79: Crisis Leadership--Leading Teams with Resilience, with Jolie Wills

How do you lead a team through a disaster when you're personally affected by the same crisis?

Join us for the first episodes in a new series: Crisis Leadership--Resilience in High Stakes Environments. To begin the series, we sit down with Jolie Wills, CEO and co-founder of Hummingly, who shares her invaluable insights drawn from her frontline experience during the Christchurch earthquakes. We discuss the triple challenge of supporting individuals, teams, and organizations under immense pressure and how understanding these layers is crucial for sustaining mission-driven efforts. Through her research and real-life lessons, Jolie reveals strategies that prevent burnout and maintain well-being and performance during prolonged crises.

We examine the nuances of pressure and leadership dynamics, recognizing stress responses within a team, and the necessity of tailored support strategies. We also look into the systemic issues that contribute to burnout and how leaders can address avoidable stressors to foster a more resilient work environment. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to build resilient, compassionate, and engaged crisis-ready teams.

Jolie is the cofounder and CEO-Americas of Hummingly, which provides tools and workshops to help people perform under pressure. She has studied how the mind works under prolonged pressure, how we make decisions, and how our reactions and behaviors are impacted by stress. She gained her knowledge in real disasters and crisis situations--she is a survivor of the Christchurch earthquakes and has lived disaster recovery first-hand with her family.

Connect with Jolie on LinkedIn. And learn more about Hummingly on LinkedIn or on their website Hummingly.co. 

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Transcript

Jolie Wills: 1:14

When pressure is high for somebody. And then, secondly, what are the things that are helpful for each person in our team in terms of what do we need from our teammates? What is helpful for my teammates to do or not do when they notice those signs?

Manya Chylinski: 1:31

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. My guest today is Jolie Wills. She's the CEO and co-founder of Hummingly. She has a master's in psychology and she has lived experience of disaster. She's a survivor of the Christchurch earthquakes and Hummingly is all about bringing training and tools to leaders and organizations to do the hard and meaningful things when the pressure is on. She and I talked about the triple responsibility when you're dealing with a disaster. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. Hi, Jolie, I'm excited to be talking to you again. You're one of my few folks who's come back for a second episode on the podcast.

Jolie Wills: 2:23

I'm honored. Thanks for having me back, yeah.

Manya Chylinski: 2:25

I'm excited. Before we talk about new topic today, I'm asking all my guests this year if you could have dinner with any historical figure. Who would it be and why?

Jolie Wills: 2:41

have dinner with any historical figure. Who would it be and why? I love that question. For me it would be Shackleton, ernest Shackleton, just in terms of someone I for those that don't know much about him, he led an Antarctic expedition. I mean, he was slightly mad when I think about it, you know, but he led this Antarctic. Maybe that's why I like him. But he led this Antarctic expedition on the endurance was, you know, his ship back in like 1914 to 16, and they got stranded in the in the pack ice and then really had to rescue themselves. Yeah, but it was for me, that was just a master class in resilience and fortitude and leadership. You know know, incredible emotional leadership, really emotionally intelligent leader, yeah, in terms of what he did to get people through and keep their spirits and make really challenging decisions under pressure.

Manya Chylinski: 3:27

Yes, now that you describe why you've chosen him, I think it fits so perfectly with who you are. So thank you for sharing that, and I wish I could make it happen and I would want to sit in on that dinner if you would let me. But that actually leads us into the topic of crisis leadership, and tell me some of your experience about leading a team through a crisis and why this is such an important topic for you.

Jolie Wills: 3:53

Anyone listen to the last podcast.

Jolie Wills: 3:55

We did together the episode and this may be a little familiar but for those that didn't, I now live in Denver, colorado, but I'm originally from Christchurch, new Zealand, and we had a really huge earthquake 2010, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that then had 15,000 aftershocks, one of which claimed 185 lives, and so in amongst you know that uncertainty and pressure of ongoing threat to life and disruption.

