control and what you can’t, with a big appetite for full ownership of what you truly can—a lot of it an inside job.

The Arena is the place for performance, for which we’ve relentlessly trained and practiced.

The place in which we activate, and then see what happens.

About the Author

Alexa Miller is a visual artist, writer, and facilitator by training, she has worked with thought leaders engaged in human-centered paradigm shifts in healthcare for the last two decades. Most known for her arts-based teaching with doctors and study of the role of observation in the diagnostic process, Alexa is an original co-creator of Harvard Medical School’s “Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis,” and contributed to the touchstone 2008 Harvard study that measured the impact of visual arts interventions on medical learners. She currently teaches a course on medical uncertainty at Brandeis University and studies high performance mindset through her work at Arena Labs.

Photo credit: Joel Harper

Leading Through Change: A Military Perspective

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United States Navy Rear Admiral Deborah Haven, Retired, provides this blog. It is a companion to her podcast Leading Through Change: A Military Perspective.

Here are my observations and takeaways from my experience navigating change in a wide variety of global logistics organizations supporting the US Military and our allies. Much of my experience has been leading change which ranged from crisis response establishing and maintaining a logistics hub to support the Haiti citizens from their devastating earthquake to contingency operations mobilizing Naval Reservists in support of expeditionary logistics missions in Iraq and Kuwait to operating system upgrade implementing a SAP system which replaced a legacy system. These experiences shaped my approach to leading change in a dynamic environment and provide the foundation for the following article.

How a leader handles change will determine the team’s future. A leader’s attitude toward change will be a key to success. I learned early on that I could spend energy resisting change, or I could embrace the change to keep moving forward. A leader must look at change in a positive and realistic light. The leader needs to be the steady rudder to keep everyone on course. This will require the leader to keep their “resiliency tank” full at all times to stay tough during the challenges ahead. Figure out how to keep your “resiliency tank” full, whether it is meditating, exercising, or playing chess. Your strength will be needed so a resiliency routine will have to be a priority. Encourage your team members to establish a resiliency routine too.

The leader’s job is to clearly articulate the WHY…and repeat the message…over and over. This gives time for the team to catch up. In most cases, the leader has had time to absorb the new information before the idea is introduced to the entire team. When the change is introduced to the team, the team needs time to grasp and embrace the new idea. The leader is going 100 miles an hour down the highway with the new idea and team is just getting to the highway on-ramp. As the leader, you may need to slow down so your team can speed up. I did not say stop. Once the team absorbs the idea, understands the mission, and is empowered to execute, it will accelerate and exceed expectations. One key point is knowing that not everyone engages the change in the same manner. Some individuals struggle with the new idea and may feel threatened by what they see taking place. The employee’s role may change. He or she may go from expert to novice in the new arrangement.  Resulting in an unsettling emotional reaction. And will usually get better over time for most individuals. This is something to be aware of during the process. A leader needs to watch out for those struggling and engage through listening and understanding the challenges the workforce is undergoing. Sometimes an empathetic ear from the leader can be the tonic to pull the team member through the rough waters of change. Also, some individuals just take longer to adjust to the new environment, but others soar to the future state.

I have also noticed that the technique that makes teams more successful in new unknown areas is to create an open dialogue about the challenges and work through them collaboratively with the stakeholders. Easily said, not always so easy to do but rewarding in the end.  Continual communication about the compelling need for the change is a must do and must be repeated often.

Some best practices when dealing with change:

  • Set trust as the foundation for all relationships.
  • Identify the key stakeholders and communicate the compelling reason for the change …the WHY.
  • Uncover the blind spots as quick as possible through listening and learning.
  • Create collaborative teams to develop solutions for the blind spots identified.
  • Build coalitions that do not exist and shore up ones that need to be reinforced.
  • Stay strong throughout by listening and understanding the barriers or challenges anchoring others.
  • Be agile. Do not get defensive when new information is received, and adjustments must be made.
  • Establish a routine and regular check-in, set goals, and follow up on progress using accountability metrics.

Have a bias for action…keep moving forward.

The takeaway here is that during a significant period of change is when the leader really earns his or her money. They need to be authentically enthusiastic and fully engaged to ensure the team members are making the transition. This can be exhausting work but extremely rewarding.

About the Author

United States Navy Rear Admiral Deborah Haven, Retired, has been a successful leader in a wide variety of global logistics organizations, both civilian and military for over 30 years. She is particularly skilled at introducing change in large organizations. She has a keen ability to understand the landscape, identify barriers and develop an actionable plan to improve organizational effectiveness. Deborah is a graduate of the Naval War College, holds an MBA from the LaSalle University in Philadelphia, and a BS from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an executive coach, independent consultant, and a member of the board of directors for the Flag and General Officer Network.

