Pandemic Leadership

‘How do you lead through a pandemic?’ is not a question I asked any mentors or read about in books. Its a question that I am only starting to get curious about 6 months into a job role which demands me to know the answer.

When Covid 19 hit I was a small business leader swept along with the wave of change felt by most business’. No more office space, no more face to face team meetings, a significant cancellation of confirmed work, this was the ‘new normal’. Having lead a team remotely for over 3 years there were some structures already in place to create a happy and empowering workplace. For example, every Monday begins with each team member sharing their priorities and the attitude they will focus on for the week ahead and at the end of every working day we share two actions taken to move the business forward (on a shared Whats App group). These routines have continued to provide our business structure when our office whiteboards and shared seating areas could not.

6 months on, what have I learnt about how to lead through a pandemic?

Far too many things to mention in one short blog but one thing stands out - empowering a team is more important than leading them. Pre pandemic I lead on all partnership and client conversations- this means I was on the phone or in the meeting room when budgets were confirmed and I experienced the satisfaction of starting successful collaborations. In a world where every business is unsure of where their next client is coming from I have had the chance to encourage and maybe sometimes push my team outside their comfort zones with the result that they now know themselves capable of confirming budgets and starting new client collaborations.

I am very clear that without the pandemic I would not have done this. I would have thought it ‘bad leadership’ to see my team outside their comfort zone- I probably would have felt guilty. My experience of pandemic leadership has given me a team of collaborators rather than followers and an experience of empowering and letting go that I don’t think could be understood from reading about it in a book or from a mentor.