What is Leadership and how to overcome post COVID Challenges?

What is leadership? All of us have different answers for this question from different perspectives. After scrutinizing all the sources available, this is getting more interesting. Although difficult, it is important to have a good definition of leadership. It is one of the terms most widely used in many areas of human activity, including armed forces, business, politics, religion, sports, etc. (Silva, 2016). Most of the time leadership can be defined indisputably based on the situation than on the person, so the definition also will be changed accordingly. It is all about our frame of reference and the knowledge we have acquired.

Leadership is a powerful tool to influence human behavior. From Plato to modern literature in economics (Hermalin, 1998). A leader must have the ability to influence his organized group towards accomplishing the goals of the organization effectively. In this process, his actions must be focused on his resources while creating conditions for his team to be effective through desirable opportunities. Ultimately, he will own and lead a cohesive and goal-oriented team that will thrive him to the top along with the organization. Adding more to above facts, since leadership is not only a science but an art where the leader must be both rational and emotional. When an emerging leader is an excellent actor he is almost halfway on his track to be an excellent leader. However, Tri Wulida Afrianty has reconfirmed in his research called “Are Leaders Born Or Made?” that leaders are both born and made (Afrianty, 2020). Making the most out of their spiral of experience is the key to leadership development which is enhanced and involves action, observation and most importantly reflection on the results.  

Leadership is more challenging in the modern world. Today it is the pandemic, tomorrow it may be something else. In certain leadership, under the present circumstance, the leader must have the same mechanism to face the forces of changing. Irrespective of what you do, who you are the pandemic impacted from the top to bottom of an organization. All Internal and external stakeholders are looking at the leadership. How the leadership will execute the new operation strategy, monitoring and controlling are the challenges. The leader must have overcome the problem and thrive among others. But during this process, the leader must have many problems internal and external. Most of the time the entire operating module will be changed. New job roles / descriptions and tools will come into the picture like working from home, recruiting medical staff and adding a digital thermometer to arm the security guard .       

Surveying the entire situation, we all understand what is this pandemic and how it altered the world economy, organizations, as well as the family? Who expected shutting down countries and locking people for days, for weeks, and majority for months in their homes or in places far away such as in other countries without even having basic needs, without a fair notice? The World Bank indicates a 5.2% shrinkage in global GDP in 2020 because of the pandemic (World Bank Flagship Report, 2020). Most organizations are already struggling to exist in many ways especially to keep their heads above the water, unable to establish and achieve realistic targets, unable to get the workforce and  material for the production, falling consumer demand, import and export markets are frozen and drying financial flow. While how to survive in this situation is also challenging, thriving to the top will be only available for few leaders who have amazing leadership qualities. This newborn challenge that modern leadership is still facing and trying to adapt to the new normal revealing us who are the true leaders. However, overcoming an enigma and expecting the same in the long run is not the leadership that can be considered as troubleshooting. Pandemic is only a prototype that has given training for expecting the unexpecting to the leaders in the new corporate world. Only regenerative leaders are thriving and taking advantage of the prevailing circumstances whilst others are trying the hard way to survive by getting rid of staff, pay cuts, etc. The regenerative leadership framework offers some insights into how leaders at every level of society may initiate change to attain this new and critical stasis (Hardman, 2006).

Both internal and external stakeholders had a golden opportunity to evaluate their confidence in the organization and the leadership during this critical period both positively or negatively. Most importantly employees are looking at how their leaders acted and behaved through the period under review. Most organizations collapsed because they didn't care what is about to happen in the future. Some of them foreseen the threat beyond the horizon and acted accordingly, even though they managed to breathe today, it is just surviving. Only the regenerative leaders who showed everyday leadership succeed. Leaders must be passionate and completely aware of what they are doing. And that will make them great leaders among their followers. A leader must be a catalyst to his followers.      

Visionary leadership which has foreseen problems long before is far better than the leadership that fixes problems as and when they surface. In some of the organizations where they already had strategic technologies in use, came many years back like an online ERP system. During the pandemic they could use it working from home. Even the organization has invested money in that ERP system maybe 10-15 years back, but the authentic advantage and value realization of that visionary strategic decision came in 2020. That is the kind of visionary leadership we need to assemble to make a new generation of leadership for the 21st century.

