What is needed here?

In the heat of a crisis, this question - What is needed here? - is a simple and powerful tool to guide our leadership. 

Greg Mullins, former NSW Fire Commissioner, reflected over the weekend on the leadership he had seen in working with multiple Prime Ministers (Howard, Abbott, Rudd, Gillard), across many disasters (NZ earthquake, Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Indian Ocean tsunami, Lindt Café Siege).

“I watched Prime Ministers step up into leadership roles and they were asking constantly: What’s needed? … there was no political partisanship… I’m not seeing (this from Prime Minister Scott Morrison). And I don’t understand it.”

Asking “What is needed here?” is a powerful leadership tool for three reasons:

It orients our leadership in service of the situation we face

Being guided by this question asks us to put the needs of those around us, the community and nation, at the heart of what we do. It asks us to suspend our own agenda in the service of the situation. This question resonates at all levels. From how we meet the needs of the exhausted RFS volunteers we meet, to how we coordinate emergency resources, to how we create space to discuss the longer term and more complex adaptive challenges.

It sharpens self-and-system awareness

In order to most appropriately meet the needs of the moment, we need to be acutely aware of ourselves, and the situation we are facing into. The question calls on us to sharpen our perception, rather than default to old patterns, biases, perspectives and default behaviours. It asks us to hear different perspectives and act in a way that mostly appropriately responds the needs of the moment.

It calls forth our courage and resilience 

By sensing into the needs of the moment, it calls forth both our courage and resilience to meet the challenges we face. Resilience is our individual and collective capacity to survive and thrive amidst adversity. The courage to act in response to what is needed is key to this. 

Have you used this question? if you've used it - where has it taken your leadership?