Capitalism Needs a Rethink – Evolving Toward a Stronger and More Equitable Future?

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This blog is provided by Ty Montague, co-founder & CEO of co:collective, a creative and strategic transformation partner for purpose-led businesses, as a companion to his podcast StoryDoers: Leaders and Organizations with Clearly Defined Higher Purposes.

 

It is fair to say we live in a world described as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). In James Stoller’s recent book, he indicates, “One way to define the “action of our time” is to ensure high performance under pressure in a VUCA world. People do not have to adapt to VUCA, though as W. Edwards Deming cautioned, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. VUCA rewards excellence and is harsh on mediocrity.” As we consider excellence in corporate performance, we must rethink how we define the corporation’s foundational role. Many corporate titans call for just this change to how we think about the corporation’s role in the national and global ecosystem.

To inform this conversation, let’s start with some history. On September 13th, 1970, Milton Friedman published what would become known as the Friedman Doctrine — a seminal essay on a corporation’s purpose.  The full essay is worth a read; the central thesis can be boiled down to a few sentences:

“Some businessmen (sic) believe that they are defending free enterprise when they disclaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes its responsibilities seriously for providing employment eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else might be the catchwords of the contemporary reformers. They are — or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously– preaching pure unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are the unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades”.

In my view, the world is a worse place today because of it. Why? Well, to say that Freidman’s Doctrine made an impression on the business world would be an understatement.  It was a frying pan to the head of the day’s conventional capitalist philosophy — let’s call it humanist capitalism — which held that enlightened business leaders needed to consider the needs of a broader set of stakeholders, not just shareholders.  This form of capitalism essentially created the bountiful economic environment in America between the end of WWII and 1970 and created the middle class.  Thwak!  With a single essay, Milton Friedman killed humanist capitalism as dead as a doornail. That thwak resounded broadly — it echoed through the hallways of America’s elite business schools and whanged around inside the boardrooms of our largest corporations. Looking around at the world today, many of the most challenging problems we face in America are a direct result of Friedman’s idea — let’s call it predatory capitalism.

Over the next several decades, many corporate leaders, following Friedman’s directive that the sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize profits for its shareholders, hacked away at internal costs by paying the lowest possible wages, providing less training, less PTO, less maternity leave and less healthcare protection. They fought unions. They held the minimum wage at sub-poverty levels. Simultaneously they found ways to artificially lower the cost of their products by externalizing as much cost as possible, for example, by dumping the by-products of their manufacturing processes into the public common (our air and our water) and then refusing to take any financial or legal responsibility for cleaning up the mess.

The truly predatory behavior happened at the regulatory level where corporations began to relentlessly lobby to lower the corporate tax rate (resulting in, for instance, public schools today that can’t afford critical supplies) and to continuously weaken environmental protections (resulting in, for example, the existential threat of our time, climate change).  But the real damage occurred when they succeeded in changing the laws around political contributions to maximize their ability to press their giant fingers on the scale of democracy and tip the entire system permanently in their favor. This effort culminated recently in the landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United,  which formalizes corporations’ recognition as people.  As full “citizens,” with all of the rights (but few of the responsibilities) that come with citizenship, companies can now contribute unlimited amounts of money to political contests, which, under the decision, is defined as corporate “free speech.” So, their voice in the political process is now exponentially louder than yours or mine.

So when we look around today at the ominous condition of America today — an unprecedented and growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, a devastated middle class, record rates of depression and drug abuse, an environment teetering on the edge of systemic collapse as evidenced by the rapid extinction of species, out of control wildfires, hurricanes and flooding events at record levels, et al,– in many respects, we have Milton Friedman to thank.

Now let’s shift to the optimistic view! And by the way, I’m also a capitalist. I believe that capitalism can solve these problems, and I think we already see some positive signs.  But we have to quickly evolve away from this extreme, predatory form of capitalism that enriches a handful of us to absurd levels.

We urgently need to re-discover the form of capitalism that created the most remarkable economic expansion the world has ever seen. The structure where all corporations, as well as all citizens, pay their fair share of taxes.  The capitalist system where corporations are corporations, not citizens, and don’t have an infinitely amplified voice in our political process. The structure of capitalism, where skill, creativity, and ambition are rewarded by upward mobility but not by savagely standing on our neighbors and fellow citizens’ necks. The structure of capitalism that values cultural and social diversity, where we remember that America was founded to be a melting pot and that this diversity makes us more resilient, not less.  The structure of capitalism incentivizes both short and long-term thinking about our planetary life support system — the natural environment. And let’s one-up the capitalism of the 1940s, ‘50s, and ’60s and pay attention to social justice, equity and inclusion while we’re at it.

Nice dream?

