“When the going gets tough, the tough get going” a maxim attributed to Joseph P Kennedy Snr was something I frequently heard during my days in the British Army. Another truism I often heard and understood was that in tough times true Leaders step up.
The scale and unprecedented nature of the Covid 19 Crisis created exceedingly difficult challenges, and for a time, chaos reigned.
As a personal coping mechanism, I attempted to keep in contact with the many business leaders in my network. For me, it was about developing and maintaining relationships, with a group of people I could openly discuss common and shared frustrations and challenges whilst sharing my own.
My Leaders in Tough Times series of conversations captures some wonderful examples of Leadership in Tough Times from business Leaders who definitely stepped up. I have summarized below some of the many fascinating and candid insights from leaders dealing with a once in a generation crisis.
My own business is built on having a strong pipeline fed by meeting people, predominantly at networking events. Clearly when lockdown happened, my business activity was abruptly halted.
The idea for the conversations took shape after a few conversations during virtual meetings with Terry Watts of and Sharon Wright.
I invited over 40 leaders to take part in a short survey that would take less that fifteen minutes of their time, part of which was the option to follow it up with a recorded virtual conversation. Some of the results were shared on LinkedIn and my website https://cubetltd.com/blog/ Whilst many contributed, not all of them were comfortable with having their contributions attributed to them.
The first question in the survey asks, “On the scale where 0 is not at all and 10 is extremely, how challenging have you found it being a Leader during the COVID 19 pandemic?” 80% of respondents were in the upper quartile whilst 20% scored 5. Of those that scored lower, drawing on previous challenging times both personal and professional helped them cope with the current challenges.
The second question “In no more than three sentences, what have been the three greatest challenges to your Leadership?” attracted a variety of responses.
One respondent who did not want their comments attributed to them said “Being overwhelmed, other people being overwhelmed, ability to reach people with the right message at the right time”. Another respondent who did not wish to be named said “Too much time spend on unproductive Zoom meetings. Slower pace of productivity due to lack of sophisticated office equipment. Lack of nuanced face to face contact.”
Alex Wright expressed how “The unknown in the early days and our responsibility to our team and clients. And balancing childcare, my wife’s business demands and my own work.” Lynda Holbrey listed “Time management; regular communication; making new connections” as her greatest challenges. Another respondent explained his challenges were around “Managing the crisis across different geographies in an equitable way, given the very different circumstances and prevailing sentiments; getting the business to take ownership of difficult decisions; keeping others calm.”
Emergent themes include morality and pastoral care. Becky Hanson told me that she found challenges around “Deciding if/when to furlough staff. Having to make redundancy decisions. Creating clear plans in every changing business landscape.”, whilst Ian Harris responded “Interpreting and formulating policy from government announcements. Remote pastoral care. Work life balance.”
The topic of trust in colleagues also arose. Ray Byrne stated the importance of “..having team retain a trust in me and the vision” and Rachel North reflected that “you need a strong team and you need to trust them”
Several the respondents alluded to the weight of the challenges such as external factors including public expectation and political pressure and internal factors such as keeping the emotionally people and the business stable.
Critical self-reflection and learning were other themes that became apparent from some of the responses to the question about what they had learnt about their own leadership during the crisis. “To relax more” understand that “influence is a strong motivator” and that being flexible in a dynamic situation is critical. Recognizing that as change is inevitable, “brave is better” and “being bold about important decisions rather than procrastination” Missing how the “familiar social/human contact with people oils the wheels of interaction”
One of the eternal challenges of Leadership is remaining fit to lead by exercising self-care. All, in varying degrees and different speeds, recognised the situation best summed by the phrase “it is what it is” and ensured that they met the challenge in a way that all Leaders do when faced with the unknown – they step up and deliver dynamic situational leadership in a people centred compassionate way.
To conclude each conversation, I asked each contribute or what wisdom they would pass on to future leaders. There some great answers which you hear by visiting https://cubetltd.com/blog/
My favourite response was from Becky Hanson who said “Do something today that you will thank your future self for”. Clearly, she was Thinking Towards Tomorrow
