Episode #415: Pandemic Leaders: Time To Harden Up

We are all striving to survive these VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) fraught and frightening times. Covid has taken huge numbers of vibrant people. The loss to families has been immense and devastating. Companies have lost collective corporate memories, a hoard of rich experiences and real wisdom. The survivors carry on, never assured they will not succumb too at some point. Vaccinations proffer the opportunity to secure herd immunity and defeat the spread of the virus. What next for those survivor leaders and what do they need to be working on for a post-pandemic world?

Own The Future

Well organized leaders lead intentional lives. What does that mean? They have goals and plans and they calibrate and recalibrate their progress. They are brutally buffeted, but not thrown totally off course by unpredictable, violent direction changes. The ancients believed that their fate was not at their determination. Many of our staff are still with the ancients on that one and are not leading intentional lives. Many leaders have seen Covid throw the commerce rulebook right out the window, but their True North is still there. Now is the time to work on the team and rebuild their belief in the future of the firm. We need to reintroduce the idea of leading intentional lives for everyone in our crew.

The company Vision, Mission and the Values may need a real refresh thanks to the pandemic. Knowing where you are going, clarifying what you do and who you are makes sense in a senseless pandemic. Now is a good time to work together and re-create these behavior drivers and help the team to become more intentional about their future prospects. Probably no one could recite the old versions from memory anyway, so this time let’s make that possible. If you cannot remember them, you won’t be living them. How can we get all the important things which need to be included into a format which we can recite from memory, simply and easily? This is a good problem for the team to work on together and reinforce the sense of ownership.

Craft Culture

Every leader gets the culture they deserve. Covid has brutally exposed the leaders who had failed to build a robust culture in their team. Things break down when you don’t have good teamwork. When we work in isolation, we can depend on others much more than when we are all together in the office. Small tears in the fabric of cooperation became gaping wounds very quickly. Now is the opportunity to tune up the existing culture or to create an even better one. When the culture weaknesses have been exposed, it becomes painfully plain what needs to be done.

Unfortunately, leaders who have failed to unite the team during the pandemic will be unable to do much. Frankly, their credibility has been trashed. What is the organisation’s plan for them – continued neglect, retraining, the axe or do nothing? The stronger leaders will have seen their team culture strengthen under their leadership and become a formidable weapon in the market. As workplaces come out of the pandemic, it will be time for some serious weapon wielding.

Collaborators Will Win

The strong, silent John Wayne hero type leader is too expensive. The opportunity costs of not achieving collaboration critical mass cannot be denied. Leaders have had to coagulate disparate team members working at home in isolation from each other, into a powerful collaborative team. This melding process isn’t easy even when everyone can see and talk with each other every day in the workplace. The exodus to our homes just adds that deadly dimension of separation that increases the leader’s difficulty of keeping it all together and going smoothly.

The business world is too complex today for any of us as leaders to imagine we can do it on our own. We need 1+1=5 outcomes. There is a lot of coordination grunt effort required, which is one reason why many leaders cannot pull it off. Those who have managed it, can migrate into a post-Covid world with a powerful collectivization of the team’s intellect, experience and insights achieved.

Critical Communication Skills

The first casualty of leadership during Covid was communication. The traditional leader casting a carefully trained eye over those beavering away at their desks, had suddenly lost all visibility of what was going on. Leadership fault lines, previously masked, hidden and indulged were rapidly exposed. Frantic times makes inept leaders frantic and their tempers snap. Not good. Feeling valued by the boss is the springboard to engagement in teams. Capable leaders were able to communicate that to their team, despite their work location. In fact, the isolation amps up the need for many team members to feel valued and if that is not being communicated, Netflix and Clubhouse are the press of a button away.

Like a convoy escort, the effective leader learnt how to keep everyone together and moving forward. Motivating and encouraging people replaced scolding, cajoling and criticizing. Explaining the location of True North over and over, constantly stressing the WHY and creating the right narrative all proved powerful. This facility must be kept in perfect working order for the days ahead when people again can gather together in an office.

The samurai sword is beaten, heated for red hot tensile strength and plunged into cold water over and over again in order to harden the blade. Covid is beating us mercilessly. Organizationally, we leaders have to harden up and help our team members to become more resilient, flexible, cooperative and accountable. If we can't manage that and our rivals can, then we are in for a depressing, remorseless post Covid business gloom of missed business opportunities.