By Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP

We were lost… hiking a trail in Port Moody (not exactly the forests of Amazon, but troubling, nonetheless). It was just  two of us on a slightly rainy Saturday afternoon in a perfect situation of uncertainty. We didn’t know where we were and had no idea what time it was. It’s been said that we naturally react to uncertainty with an ‘away response’ – our cognitive focus narrows, the ability to make broad neural connections necessary for insight decreases, and our fight or flight mechanisms kick in. Thinking becomes hard; acting follows suit.

It’s the ideal recipe for panic  leading to a negative spiral in outcomes – especially when you consider how our thoughts, feelings and actions influence the actions of those around you.

That’s social proof working.  Robert Cialdini explains it as ‘[t]he greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct’. If one of us thought we were hopelessly lost, the other would surely catch on. Howard Bloom echoes this concept with his illustrations of reality as a ‘shared hallucination’; that is, what we see and believe is an aggregate of what others around us agree to see and believe. This force is shown true in Albert Bandera’s famous Bobo doll experiments and is supported by some of the latest neuroscience research.

Of course, being the nerd I am, I knew all these things at this time of uncertainty. So, I didn’t act lost because I knew the importance of behavior on others’ perceptions of the shared situation. I acted as though this were all part of the plan, the reason we had embarked on the journey in the first place: to search for something exciting and new, while mixing in a good workout.

Organizational leaders must always keep in mind the vision, the reason we’re all here. We’ll have times of crises, challenges which test our integrity and call upon our persistence. It’s important to constantly believe and then think about how the challenge, once complete, WILL move us toward our overall purpose.

Reappraisal (the secret ability great leaders possess), relabeling situations to fit into our cognitive frameworks and acting with confidence are all tactics to be considered when we are in situations where others look to us for answers and the ways to behave. They will gravitate toward your certainty and mimic your qualities of persistence and resilience in achieving the common goals.

Your composure and behavior is important in almost any goal-directed situation  – whether that is finding your way out of a trail in Port Moody, or leading an organization toward social and economic good.

Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP, is the membership and CHRP administrator at BC HRMA. After several gruelling years in school, Nilesh graduated in October 2010 from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, First Class Honours. He majored in Human Resources Management and tacked on an extended minor in Psychology. He’s a self-confessed nerd (the first step is admitting), likes to read, loves hockey and is struggling with the complexities of learning the game of golf.