Maybe. But over the past ten years, we started to see some green shoots in this space. More and more companies are waking up because they have a broader responsibility than only enriching their shareholders directly.  We see innovations like the B Corp, and its stricter cousin, the “Benefit Corporation.”  We see the Conscious Capitalism movement take hold. We see powerful capitalists like Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, taking up the cause — in his closely followed ‘annual letter to CEO’s’ in 2018, he stated that Blackrock (the world’s largest investment fund manager) would no longer invest in companies that are unable to articulate a higher social or environmental purpose. The Business Roundtable, comprised of the CEO’s of 200 of the largest corporations in the world, recently published an open letter proclaiming the exact opposite of the Friedman Doctrine, that the purpose of a corporation must not be solely to create profit for shareholders, but must also be to create value for a wide variety of stakeholders., These capitalist chieftains are not saying this exclusively to salve their souls. After all, they are capitalists, and they are saying this because they sense something new happening. A new generation of consumers won’t do business with companies that operate in the antiquated, predatory, Friedmanesque model.  “Woke” millennial consumers aren’t accepting it. Their POV on predatory capitalist enterprises of today?  “Change or die.  We’ll take either.”

So, the writing is on the wall. Capitalism and capitalists must evolve once again (as we always have and always should!).  If you run a company today, rather than resist this, my request is to get on the right side of history.  Get to work defining your higher purpose.  And then put it to work driving positive innovation and permanent change in your company, your community, and in the

 

About the Authors

Ty Montague co-founder & CEO of co:collective, a creative and strategic transformation partner for purpose-led businesses. Co: works with leadership teams to define their higher purpose and to bring that purpose to life through innovation in the customer experience. They call this process StoryDoing.  Ty published a book about StoryDoing in 2013 called True Story, and since that time the co: team has been fortunate to work with some of the most inspiring and progressive organizations and leaders, including Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, IBM, MetLife, Microsoft, the ACLU, Infiniti, Capital One, and Under Armour. He previously served as Co-President & Chief Creative Officer of J Walter Thompson North America and Creative Director of Wieden and Kennedy New York.

Maureen Metcalf, CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, is a renowned executive advisor, coach, consultant, author and speaker.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Nimbly Moving Through the Next Inflection Point

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This blog is provided by Lisa Gable, CEO of FARE, Food Allergy Research Education as a companion to her podcast Managing Inflection Points.

Having worked through many times of significant global change, most notably the dot.com bust and 9/11, I quickly learned the importance of being agile in my professional and personal life. I had to “zig and zag” while maintaining a positive outward face in business, while building a home environment based on readiness and resilience.

For those of us who are not experiencing our first inflection point (aka the Covid-19 crisis), we have the advantage of a lifetime of managing and surviving stressful situations.  By your early 50s, there is a higher likelihood that you will have suffered a few life altering events and have managed through booms, busts, and heartbreaks.

I’ve seen probably more than my fair share of inflection points in history, including with my time at the Reagan Defense Department during the final days of the Cold War. And, when I joined FARE back in 2018, I inadvertently created an inflection point for the organization.  My remit was to restructure the organization and drive philanthropic and industry investment to help fund new therapies and diagnostics.

If Covid-19 is the first time you are confronting an inflection point, don’t worry – there is time to more fully develop very specific resilience and coping skills. In the meantime, here is some advice for budding and senior managers during this crisis and others that will inevitably follow:

  • Offer mentorship and coaching and consider what you can do to help alleviate the unique stressors of Covid-19.
  • Work to balance the needs of business against people’s fears. Be human and approachable. Share your own story in a manner that is comfortable for you so that you can take part in open dialogue.
  • Encourage co-workers not to hide their challenges, but to share them. Challenges may that remain tucked away can negatively impact the ability of peers to meet their goals, including thriving personally through the inflection point. Awareness of a unique situation become points of information for creating systems and tools.
  • Foster a culture of collaboration which transparently recognizes barriers and encourages teammates to work together to build a path forward which works for the team.
  • Realize that everyone will hit a mental wall at some point – even you. Even the strongest employee will eventually become overwhelmed. Be prepared for the moment and provide a safe environment for the individual to take a mental health break for a few hours, the afternoon, or a day.
  • Take your vacation and encourage others to schedule theirs, also. Burn out is real and renewal is required to meet the uncertainty that is still to come.

The point about inflection points is – you just don’t know when they will arise. They just happen. To everyone. So, to be prepared means you are a better prepared manager, colleague, friend, and parent.

About the Author

Lisa Gable is CEO of FARE, Food Allergy Research Education, the largest private funder of food allergy research advocating on behalf of the 32 million Americans living with potentially life-threatening food allergies. Lisa passion, expertise, and fearless workstyle have propelled her to achieve the titles of CEO, US Ambassador, UN Delegate, Chairman of the Board, and advisor to Presidents, Governors, and CEOs of Fortune 500 and CPG Companies worldwide.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio