Strategies for coping with challenges

The number of leadership changes last year was remarkable. It is difficult to find a fashion house that has not exchanged its CEO or creative director in the past twelve months. Uncertain times, the pressure to boost sales, increasingly demanding customers: inside and new European regulations that require drastic changes: These are the challenges that managers have to face in the fashion industry.

But how? Certainly with courage. Easier said than done. Because as Don Abbondio already confessed to Cardinal Federico Borromeo: ‘You can’t give courage if you don’t have it’.

So you have to be born with it. Managers must ensure that they are equipped with courage to take courageous and risky measures and achieve their goals. At a time when 76 percent of S&P 500 companies speak of “uncertainty” in their profit forecasts, there are strategies that can learn and apply managers in order to become braver.

Create positive narrative

According to Ranjay Gulati, creating a positive narrative in the Harvard Business Review has an enormous impact on the feeling of identity. It influences the understanding of the world in general and the ability to act courageously. A tactic is to identify and reduce challenges and threats. It’s not about reducing the risk to zero. Rather, the perception of the stranger should be changed so that it has less discouraging and you feel more secure. Ranjay Gulati is a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School.

Larry Fink, co -founder of the Vermögensverwaltungsgesellschaft Blackrock, has built up his entire career and business on this approach, explains Gulati. He commissioned his first employee, Charlie Hallac, to develop a comprehensive risk assessment platform. This platform, which was later called Aladdin, has been the reference among financial specialists since then. But even without such sophisticated instruments, executives such as Fink obsessively look for signals that they can construct a positive story around them. Another tactic is to reorganize the work. This also includes risky decisions or actions that could be considered. Scientists: The inside has found that people who are inspired by their moral principles to courageously feel a greater feeling of security.

Many managers also take their belief in a higher power to find courage in difficult situations. Some may dismiss this way of thinking as magical or irrational. Researchers: However, the inside tend to consider them as an adaptive as an important method for coping with difficulties. The second strategy is to develop self -confidence. In order to be confident in a position, you have to study and use the best procedures until they become second nature. So you can do your best under pressure and in the middle of changes. In sales, this could mean how to present products, maintain customer relationships and complete business. In the technology sector, it means to have sound knowledge in the areas of engineering and product design. In human resources, it means studying psychology and developing a manual to treat all types of emergencies with employees: sensitively treat inside.

Take small steps

It is also important for Gulati to take small steps. “The managers and organizations that I examined took small steps in unclear situations before they dared to jump big. Signed, ”says Gulati, revealing the third strategy.

Courage is team sport

Find a connection. For the expert: Courage is a team sport. As a rule, every brave manager is a group of less visible, but extremely important supporters: inside and a number of constructive critics: inside, including employees: inside and customers: inside. To contact allies in order to receive emotional support is therefore a desirable measure.

After all, retirement is the right way.

Psycholog: Inside, the “emotion regulation” – the ability to influence one’s own feelings and experiences – have analyzed in detail, especially in moments when the reaction “freeze, flee or fight”. “Certain measures can help you to dampen or weaken fear, let them pass faster or to change the way you experience and express them,” Gulati writes in the Harvard Business Review.

Courageous managers rely on small physical or mental rituals

It is of crucial importance to take care of yourself, the expert warns: In. “In order to make real decisions in difficult times, managers have to sleep, eat and drink enough. You cannot think clearly if you are exhausted. As Nair recently said, whose first three years were shaped by Chanel of courageous missions for sustainability and philanthropy: invest in your physical and mental well -being. You have to put up the oxygen mask to fulfill the energy, a proven way. In order to reduce fear in uncertain situations, it is to find consolation in what is familiar and predictable. Some entrepreneurs: For example, a lucky charm sweater or recite before every presentation in front of investor: inside or customers: inside a certain mantra.