How to Lead Through Tough Periods Without Burning Your Team Out

I recently had the opportunity to interview Kerry Grace, the CEO of Regional Development Australia, Mid North Coast, and CEO of Evolve Group Network. Kerry has spent the last few years confronting extraordinary challenges that tested her leadership acumen to the core.

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Leading Through Turbulent Times

From devastating bushfires that ravaged communities to destructive floods and the disruptive impact of a global pandemic, Kerry's leadership journey has been punctuated by crises that demanded swift action and unwavering resilience. She has also experienced personal tragedy, which further strengthened her resolve to make a difference for her family and the community she is part of.

Most impressively, Kerry triumphed over adversity through her unwavering commitment to empathy, taking meaningful action, and harnessing the collective power of collaboration. She really is an example of high performance.

Throughout our conversation, Kerry candidly shared her experiences and the profound lessons learned from these trials. Despite the immense pressure, she remained steadfast in her commitment to finding solutions and providing support to those in need. Kerry's remarkable ability to empathise, adapt, and lead with compassion has been the cornerstone of her success.

Understanding What You Are Actually Dealing With

Before you can lead well through a tough period, it helps to name what kind of tough period it actually is. Not every hard stretch is the same, and treating them as if they were leads to poor decisions and exhausted teams.

Most leaders are familiar with the VUCA framework: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. It describes the background noise of modern business, where change is constant and challenges are the norm. A crisis is something distinct from that background noise. It demands immediate attention because of its potential to cause severe harm or disruption. Understanding the difference matters enormously.

VUCA versus crisis: the key distinctions

• Speed and intensity. In a VUCA environment, change is often gradual. Leaders have time to assess, plan and adapt. A crisis moves swiftly and with overwhelming intensity, whether that is a sudden cybersecurity breach, a natural disaster or a reputational emergency. Quick decisions are required, not extended deliberation.
• Degree of impact. VUCA challenges are often manageable one by one. Crises can disrupt core operations entirely, with consequences ranging from financial loss to lasting reputational damage.
• Leadership focus. VUCA environments call for strategic planning, risk assessment and long-term adaptability. Crises call for containment, mitigation and recovery, fast.

In a crisis, leadership shifts instantly to crisis management. Leaders must swiftly address the crisis while minimising damage and ensuring business continuity.

Kerry's experience is a masterclass in this distinction. She was not managing a slow-moving strategic challenge. She was responding to fires, floods and personal loss, often simultaneously. The clarity she maintained about what was actually happening, and what it demanded of her, was itself a leadership act.

The Danger of Leaders Who Create Crises

There is another pattern worth naming. Some leaders are drawn to crisis mode even when no genuine crisis exists. There is an undeniable appeal to steering through stormy seas, to the sense of purpose that comes with high stakes. But this appeal can become a trap.

Leaders who consistently cultivate urgency and high-stress conditions can unwittingly burn their teams out. The perpetual sense of emergency, the endless cycle of crisis resolution, the relentless demand for peak output under pressure: over time, these erode morale, reduce performance and drive good people away. The leader may feel they are pushing the team to greatness. The team experiences something quite different.

Getting Priorities Straight

I really admired Kerry's commitment to her family whilst undertaking the demanding job she found herself in.

"Family came first, then the job, and then anything else."

Often, combatting burnout is best achieved by re-assessing and making sure our priorities are straight. When we try to focus top priority on all areas of our lives, that is where things start to overload us. Which comes first for you?

This connects to something I have observed in the highest-performing leaders I have worked with. They may be receiving thousands of emails a day, facing dozens of competing emergencies, but they know they can only solve a handful of meaningful things each day. The discipline is not in doing more. It is in choosing well. Adaptive intelligence, the ability to make smart decisions amidst uncertainty and prioritise on the fly, is what separates leaders who sustain performance from those who burn themselves and their teams into the ground.

Fostering Resilience and Support

Amidst these immense challenges, Kerry emphasised the critical role of empathy in effective leadership. She firmly believes that understanding and connecting with the experiences of others is paramount, particularly during times of crisis. By actively listening and acknowledging the emotions and concerns of her team and community, Kerry created a safe space for individuals to express their needs and collaborate on finding solutions.

Taking Action and Collaborating for Solutions

In the face of overwhelming adversity, Kerry firmly believes in doing what she can and working with and through others to effect positive change. She understands that no single individual can tackle challenges of such magnitude alone. By fostering collaboration, Kerry harnesses the collective intelligence, expertise, and resources available within her network and community. Whether that be processing a personal crisis or a regional tragedy, working together is what creates the most effective results.

Her leadership approach and how she builds teams centres around three principles:

• Inclusivity and transparency
• Open dialogue and active participation
• The pooling of diverse perspectives to generate innovative solutions

By empowering others and instilling a sense of ownership, she creates a ripple effect that amplifies the impact of her leadership.

Giving the Team a Story to Work Within

One of the most underused tools available to leaders in tough periods is narrative. When a team understands not just what they are doing but why it matters, and how their individual contribution fits into something larger, they sustain effort in ways that task lists and targets alone cannot produce. This is sometimes called narrative thinking: weaving the disparate threads of your team's work and challenges into a cohesive story, framing the day's obstacles within a larger, meaningful context.

Kerry did this instinctively. Her community was not just recovering from a flood. They were part of a story of collective resilience, of people choosing to rebuild together. That framing changed what was possible. When purpose is clear and bigger than personal gain, teams consistently and significantly outperform those without this source of motivation.

For leaders in business, the same principle applies. In your next team meeting, try framing the week's objectives as chapters in your team's ongoing story. Highlight how each person's contributions push the narrative forward. It sounds simple. The effect is not.

Building a Crisis-Ready Team Before You Need One

Kerry's resilience did not appear from nowhere when the fires started. It was built over time through the culture she had created and the relationships she had invested in. Leaders who wait for a crisis to think about crisis readiness are already behind.

Three practical steps that make a real difference:

1. Foster a learning and growth mindset culture. Teams that are encouraged to adapt, innovate and learn from unexpected challenges respond far better when genuine crises arrive. This is not a training programme. It is a daily habit of curiosity and honest reflection.
2. Prepare your response protocols before you need them. In a VUCA environment, this means scenario planning and contingency strategies. For genuine crises, it means designated response teams, clear communication systems and agreed decision-making authority. Effective leaders do not wait for a crisis to develop these. They are prepared long before it occurs.
3. Seek guidance and bring in fresh perspectives. During a crisis, reaching out to experienced peers or mentors is not a sign of weakness. A fresh perspective and access to tested approaches can make all the difference. The same applies in calmer periods: staying connected to how others are navigating similar challenges keeps your thinking sharp.

The Triumph of Resilience and Collaboration

Kerry Grace's remarkable journey exemplifies the transformative power of resilience, empathy, and collaboration. Her unwavering commitment to her role as CEO, even in the face of personal tragedy, inspires others to rise above adversity and make a positive impact.

I believe that all leaders can draw invaluable lessons from Kerry's experiences. Know what kind of challenge you are actually facing. Resist the pull towards manufactured urgency. Get your priorities straight. Give your team a story worth being part of. And build the culture and the readiness that means when a genuine crisis arrives, you are not starting from scratch. By fostering empathy, embracing challenges head-on, and collaborating with diverse stakeholders, leaders can navigate turbulent times and emerge as catalysts for positive change.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.