Jolie Wills: 4:21

We had a whole city to rebuild, you know 95% of homes were damaged and destroyed, and our business district, our downtown area, you know, was cordoned off for more than two years. So this really long, complicated recovery process and it was in that time. You know I'm impacted by the event myself, with my family, and I'm leading a team of people who are living in that environment, so they're impacted and their role was to support the communities of Christchurch through that really long, challenging recovery process. So you know, for me that was probably the hardest leadership challenge ever of the prolonged pressure being impacted yourself, supporting these amazing, mission-driven people who have this incredible goal, but trying absolute, damnedest to make sure that we didn't harm them in the process.

Manya Chylinski: 5:09

Right, that was probably my biggest one yeah, well, thank you for sharing that, and you know you say something that I think we don't always think about. But sometimes the people or maybe often the people who are responding to the crisis are also themselves impacted by it. So there's double whammy, the stress that they have to be dealing with. What did that experience? Living through the earthquake and helping in the response teach you.

Jolie Wills: 5:33

Well, it taught me that I didn't know enough about how to support and lead people under pressure in the way that I really needed to to be able to do the best job I could. You know, I felt the moral obligation to do the best leadership job I possibly could for my city, but also for the people that I was leading. And as a result of that, my co-founder, elizabeth, and I ended up doing two Winston Churchill fellowships One, looking at leadership lessons. What do people who are leading in these kind of environments really wish they had known? What do they want to pay forward? And secondly, how do we sustain mission-driven people working under prolonged pressure? Because clearly everything I was trying and I was being really proactive wasn't enough because we were still burning people out. So for me I didn't know enough to start with.

Jolie Wills: 6:20

And secondly, that research taught me a couple of things. One is that when it comes to really leading your people for wellbeing and performance under pressure, it's a triple responsibility. You know, we can encourage people to look after themselves. That's really important but alone that is not enough. That's an individual responsibility, but there's also a team responsibility and an organizational leadership responsibility, sort of understanding those three pieces of the puzzle and when it became really clear to us that you know all the things we were trying, why were they not working? When the pressure's on the research sort of highlighted three missing pieces, you know sort of three challenges that I like to see as three leadership opportunities, you know, then we can really make a difference in supporting our people under pressure.

Manya Chylinski: 7:06

Okay, and you mentioned individuals, so let's start with that Like, what is the challenge that you saw for people on the individual level?

Jolie Wills: 7:14

Well, the challenge there is you know you can educate till you're blue in the face about the importance of you know getting good sleep and exercise and eating well, and I know that's just the physical aspects of your wellbeing. There's so much more to it than that. The education piece, the knowledge, was not what was missing. People knew those things. So the missing piece there was this huge gap between knowing the things we need to do to be looking after ourselves and actually being able to put those things in place. So the biggest challenge there was the gap between people knowing what we need to do to look after ourselves and actually being able to do it when the pressure's on.

Jolie Wills: 7:51

So if you ask people if they know it's important to eat well, you know, get good exercise, get good sleep, they'll all say yes. If you ask people, do they find that easy to do? Under pressure, you just get cricket. So therein lies the problem bridging the gap between knowing it and doing it, especially for mission-driven people. You know, because we are, we feel, really uncomfortable to prioritize ourselves in the face of overwhelming need. We're often not designed that way, socialized that way. You know, the culture in our organizations doesn't always, you know, reward that or incentivize that either.

Manya Chylinski: 8:21

Right. What strategies or tips do you have for leaders to help individuals when they're dealing with this challenge in a crisis?

Jolie Wills: 8:30

So one of the biggest things we came across was the importance of having a plan. You know, getting really intentional. So we sort of say this is like providing your people with PPE for pressure, right? So if you have someone working up on scaffolding, it doesn't take much in your mind to imagine what would happen if that went wrong and you know they fell off. Same thing with people working under pressure it is actually really hazardous. They came through very clearly in our research.

Jolie Wills: 9:01

So making sure your people have all the tools that they can to get intentional about bridging that gap between knowing it and doing it.

