On occasion, a team facing a challenge or major obstacle doesn’t act with the urgency a leader desires. A relaxed attitude when the business is under duress can be highly disconcerting for any leader.
When a leader wants to turn up the pressure and create urgency in a good way, they focus on key measurables and discuss them more frequently. For example, a team that has a weekly business review during turbulent times might schedule an additional call per week to underline the issues and solutions. Or a finance team, underwater for costly errors, might conduct its process check daily instead of a normal weekly cadence. Team members take note of the change and understand the problem must be addressed now.
The best leaders turn up the heat when they engage in more frequent and in-depth discussions of what they traditionally measure to assess progress. They may even unveil new metrics or measure results more precisely than they normally do.
