Tonight it is the Eurovision Song Contest final, an unlikely place to look for leadership guidance. However, whilst listening to the radio yesterday, the UK entry from 1981 came on. I first remember hearing this in my Grandad’s kitchen when I was six, and as I reminisced, it reminded me of some key leadership approaches.

When I work with schools in my SIP role, a question I get asked repeatedly is, “How in leadership do you know what to do?”

This is a perennial conundrum. “Making your mind up” about what to do in any given situation is partly the wisdom of lived experience, partly confidence, partly alignment with vision and aims, and sometimes, part gut feeling or flying in the face of convention.

So what does this have to do with Bucks Fizz? How does the brightly coloured pop quartet powered by hairspray and tinny backing tracks help us to know what to do in leadership? Well, if you listen closely enough, hidden between the horribly catchy choruses is some leadership gold.

“You gotta speed it up
And then you gotta slow it down”

In any new leadership situation you first need to rapidly assimilate information, be that getting to know new staff, or assessing an emergency in front of you. The swift collation of information in order to make informed decisions or set a strategic course is imperative. If you are not in receipt of all the facts and all the nuances pertaining to these then your leadership actions are likely to fall flat or at the very least land limply. Knowledge is power and the speed with which you can acquire this knowledge in any situation will be a catalyst for good decision making.

Once you have a sound picture of what’s what and who’s who, you then need to “slow it down.” Implementation at speed can easily descend into a hurried bumble and a patchy or poorly understood approach – think trying to carry all of your shopping bags in one go from the car and dropping half of your purchases rather than steadily retrieving them one or two at a time. Even if you are in a situation which requires swift action, you should always “walk towards an emergency” like the old Chinese proverb which encourages us to “Always take an emergency leisurely.” By slowing down, this buys thinking time, more time to assimilate the necessary information, and ultimately make a more informed decision. You don’t want to accidentally kick yourself in the face with your own knee jerk reaction.

What we also need to know is that often in leadership, our first solution is not always our best.

“Cause if you believe that our love can hit the top,
You gotta play around”

If we want to steer improvements, develop and support people, and ultimately make our organisations a positive and outward facing environment we can’t attack each problem with the same solutions. Consistency is important but we cannot treat every problem with the same solutions. Maslow’s instrument of law around cognitive bias tells us that, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

It is so tempting to default to what we know rather than what is possible so we need to “play around”. We need to visit other settings, talk to other colleagues, find out what is possible and ultimately recognise that we work in complex and messy settings that won’t always fit a perfect standard solution.  Also, we need to recognise that what worked in our previous settings or what has worked before may not work now so we need to “play around”. Leadership tinkering and recalibrating is an ongoing process if we are to keep our ship on course and weather any storms or choppy water.

We do however need to ensure that despite the need for adaptations and adjustments, that everyone knows what we are ultimately trying to achieve and that everyone is pulling in the same direction.

“You gotta turn it on
And then you gotta put it out
You gotta be sure that it’s something
Everybody’s gonna talk about.”

This means consistently communicating our expectations, norms, standards, approaches, our overall attitudes and ways of working and being, clearly and concisely and in a way that is understood and shared by everyone. If the only person who can explain how and why we do things a certain way in an organisation is the leader then not only will everything ultimately fall to them to decide as there will be no one able to making the “right” informed decision, but also progress is likely to be patchy or stilted or disjointed as everyone could be pulling in a multitude of different directions. This means that what we do, and why we do it, and why we do it in the ways that we do need turning on, amplifying and then put out to everyone who comes into contact with our organisation. Why we do what we do and why we do it in the way we do needs to be, “something everybody’s gonna talk about”.

This means therefore that we need a clear vision that we stick to in order to help guide and support our leadership decision making. Being clear about what we are trying to achieve and then aligning our actions with this vision, even in tricky and testing situations is another key aspect of leadership.

“Don’t let your indecision
Take you from behind
Trust your inner vision
Don’t let others change your mind.”

There is a Bernhard Langer quote which summarises beautifully the need to simply make a decision. “Be decisive. A wrong decision is generally less disastrous than indecision.” This is echoed in a Forbes article entitled “Leadership Flaws: Indecision Is A Bad Decision”  which says, “Action is often the difference between success and failure. In a comprehensive study of 17,000 executives, decisiveness — making decisions quickly — mattered significantly more than the quality of those decisions. Too often, leaders delay decisions or, worse, make none at all.”

This is not to say that we make snap judgements, or ill informed spur of the moment choices, but that we instead use a clear vision of what and how we work and what we stand for to help inform decision making. Holding the line can be difficult in challenging circumstances and there can be the all too often felt decision making paralysis of overwhelm in any given situation, but by having a clear vision, set of shared goals, shared ways of working and agreed systems and approaches it can help make decision making easier. It also helps to stop decisions being dragged off course by the winds of the whims of others. A clear vision, strategy and ways of working can help to ensure that our decision making is underpinned by well thought through systems and processes that we decided in the “slow it down” phase of implementation so that when we do need to make challenging decisions we can be more confident that these are informed rather than a heat of the moment panic.

What clear vision and associated systems also provide is the conditions in which innovation can then flourish.

“Take a chance
And it’ll turn out right”

Once you have clear systems, structures and processes, you can begin to innovate within the security of these. If we fail to recognise the value of innovation then this can lead to stagnation, so we need to embrace opportunities to try out new possibilities as they may just “turn out right”. However, innovation rarely stems from just having the vision or doing the right or aligned thing. Simon Sinek describes innovation as being, “…not born from the dream but born from the struggle.” This means that we need to be constantly on the look out for where our systems and processes may not be working as well as they could and then looking for the innovative ways in which to solve these problems, recognising that they may involve an element of chance or struggle or potential failure. If we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always got. We sometimes therefore need to look beyond our initial solutions or our tried and tested methods and simply “take a chance.”

Bucks Fizz may be unlikely to hit the leadership guidance bestseller spot, and I’m fairly sure they’d never align their lyrics with leadership advice but next time you’re faced with a leadership conundrum or the need for an urgent decision, maybe hum a couple of verses to yourself and buy yourself a little moment of thinking time as you’re “making your mind up.”

Lyrics

You gotta speed it up
And then you gotta slow it down
‘Cause if you believe that our love can hit the top
You gotta play around
But soon you will find that there comes a time
For making your mind up

You gotta turn it on
And then you gotta put it out
You gotta be sure that it’s something
Everybody’s gonna talk about
Before you decide that the time’s arrived
For making your mind up

Don’t let your indecision
Take you from behind
Trust your inner vision
Don’t let others change your mind

And now you really gotta burn it up
And make another fly by night
Get a run for your money and take a chance
And it’ll turn out right
But when you can see how it’s gotta be
You’re making your mind up

And try to look as if you don’t care less
But if you wanna see some more
Bending the rules of the game
Will let you find the one you’re looking for
And then you can show that you think you know
You’re making your mind up

Don’t let your indecision
Take you from behind
Trust your inner vision
Don’t let others change your mind

And now you really gotta speed it up (speed it up)
And then you gotta slow it down (slow it down)
‘Cause if you believe that our love can hit the top
You gotta play around
But soon you will find that there comes a time
For making your mind up

And now you really gotta speed it up (speed it up)
And then you gotta slow it down (slow it down)
‘Cause if you believe that our love can hit the top
You gotta play around
But soon you will find that there comes a time
For making your mind up

For making your mind up
For making your mind up
For making your mind up