By Niamh O’Keeffe, corporate leadership advisor and author of ‘Future Shaper: how leaders can take charge in an uncertain world’ (published 2020) niamh.okeeffe@ceoassist.com
- Trying to control the situation
There is no rulebook for a crisis like COVID-19. Rather than trying to control this situation, or feeling overwhelmed by the lack of control, try to shift your focus to developing a new leadership skill – the ability to rapidly evaluate an evolving situation and respond with compassionate, creative and collaborative solutions. In our leadership lifetime the world has never suffered a global pandemic so this is new unchartered territory. The closest experience that leaders have is the most recent global economic recession and already we see government and leaders quickly accessing that experience to tap into resilience and lessons learned. When the time comes, we will look back on this too, and learn the lessons and build our contingency plans accordingly.
- Not stepping back to see the bigger picture
There is growing pressure on governments to exit lock down and help the economy to get back to normal. However, this emphasis on returning to ‘normal’ falsely implies that we think we can go back to where we were. It will not be as simple as that. Leaders need to step back and see the bigger picture. Leaders need to acknowledge the severity of both short term and long-term business economic fallout from COVID-19 and try to pivot their businesses accordingly to an adjusted or new set of products and services, and delivery platforms. It might help you to think of pre-COVID-19 as ‘normal’, the current crisis as the ‘new normal’ and post-COVID-19 as the ‘next normal’.
- Not communicating enough
In any crisis it is important to communicate more regularly and more often, because people want more reassurance and more information than usual. Set out how regularly you plan to be in touch, and stick to your schedule. Don’t wait longer than a week for your employees and key stakeholders to hear from you – otherwise you create a vacuum of silence which will inevitably be filled with unhelpful fear-led rumours. Never cancel any planned communications events. Even when if there is nothing new to share, stick with the planned session to let people know that there is nothing new to communicate yet. Take the opportunity to be encouraging and explain what plans are in place to continue working on solutions.
- Not decentralising decision-making
Centralising decision-making in a crisis like COVID-19 is a mistake because, although the pandemic is global, it is occurring at different rates in different countries. Allow country heads to establish their own response. Give clear direction to your teams on the key priorities but decentralise decisions-making and empower local teams to respond on how to deliver on those key priorities as they see appropriate, whilst still staying accountable to big picture purpose and values of the organisation. However, just as individual team members should not isolate themselves from each other, don’t let the team distance itself from the rest of the organisation and what is happening at headquarters and around the world. Ideally, different country teams can be leveraged to help each other through the worst parts of this crisis.
- Not accessing the experience in your organisation
Allow space for everyone at every level to step up to play their part and be open to their ideas and resourcefulness. It will be interesting to notice whether members of your diverse and minority groups will be the ones to make maximum contribution because of their inbuilt resilience and life experience of responding to situations where the odds are stacked against them. It is not that long ago when businesses had to respond to a sudden global economic recession – and I can see already that leaders who went through that experience are tapping into that inbuilt resilience and reflecting back on the lessons learned; what worked well and deploying tactics accordingly.
- Missing the opportunity to bond with your customer and community
Lack of transparency would be a mistake. This crisis is happening to all of us and there is nowhere to hide. Let your customers know that the team may be working remote from the office – but remain committed to excellent customer service. Explain that we are all in this together and we will all come through this together. There is nothing more bonding than working with your customer in a transparent way during a crisis and coming up with solutions together. Beyond customers, businesses have an opportunity to show what they really stand for, and show their support to the community suffering around them. What resources does your business have that you can redeploy for the benefit of those less well off during this crisis?
- Moving to remote-working without a holistic employee engagement strategy
It is a mistake to think that it is business as usual for employees working from home. Employee stress and burnout should be a concern as workers grapple with the healthcare implications of COVID-19 on loved ones, and their requirement to work from home while other members of the family have to be home-schooled and their other partner is also working from home. Develop a holistic employee engagement strategy to support the emotional and social health of your people – from employee assistance programs to leaders hosting virtual coffee informal check-ins. No one should be expected to be superhuman and deliver the same 100% rate of output during a global pandemic and country lockdown. This goes for you too. As leader, you are not superhuman – remember to take care of yourself as well as taking care of your people.