Jolie Wills: 9:04

So one of the things we heard again and again was people saying to us look, I knew I need to look after myself. That wasn't the issue, right, I knew it was important, but I just didn't do it. I couldn't find a way to do it. And if I could go back now in time and give you know one piece of advice to someone else, if I could change something for myself, it would be to find a way, because maybe if I had, then maybe my marriage would still be intact or maybe I wouldn't have these health impacts that I now can't unwind. What we see is people intend to look after themselves and we have to help them move from intending to where it always falls off, the bottom of the list, getting intentional. So helping people with the tools to create plans, to have accountability mechanisms and to do it in a way that doesn't add more load to already loaded up people right and to add to that, I'm thinking that gives them permission to take care of themselves.

Jolie Wills: 9:55

Absolutely so really creating the environment where you're removing as many barriers as you can from people doing that, yeah, wow.

Manya Chylinski: 10:03

Okay, so the second challenge that you mentioned was the team challenge. So what is that? What's the challenge for the teams to be working together after a crisis?

Jolie Wills: 10:13

So the biggest thing is that you know we have the typical recovery curve that we see play out for communities, but the same thing plays out for teams working in it.

Jolie Wills: 10:22

You know that's where you've got your honeymoon and heroic phase, where there's it's horrible, but there's a huge amount of energy and focus and support and people are pulling together for the greater good and, you know, for a common purpose. And then what happens is you know all this energy is going out in one direction and there's very little replenishment and it's a sustained effort. It's always longer and harder than we expect, and so what happens is fatigue sets in, you know, and what I like is, at the other end right, especially if we've managed this well there is post-traumatic growth. So I really want to highlight that piece. But the biggest challenge for teams, in the same way as for communities, is the fatigue. You know that really hits, and the and once prolonged pressures, you know is really kicked in at that point. You know teams, we're often not at our best selves when we're tired, and so teams have this amazing power to support each other under pressure but also to undermine each other's well-being right.

Manya Chylinski: 11:16

Oh well, yes.

Jolie Wills: 11:19

Everyone's been part of a team where it's been a little bit toxic or the wheels have fallen off in some way. Personality clashes, those things play out Well. All of those things are exacerbated by prolonged pressure. Prolonged pressure makes it really hard to relate constructively to other people, to be able to hold tolerance for each other and be patient and to see past your own perspective and see things from someone else's perspective. So it's really normal for teams to get a bit emotionally tense. And that's the biggest challenge is how do we set teams up to become a source of support to each other under pressure rather than an extra source of stress, Right?

Manya Chylinski: 11:54

Now, when you're talking about teams in this regard, are we talking specifically about, for example, the crisis management team? Or, if your organization has an emergency management department, are we talking any team across the organization, or can you help us put that in context?

Jolie Wills: 12:13

Yeah, absolutely. I've seen this play out in every disaster that I've been in. You know, like this is very normal, you start to see divisions occur within teams, between teams, so that can absolutely be the you know, disaster focused crisis teams you know that are working with communities. But, honestly, we see this in all sorts of organizations where teams just trying to achieve something really big and hard and meaningful but it's a real slog. You see that play out when pressure is prolonged. It doesn't matter what the focus of the team is. It's very, very normal. But therein lies the challenge. Right, if this is normal, but we need a team to pull together to achieve amazing things, how do we set that team up in that way? That's the missing piece number two, you know, for us, right?

Manya Chylinski: 13:00

So how do leaders address that challenge? I mean, how do they help the teams be set up in a way that we minimize this kind of conflict and difficulty?

Jolie Wills: 13:10

For one for all leaders to ask that question. Right To be thinking about that, because it's often the missing piece that we don't think about. We might think about self-care at the individual level, we might think about our leadership responsibility, but very rarely are we intentional about thinking about the team responsibility. The first thing is to make sure that your team members are aware of the great power they have to influence each other's wellbeing and support each other under pressure for better or for worse. And so you know, having that awareness, really understanding their responsibility. And then, secondly, the piece that is really important is helping them with very intentional behaviors and strategies they can then put in place to pull together under pressure. So, just to give you one example, we often run workshops, as running one for a state entity last week and they had been running hard for a really long time and the conversation we had. This is I hear this all the time if only we'd had this conversation, you know, years ago, right at the beginning. A really valuable conversation. It's really helpful to us right now. It's really going to help us. But imagine if we'd had this conversation earlier.