However, this destructive pandemic has proven the experience of a leader doesn't depend much in his leadership skills when it does not involve action, observation and reflection along with the perception. A classic example for this is given by Brandix Apparel Limited, Sri Lanka which faced a major challenge during the pandemic because they couldn't continue their regular production to their regular export market. But they had all the resources to convert their production catering to the market demand, converting their operation strategy module from the top-down approach method to the customer-market requirement perspective method. They manufactured and exported 200 million face masks to the United States as their first batch, boosting the apparel industry in Sri Lanka (Brandix Lanka, 2020). It exhibited very inspiring leadership going against the grain in May 2020. But the leadership was unable to continue looking into small but most important keys in this new normal working environment like COVID-19 health guidance and showing lack of interest in continuity of perception in what was happening at the grassroot level. They had to close one of their factories immediately, dragging them back to square one recording the most number of COVID-19 positive patients found in Sri Lanka in a single day (Chua, 2020). They are not only limited to themselves but also exposing those employees unintentionally into the society. Now the entire country is on the brink of getting hit by a second wave of devastating pandemic which was under control. That is where very small things also matter and why the reflection matters the most and how you perceive those. 

Now it is time to rise from the ashes of COVID-19 with lessons learned. A leader must be aware of which areas you and your team are affected, what are the strengths and how are you going to accept that accordingly to your leadership qualities. Unforeseen things can surface to make everything upside down without a notice. So now leaders must be ready for such events mentally and physically. It will be better to check all possibilities in making, developing and expanding virtual working environments as much as possible to the requirements of the organization. Steps are going to be adopted in this post covid recovery process, sometimes might have other consequences both positively or negatively. So emotional intelligence will have a key role. Leaders must gain the trust of all internal and external stakeholders along with this recovery process. They must have the best empathy towards the employees to make the most positive outcome from them to move forward as an organization.

Nature has given the opportunity to look back into your SWOT. In this recovery period there must be a leadership strategy with a balance between continuously the pressure forcefully to go forward and guiding to a solid return smoothly. Now this may be a good time to reconsider the mission if not the vision of the organization.

Leaders must stop pretending that they know more than what they actually do. Effective and ethical leaders who are able to work with clear transparent communication gathering all stakeholders together. Also who have acquired an updated knowledge along with the experience which accommodates any situation and to overcome challenges originated by COVID-19. 

“As a human race, we have forgotten how to connect with our outer nature and our inner nature. It is vital that we remember, or relearn, how to read the patterns, relationships, energies, insights, and intelligences innate within life. Without this reconnecting to life’s logic, we will be unable to find our way to a more balanced structure or coherent business paradigm that enables our people and our planet to thrive in the years ahead.” (Giles Hutchins and Storm, 2019)

However, this new devastating situation has proven to us that most leaders and their leadership skills are outdated or obsolete. So the world needs to navigate forward with true regenerative leaders? 

Reference list

Afrianty, W.T. (2020). Are Leaders Born Or Made?……………….. Tri Wulida Afrianty Are Leaders Born Or Made? : A Point Of View. Jurnal Penelitian Ipteks, 5(1).

Brandix Lanka (2020). 200 Million Face Masks for Export by Brandix. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_e52OXtJzM [Accessed 10 Nov. 2020].

Chua, J.M. (2020). Brandix Factory Linked to Sri Lanka’s Biggest Coronavirus Outbreak. [online] Sourcing Journal. Available at: https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/labor/brandix-apparel-factory-sri-lanka-coronavirus-garment-workers-quarantine-240293/.

Giles Hutchins and Storm, L. (2019). Regenerative leadership : the DNA of life-affirming 21st century organizations. S.L.: Wordzworth Publishing.

Hardman, J. (2006). Cortese. McDonough & Braungart. Seelos & Mair.

Hermalin, B.E. (1998). American Economic Association. The American Economic Review, [online] 88(5), pp.1188–1206. Available at: http://econdse.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/leadership-Hermalin.pdf.

Silva, A. (2016). What is Leadership? - ProQuest. [online] Proquest.com. Available at: https://search.proquest.com/openview/da932f3ddd496ce36e7f30f9e133b141/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1056382.

World Bank (2020). Global Economic Prospects. [online] World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects.