The best leaders are the ones that can continue to successfully lead and motivate their people even during times of crisis. So says Marshall Goldsmith, consultant and professor of Executive Education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School, as well as speaker in this year’s World Business Forum Buenos Aires.

Based on his many years of experience as advisor for distinct executives—ranging from the most successful to the most disastrous—Goldsmith has developed three suggestions for leaders to apply in the toughest of times. Where and on who should you be focusing? Learn the answer in the following.

Extracted from Marshall Goldsmith’s blog

Have you ever thought of leaders as pilots? Although it sounds a little strange, there are a number of similarities between running a company for example and flying a plane. As mentioned in a recent article in Inc.com both business leaders and pilots take a lot of people with them if they make a fatal error. Discover the four leadership lessons we can learn from professional pilots according to consultant and pilot Moe Glenner.

Recent events in Boston, MA and West, TX have reminded us of a stark reality: we cannot escape crisis situations. Although unable to avoid them, we can learn to lead people through them. In fact, dark, difficult times may be the moments when leadership is needed the most.

While very few of us will ever be responsible to lead in the aftermath of a large-scale catastrophe, we all encounter times of intense difficulty within our organizations. By nature, a crisis urgently demands attention, and yet it can be difficult to know how to respond to sudden adversity. My hope is that this lesson equips you to lead others with poise and confidence through the storms of life.

Bailouts, energy crises, civil wars, global warming, the climate crisis, the Euro crisis: when you take a step back and look at the big picture of what is going on in the world it can sometimes seem pretty grim. Will Greece leave the Eurozone? Will Spain’s bailout work, or will they follow? What will be the consequences for the rest of the world? How will the Arab Spring effect geopolitics in the Middle East, as well as the world’s access to oil?

As I sit at my desk pondering these questions, it’s easy to feel that there is nothing, not an absolute thing I could do to help change the seemingly bleak outlook of any these scenarios. There is evidence that this “fatalism” is becoming an epidemic, that to a greater or lesser extent it is slowly infiltrating the minds of the majority of us.

So what is the impact of this creeping fatalism? We become complacent. We complain but we see no point of action. We don’t see the possibility of change, and we certainly don’t expect ourselves to be the drivers of that change…that would be impossible!

Trying to explain the current and future state of the global economy is no easy task.  But this was the challenge set before Nouriel Roubini as he took the stage to close this year’s ExpoManagement in Madrid.  Roubini became a household name as one of the few economists to have predicted the global economic crisis that hit in 2008.  Known by the moniker “Dr. Doom”, his reputation is one of an untra-realist who is not afraid to say things as he sees them.

His style is direct and to the point.  He doesn’t sugar coat.  Instead he lays out the situation as he sees it without pulling punches.  His hour long, whirlwind tour of the global economy, required his audience to hold on tight in order to keep up – the amount of ground he covered was considerable, and made one realize just how many interconnected elements there are shaping our economic future in the short, medium and long term.

His words were always going to have a special resonance to the Expomanagement audience in Spain, a country whose current economic problems are well documented and seemingly far from being resolved.   But what he had to say during his hour long key note speech was fascinating to anyone with an interest in possible future scenarios for the global economy.

Read on to discover just what he had to say, including:

• 5 reasons why the Eurozone recession is only likely to get worse
• 2 future scenarios for the Eurozone
• The outlook and challenges for the USA, Middle East and emerging markets
• 5 reasons for optimism for the future
  

Over the past couple of years the world has watched a succession of economic and political crises, and in many cases the first people to be observed and judged harshly are the leaders in charge.  According to a global survey, people’s opinion of leaders have fallen sharply. Are you disillusioned as well? How do we turn around this trend?