Jolie Wills: 14:18

It's a very simple one and the conversation looks a little bit like, you know, hey, Manya, what do you look like under pressure? Everyone answers that question in the group because pressure impacts us all. If we're human, it's just a biological reality and we all have different signs. So, Manya, you might get a little bit snippy I have no idea, right which is a really common thing, Whereas John over there, his thing might be just to kind of pull away, so he's normally pretty gregarious but he's gone quiet. Or Maria is hyper-focused and just really laser-focused and all the niceties are gone out of emails and just very direct all of those things.

Jolie Wills: 14:50

So what are the signs to look for when pressure is high for somebody? And then, secondly, what are the things that are helpful for each person in our team in terms of what do we need from our teammates? What is helpful for my teammates to do or not do when they notice the signs? So you know, I might want a listening ear, maybe a hug, but you know I'm married to an engineer. If I try that approach when he's stressed, that doesn't land well right, and it's another source of stress in teams where someone is trying to do the right thing. They're doing what is helpful to them to somebody else, and it just adds more to the. You know miscommunication and the fragility of teams. So Absolutely.

Jolie Wills: 15:28

Really simple things around. What are the intentional behaviors? What are the things we need to know about each other? How do we set teams up to pull together under pressure?

Manya Chylinski: 15:36

You know as you were talking about that. I was thinking what we mentioned earlier, that sometimes if you're specifically dealing with a crisis, like you did in the earthquake, the people who are responding many of them are also victims or survivors of the event. And I think back to what I learned after the bombing and how divided the community of survivors is. It can be very difficult and I know people probably think of oh, you're this group of survivors. There are a lot of challenges. We all had different experiences, we all dealt with it differently, we all believe different things about the other people in the group and I imagine trying to have a response while dealing with that level of difficult interpersonal relationships- Absolutely so.

Jolie Wills: 16:23

It's just being mindful of that as a leader is really important, and then being intentional with your team around what is their piece to play. Everybody has a responsibility and a part to play when it comes to setting ourselves up to achieve big things, but to not harm each other in the process. Right, yeah?

Manya Chylinski: 16:41

And just for the record, I absolutely get snippy when I'm under stress. You nailed it.

Jolie Wills: 16:47

You wouldn't be alone. Tanya, you wouldn't be alone. I just picked that one randomly out of the air, but yes, You're not wrong when we're thinking about myself.

Manya Chylinski: 16:58

So we looked at the individuals and we looked at the teams. But what is the challenge at the sort of organizational level?

Jolie Wills: 17:05

so at the organizational level. You know we often think about the importance of messaging self-care and it is important. Don't get me wrong, but it can feel a little bit like gaslighting when we're telling people to look after themselves and then we're simultaneously loading them up with more At the leadership level, the organizational level, there's two pieces. One is understanding that organizational factors contribute to burnout and therefore, as a leader, you are the one with the power to address probably the biggest things that are really going to impact people's well-being. So understanding so from the research, there were three types of stressors that people talked about that really contributed to their burnout. They talked about the ones they couldn't influence or control. Now, working in crisis, I mean, it's challenging for so many reasons and we can't fix a lot of those things. Right, that is just. We're going to be exposed to things. There's things that we can't influence or control, sometimes at a resourcing level. Just things that we can't influence. Secondly, people we put some things on ourselves, right that whole.

Jolie Wills: 18:06

I'm finding it really hard to say no. I'm that person that always says yes. That's the way I'm socially conditioned. I always find a way. I'm that person that always says yes. That's the way I'm socially conditioned, I always find a way. I'm the safe pair of hands, you know, or I don't ask for help, all of those things, but by and large, people said, yes, I would love all the support that, you know, people are talking about. It would be amazing.

Jolie Wills: 18:22

But actually what I want most is for my leaders to address those stressors that don't need to be there. They come even heavier because they feel avoidable. You know and it feels hairless, right that we were having to deal with these stressors, and every organization has them. So it might be systems and processes that are no longer fit for reality you know the reality that we face that are adding extra stress more than they are actually helping. It might be meeting culture, right, having way too many meetings, or they're less efficient than they should be. Yes, might be again, personality clash within a team that's not being managed. Might be leaders who have been promoted because of their technical expertise but not given the support to understand.

Jolie Wills: 19:06

None of us are born with those chips in us that say here's how you lead under pressure. It's not an easy thing, right? So there's all sorts of things. So, from a leadership perspective, know two things. One is to address the stress at the source, right, to really get to the source of the challenge for people.

Jolie Wills: 19:22

So looking for those avoidable stressors, the things in an organization that you can influence and control. And so analogy I like best for this is if you send the canary into the coal mine and you would have heard this one before, Manya, I'm sure it's often used when we talk about burnout but if you send the canary into the coal mine, if the canary falls off the perch, the answer usually isn't a stronger canary, right? Yes, so for leaders, thinking about how do we influence the environment to reduce some of that stress, you know, just looking for those things you can influence and control, there's always something. And then, secondly, how do we equip and support leaders themselves, because leaders too are prone to burnout. Right, they have been carrying a huge amount the last few years and you know, as I said, we don't come with that chip, with everything already, you know, uploaded, so we know how to lead in these kind of times. So really ensuring that we give them the support, them with the knowledge and strategies to be able to lead in these kinds of environments.

Manya Chylinski: 20:20

Right, and that's so critical. We both spend time thinking about what can leaders be doing, but it's also important to remember what can we take off their plates to focus on the things that they need to be doing, because we are simply piling more onto people's plates. I think about traditional leadership in organizations, like sort of the command and control approach, leading from the top down, etc. What is it about those approaches that might be a problem in a crisis and really make it a struggle to get through?

Jolie Wills: 20:53

I think there's a time and place for, you know, all types of leadership. It's understanding, again, that contextual piece. You know, people understand situational leadership. If people understand, this is what a leader's going to be like in this kind of situation, in these kind of situations. I'm going to turn up in this way, just so that you know. So it's not personal, right For this reason, but I think it's just always being aware that when we're very focused on tasks, that it is the people that get those tasks across the line, right?

Jolie Wills: 21:23

So in New Zealand, we have our national dessert and the Australians fight us for it. But in New Zealand, our national dessert is a pavlova which is like a giant meringue cake, right? Yeah, so we're very, very proud of it. So I always say you know, trying to do anything in the crisis space without considering and supporting the people through the process is kind of like trying to make a pavlova without eggs. So and again, that's one of those words that doesn't translate with my accent. You know what I meant when I said eggs. Yes, I'm learning. When I go to a cafe, never order anything with eggs accent wise.

Manya Chylinski: 21:57

I understood, but maybe some of our listeners don't know, that you make a meringue with egg whites. Yeah, thank you, if you don't have the eggs, then you can't make a pavlova, and I'm fully in support of the pavlovas, by the way.

Jolie Wills: 22:15

Love, love, love. You can claim them loudly, um, patriotically, as a new zealand dessert, but, yes, so it's the whole concept around. You know, we, we. There is a time and place for getting task oriented. You know, um, and it's really important for people to understand and have things as clear as possible in terms of everyone's role and what needs to happen when that structure really is important. But just always thinking about what do people need to be able to show up and continue to show up in the way that we need them to over time, that's often a missing piece.

Jolie Wills: 22:42

I go back to Shackleton. They were stranded on the ice and they could have just twiddled their thumbs, but he was very good at setting up structure for people. He did a lot to boost morale. He really showed a huge amount of empathy for where people are at. He embraced storytelling. So soft skills I don't like that term, but I think it's incredibly important. I think, when it comes to leading in these crisis situations, if we don't develop the soft skills, we set ourselves up for hard problems in the long run. And, speaking of soft skills and set ourselves up for hard problems in the long run.

Manya Chylinski: 23:15

And speaking of soft skills, and I agree with you I'm not sure I like the term soft, but you know what are the skills and the personal qualities that are essential for someone to be effective leading during a crisis.

Jolie Wills: 23:27

I think, being okay with the fact that you don't know it all as a leader. You're going to be figuring it out while you're doing it. And the leaders I worry about most are the ones that don't reach out to others as kind of a. The ones that do best are the ones that have a personal board in place right. They are the ones that essentially have a group of people that they can test decisions against or perspectives, have wise heads around them. Maybe people have been through something similar. They've got great sounding boards. They have people who can sort of tap them on the shoulder when maybe they've lost perspective.

Jolie Wills: 23:59

But that takes being open to guidance, and a lot of leaders the ones that I worry about most are the ones that want to show up as super capable, show that they have it all together, that they understand it, they have all the answers, and that can work for a short period of time. But over the long run, when we lose perspective, that's when the wheels fall off, and it's those leaders that don't have a really great support system around them and are open to using that. They are the ones that tend to fall over or, in the end, make a really poor decision that may be career ending or have huge impact for a community or their staff. So for me it's being open to the fact that you don't know everything and you might have to be confident and calm in front of certain audiences, but make sure you have that space where you can be open and vulnerable and seek answers and test ideas, just to have that guiding space, that vulnerable place and your leadership, I think is really important.

Manya Chylinski: 25:02

Okay, and as you were talking, I was thinking. This is why it's so important to have some of this, if not all of this planned and thought about and in place before something goes wrong. It is so difficult in the moment to think are we missing, or what piece of this have we forgotten about? Because you're not going to remember it in the moment.

Jolie Wills: 25:21

No, and what we find really helpful in the moment is a set of questions that you can keep coming back to. Right, make sure that you're staying pointed in the right direction. Or you're treating people right, or you're caring about the right things, or you're not missing right. Or you're caring about the right things or you're not missing things. So, having a set of questions prepared around, what do you need to guide your leadership? And having that leadership support crew, that personal board, whatever that looks like in place. So, thinking about your contact list and your phone right, how do you build that as much as possible for beforehand, those relationships, those so you can pick up the phone right and be open with somebody you know, ask for the support and help you need along the way?

Manya Chylinski: 26:00

Absolutely Well. We are at the end of our time, but that rolls into perfectly to can you share with our listeners what it is that you do for a living?

Jolie Wills: 26:10

Great. So essentially, we took a lot of the learning from disasters, all the things that we wished we had known or had access to and created, you know, the tools and training, everything that really helps support leaders and teams and communities right to be able to do those really big, hard, challenging things when disaster is struck or when they're just trying to do something difficult. So, Manya, do you have show notes that we can add some things to?

Manya Chylinski: 26:36

We absolutely will. So what should we put in the show notes? How can people read the show?

Jolie Wills: 26:40

So that leadership guide came from the Winston Churchill Fellowship around what do leaders wish they had known? So we can make sure we have that as a free downloadable guide for leaders, including a set of those questions that we talked about questions being really helpful and we have packaged things up into workshops in a box and card packs so we'll make sure our website's on there too. So, yeah, please feel free to reach out to us. In the same way, we had amazing support when we were going through tough things, so we love to support teams that are on a mission, do important things.

Manya Chylinski: 27:14

Absolutely. Thank you so much. It was great to talk to you again and to dive more into what's really going on in a crisis and how can we support at all different levels. So, I really appreciate that, thank you.

Jolie Wills: 27:22

Thanks for having me, Manya.

Manya Chylinski: 27:23

All right, bye everyone. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did, so if you'd like to learn more about me, manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manya Chylinski. com, or email me at Manya@manyaChylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.