Have you ever wondered how far external factors can influence your work environment?

Every day we are faced with many challenges in the workplace. Whether in leadership positions or as aspiring employees. And many of times we focus on the challenges within the company and forget about the many obstacles that come from the outside, which are often beyond our control. 

Social and economic aspects, for example, are beyond our scope of control but still need to be foreseen and considered. I used to work in a supermarket here in Victoria and just before I left, we started dealing with some effects of inflation, which would inevitably influence our customers. This (external) factor made us restructure our whole policy for quite a while (when I left we were still restructuring) so that we could better deal with the frustrations of the customers and the employees themselves, as they had to deal daily with dissatisfied customers complaining about the price (and often using this frustration to escalate to other complaints). 

These issues can perfectly illustrate what an uncertain environment would be, showing that instability does not always come only from a company's internal processes. Although uncertainty in a work environment is an indication of something that the management was not yet aware of - and consequently would not know how to handle and guide the team - these moments are important opportunities for growth and positive highlighting of good leadership. Good leaders see these situations as challenges to be overcome and a way to strengthen the team. 

However, the internal environment ends up being an important variable in all this and cannot be left aside: with a strengthened and aligned team in terms of objectives, goals, and purposes (because without purpose the team becomes demotivated, and that's where the continuous turnover and lack of sense of unity come in), the external influences are overcome in a smoother and more fluid way.