Challenging the leadership mettle

Tough situations do not last, tough leaders do. In case of coronavirus crisis the tough situation seems to last indefinitely. That is why the bigger challenge, with the threat of Corona lurking around is what can leaders do to save people's lives, livelihoods and the future. A question that seemed almost impossible to answer a few weeks ago but is more answerable as some nations seem to be getting to grips with this killing reality. While the US, the UK, France, Italy and Spain are still struggling, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam are entering the recovery phase. This of course raises the question of what are the lessons we can learn from countries who have done better and those that have not.

The last crisis, that is the Financial Crash in 2009, was considered less of a financial and more of a leadership crash. Leadership guru Stephen Covey explained the reasons of that crash by stating that "Most organizations are over-managed and under led". The leaders were too busy focusing on pepping up the inflated profits and shareholder values by breaking principles of risk reserves and due diligence creating an artificial growth based on deceit and greed. When the market crashed the world went into a recession. Leaders were blamed, fired and retired. In the corona crisis, dynamics differ. It is natural disaster which hardly anybody anticipated. Some TED Talks of Bill Gates and some speeches of George Bush now reveal that it was expected but the world ignored them.

Thus leadership challenges are dual, i.e., how to save lives from a virus that has no cures presently and secondly how to save livelihoods and economies if 'stay home' is the only option to save lives. These two imperatives - health and economy - are almost contradictory. Leaders thus need to be really tested for their foresight and ability to come up with a combination that induces minimum damage to the two pillared imperatives to manage this crisis. It is a two -legged race to overcome this adversity. Focus on any one leg and you will stumble and lose the race. This is the leadership dilemma. Both legs require approaches that endanger the other leg. Keeping people locked at home decreases the infection rate and keeping the economy locked decreases the money available to battle a virus that requires resources even the richest countries are running out of.

As they say that the only ship that matters in a storm is leadership. The pandemic is a classic tale of the rise and fall of leaders in crisis. With the tale still being told there are no absolute endings but many interesting beginnings. Uniqueness of this ongoing study is that perhaps for the first time in history a calamity has hit 200 countries at the same time with the same risks and dangers. That is why the display of leadership responses will be so comparable despite the differences in the country economics and demographics. China was the first country to get hit by the Virus and it is the first country to get back to normal. Other countries like New Zealand, Australia, South Korea are all doing better than many others. That is why some leadership lessons are emerging that can become torch bearers for others to follow:

1 Leaders do proactive preemption - Leaders lead. That has never been more evident than in this pandemic. Leaders face reality no matter how outlandish it is. That has never been more proven than in the last few weeks. Some commonalities of those countries who have performed better and those that have not is emerging. The two most developed nations in the world - the US and the UK - have the highest number of deaths in this pandemic. Similarly in Latin America, the country that has fared worse is Brazil. What is common in all three of them is that their leaders dismissed the danger of the virus and were reactive rather than proactive. President Trump just kept on calling it a Chinese or Democratic party propaganda which will go away. Boris Johnson laughed it away by saying let us not do anything and let herd immunity develop. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dismissed the illness as a "fantasy" and a "little flu".

In contrast to that, South Korea, China earlier and now New Zealand and Australia took early action and are succeeding in controlling the virus. The reason being a quick realization of the seriousness of the threat and taking proactive steps at the right time. New Zealand imposed a lockdown even when their numbers were in double figures and South Korea with their lessons of SARS led in testing and tracing.

2 Leader chooses his battles - In a crisis resources become scarce while needs for them are multiple. Astute leaders then play on their strengths to use resources selectively on key risk areas. In China's case it was their history of discipline and control which they used to lockdown Wuhan for two months to limit the virus. In New Zealand's case it was public trust and cooperation that was leveraged by Jacinda Ardern to make people follow the lockdown willingly. In Germany's case it was the huge health infrastructure that made Merkel focus on lowering the death rate. In contrast, US has been all over the place busy in shifting the blame game from Democrats to China to the WHO to the Governor of New York while the virus has become uncontrollable.

3 Leaders show compassion and courage - Leadership is not just about cash dole-outs to the affected but also about empathy and compassion in times of such distress. Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand has come out as a humane leader with her slogan of " Be Kind". Angela Merkel's image as the mother of the nation has won accolades. Leadership is not just about being tough in tough conditions but being soft on those in tough conditions. Reaching out and caring for those who are under the maximum duress. The virus affectees, the frontliners, the poor, the helpless, the families of the sufferers need emotional healing. At times when pressure demands that harsh decisions be taken such softness is mistaken for being a soft leader. As Jacinda Ardern said on being criticized for not being assertive enough, "People say that because I am empathetic, I am weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong".

The test of a leader is how he kept his cool when everybody and everything was driving him up the wall. How he thought about the underprivileged when all the privileged were using their powerful voices to suppress the voice of the weak. And finally, leadership is about how the leader lets humanity and compassion triumph over popularity and aggression.

(The writer can be reached at [email protected])