Trapped in the Big Easy: Leadership Lessons Learned

Long after the images of suffering, disarray, and death from Hurricane Katrina recede from public memory, this one fact will remain; the story of Katrina is one of the massive failures of leadership on all levels including local, state and federal governments along with emergency and disaster relief agencies. Had effective leadership been on the ground in New Orleans immediately after the storm passed much of the suffering, confusion, and death could have been prevented.

How would I know? I was there in the French quarter from four days before to four days after Katrina struck. After the winds and rain had stopped, I saw firsthand the looting of the Walgreens next to my hotel on Rue Royal. I watched as people on the street cheered one looter after another as they emerged from the store with double armfuls of looted goods. I heard more than one person exclaim in a fit of frustration, “This is the United States of America. This isn’t supposed to be happening here!”

When the New Orleans police refused to help and left me standing alone in a sweltering and abandoned hotel garage on the fourth day after the storm it amounted to a “wake up” call. I realized that if I was going to get safely out of New Orleans it would be by my own decisions and actions. I had to take the responsibility I’d been expecting the authority figures to take and lead myself out of harm’s way. All these factors combined to set the stage for me to make a leadership switch, and opened the door to a breakthrough in understanding five bedrock lessons about leadership. These five lessons have made all the difference in the world in developing my own leadership potential, and serve as sharply defined guideposts in my work as an executive coach when coaching a client in the development of their leadership capability.

1) Access, Trust, and Act on Your Gut Intuition: The process of becoming a leader starts by engaging your own gut level leadership intuition. It’s about developing your ability to access, trust, and act on your intuition. It’s making what I call the leadership switch, which means switching your focus for direction from outside of yourself and from “authority figures” to inside of yourself and your own intuition. This is the fundamental starting point for developing your leadership potential.

2) Learning to be a Leader is an Experiential Process: In order to become the best leader that you can be, you must have direct experience of engaging and acting on your intuition. You can’t only read about how to do this. I believe that directly experiencing a personal challenge, even a crisis, helps you to make that leadership switch and lock onto your leadership capabilities.

3) The Ability to Deal With Reality is Key: Developing the ability to deal with reality, especially a fast-changing reality, is key to successful leadership. This involves being able to switch off what you thought would happen to facing what is actually happening. Further, it means being able to shift your “internal frame of reference” to quickly match a new, changed reality. Being stuck on “this isn’t what’s supposed to be happening” impairs your ability to respond successfully and make reality based decisions.

4) Without Identifying and Taking Responsibility For Your Weaknesses You Will Not Be Able to Develop Your Full Leadership Potential: Identifying and learning to take responsibility for and/or resolve your weaknesses is essential to developing your leadership potential. Unless you do this, your weaknesses remain as hidden obstacles. Such leadership blocking weaknesses may include fear, a lack of confidence, or even arrogance, among others.

5) Never Hand Over Complete Responsibility for Your Situation to “Authority Figures.” Don’t naively trust authority figures as if you are trusting a Higher Power. They will do their best, but they will always have their own self-interest in mind as well, which may not align with what’s best for you. Never ignore your “leadership instinct,” and always hold on to some quotient of responsibility for yourself and your situation.

Adapted from …

Trapped in the Big Easy

A Hurricane, Leadership from the Heart, and the Quest for a Life of Purpose, by Gregory A. Ketchum, Ph.D., TalentPlanet Publishing, 2013. All rights reserved.