The pandemic brought our very different needs for security into especially sharp focus. These differences may determine not only how we cope with a crisis, but also which career path is right for us.
Three days after graduating from high school in 1994, before starting college, I founded my first company—which, incidentally, is still operating today. Back then I wasn’t called a startupper, “just” a beginning entrepreneur. I gave absolutely no thought to risks or dangers, but I always felt this was my path. Feeling and reality, however, do not always travel on the same plane.
In an ideal world, we would all receive support in planning our careers: guidance that would help us choose the best path based on our underlying motivations and values. It is easy to say and easy to imagine, but only valid “measurement tools” can give us an accurate map to our own Holy Grail—a life perfectly suited to our career choice.
I was damn lucky to throw myself into something that worked—something I not only loved but was good at. Most people, however, choose a career based on patterns from family and friends or on current trends, without the level of self-awareness they would need to build on.
Security versus uncertainty
At work, there are ten different categories of motivational factors worth considering. Security naturally comes to the fore, especially in situations like the one we have lived through in recent months.
Security is a financial motivator, while profit orientation belongs to another category.
When security is high and profit orientation is low, the combination makes us especially vulnerable in a crisis.
Someone who is constantly concerned with security and a stable job dislikes risk, uncertainty, and unnecessary mistakes. They take few needless risks and generally try to minimize their exposure.
A person with a strong need for security will not necessarily be comfortable with the life of an entrepreneur or startup founder, or with a compensation package focused exclusively on bonuses.
In an ideal world, only someone willing to take enough risks—someone who knows the need for security only from books—would become a startup founder.
Self-regulation matters too
Alongside motivation, we should also consider competencies by examining an important part of personality: self-regulation. A low score suggests someone more likely to appear changeable, tense, irritable, and negative. They are more open to the noise of the outside world, and therefore more exposed to it. They can change more easily, which is a good thing, but amid all that noise they can be tossed in the wrong direction like a boat on a stormy sea.
People with a lower need for security and greater self-regulation find it easier to overcome obstacles in emergencies, whether they are employees, leaders, or startup founders.
What can a leader do?
Leaders’ responsibility is undeniable. Even if their own profile helps them navigate more easily, they must not forget that some people on their team may have a greater need for security than they do. Setting aside their own unconscious bias—that what works for them may not work for others—they need to devote extra energy to reassuring their colleagues. In a crisis, the leader who succeeds is the one who remains calm and navigates comfortably through the unknown, but stays at the helm without leaving security-seeking colleagues behind.
A “virus-proof” leader does not retreat into an ivory tower or choose withdrawal as a stress response. Even if belonging to a group is not one of their own motivations, they can make the effort to create and sustain a virtual community with colleagues stranded far away.
The proof of the pudding would be in the eating—but not here. Before we take a bite out of crisis management or startup life, we need to examine ourselves and assess how capable we are of meeting these demands.
I was lucky: what I felt turned out to be right. It is in everyone’s interest for feelings to be backed by reality, and for neither luck nor outside forces to decide what we spend most of our time doing at work and in life. Covid-19 or no Covid-19.
Zsolt Fehér
International HR expert and European Managing Director of Hogan Assessments
Guest authors are external experts rather than members of the Forbes editorial team, and their opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Forbes.