Episode #400: Leading in the Era of Pandemics

The WHO team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan came up empty. A lot of fairy floss was wrapped around the report, but reading the outcomes there were no outcomes. If we don’t want to face the reality of why this occurred in the first place, then there is no comfort that we can prevent Covid-20 arriving unannounced at some time in the future. As leaders what are we going to be working on between pandemics? The current one will hopefully quiet down over the course of 2021. There are five pillars of leadership we can rely on to be prepared for the next round of viral mayhem or any other VUCA events.

1. Take responsibility for the future.

We lead intentional lives and we help our team members to do the same. Most people in first world countries are leading accidental lives, buffeted by whatever happens to them, unable to exercise any control of their fate. You can understand it when poverty, lack of resources and no useful assistance are your third world reality, but not in our advanced economies.

Dispensing THE VISION from on high is not as good as co-creating it with the team. Let’s get the direct reports working together and come up with the enterprise wide umbrella vision and then have every work group cascade that down to form their own, within the general direction of that umbrella vision.

So what is the state of play of your corporate vision – if I called your company right now, can the person picking up the phone recite it from memory? If you can’t remember it you cannot live it.

2. Build a culture of trust

The value set of the leader determines the culture of the firm. If the leader is the alpha thrusting type, consumed by personal avarice, then dystopian political survival games will rule. If the leader focuses on developing their people to their maximum potential, then trust and respect will reign throughout the team.

Are you building a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts or are you tearing each other apart? Is it a safe environment for the meek and mild to speak up and offer their ideas? Or do the super noisy minority dominate the airwaves and get all the attention?

3. Create a culture of collaboration

Superman wore tights and a cape not a Brioni suit. The leader as superman concept worked in a less complex business world. Today, no one person can know everything, in real time and make all the key decisions. The leader no longer must be male and that revolution is still creeping forward, a long way from reaching its destination. According to ex-Prime Minister and ex-Tokyo Organising Committee Head Mori, women talk too much. That statement says everything about the state of collaboration in Japan.

We want the best ideas. Is your corporate culture an enabler or a blocker in that process?

4. Communicate effectively

The leader articulates the narrative about the desired future state of the organisation. From lowest to highest on the firm totem pole, there is a strong sense of “what I do matters around here and I am valued”, because that message has been communicated from top to bottom.

Feeling valued is the springboard to feeling engaged. Are your leaders constantly banging the drum that their people are valued?

5. Demonstrate reliability

Trust in business is wrapped up in reliability. Reliability simply communicates that I always do what I say I will do and you can make plans and take risks on that basis. Are your organisation’s leaders consistently reliable?

If I asked people at random, would they say they trusted the leadership, because they were reliable and were true to their word?

We are creatures of emotion with a thin veneer of logic lightly smeared over the top. We are not perfect and mistakes with people are an ever present danger. Do we understand what we need to be working on as leaders? Are we working on our businesses, rather than being a busy bee in our businesses? The best antidote for the next pandemic is mastering these five pillars of leadership. We need to get on to this now, because we probably have less time than we think, as propaganda tries to overtake and replace science.