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HBuasrvinaersds Review

-m Digital Article

What Good

Leadership Looks

Like During This

Pandemic by Michaela J. Kerrissey and Amy C. Edmondson

Crisis Management

HBR / Digital Article / What Good Leadership Looks Like During This Pandemic

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What Good Leadership Looks Like During This Pandemic

by Michaela J. Kerrissey and Amy C. Edmondson

Published on HBR.org / April 13, 2020 / Reprint H05K3M

Left: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images; Right: Jun Sato/Getty Images

The speed and scope of the coronavirus crisis poses extraordinary

challenges for leaders in today's vital institutions. It is easy to understand

why so many have missed opportunities for decisive action and honest

communication. But it is a mistake to think that failures of leadership are

all we can expect in these grim times.

Consider Adam Silver, the commissioner of the National Basketball

Association (NBA), who – way back on March 11 – took the then­

surprising step of suspending the professional basketball league for the

season. Silver's decision was one of the earliest high-profile responses to

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the virus outside China. He delivered it at a time of great uncertainty;

coincidentally, March 11 was the day that the World Health Organization

formally designated the coronavirus a pandemic.

When the situation is uncertain, human instinct and basic management

training can cause leaders – out of fear of taking the wrong steps and

unnecessarily making people anxious – to delay action and to downplay

the threat until the situation becomes clearer. But behaving in this manner

means failing the coronavirus leadership test, because by the time the

dimensions of the threat are clear, you're badly behind in trying to control

the crisis. Passing that test requires leaders to act in an urgent, honest, and

iterative fashion, recognizing that mistakes are inevitable and correcting

course – not assigning blame – is the way to deal with them when they

occur.

In a moment of tremendous ambiguity, Silver's decisive action – well

before state governments began restricting public gatherings in the United

States – set off a chain of events that almost certainly altered the course of

the virus. Over a million fans would now avoid potential exposure at

games. Moreover, the decision had a powerful ripple effect: The

suspension of the NCAA's historic "March Madness" college tournament;

the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and

other sports leagues halting their own operations; and the rescheduling of

the Boston Marathon.

That this action happened in the sports arena may be material. Here was

the NBA, an organization with more than $8 billion in 2019 revenue,

known for physical prowess and competitiveness, not excess caution,

acting with what appeared at the time to be great caution and reserve.

It got people thinking.

But could a politician ever show similar courage in getting out ahead of the

virus before its impact was widely apparent? In fact, that is exactly what

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happened in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's response to

the pandemic back on March 21 was bold and engendered public support.

That day, Ardern delivered an eight-minute televised statement to the

nation in which she announced a four-level Covid-19 alert system.

Modeled on fire risk systems already in use in New Zealand, this familiar

approach set clear guidelines for how the government would step up its

response – and what would be asked of citizens as infection rates grew.

The prime minister's announcement, when New Zealand had only 52

confirmed cases, set the alert level at two, restricting some travel and

urging people to limit contact. But when cases grew to 205 four days later,

the alert system was raised to level four, triggering a nationwide

lockdown. While her political peers – heads of state around the world –

worried about their ability to maintain public support for sweeping

restrictions, Ardern's actions showed that honesty and caring yield

support. A national poll put her government at over 80% public approval

as of March 27. And, although uncertainty remains high, as of April 7 the

number of new cases in New Zealand had fallen for two consecutive days.

The country reported only 54 cases on April 6 and only one Covid-19

death since the pandemic started, leading to the Washington Post headline:

"New Zealand isn't just Flattening the Curve. It's Squashing it:'

Importantly, Ardern's explicit step system meant that people knew in

advance that escalation was coming. They knew what would be required of

them – and they accepted the challenge.

How a message is delivered matters. Ardern's communication was clear,

honest, and compassionate: It acknowledged the daily sacrifices to come

and inspired people to forge ahead in bearing them together. Ardern

closed her March 21 address by thanking New Zealanders for all they were

about to do. And her powerful parting words were soon picked up around

the globe as people looked for direction in the fog: "Please be strong, be

kind, and unite against Covid-19."

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What Ardern and Silver got right in March, before the situation was clear

to much of the public, reveals a great deal about what good leadership

looks like during this pandemic. Understanding what's required of leaders

in this moment starts with appreciation for the type of problem this

pandemic presented in its initial phases. When warning signs are fuzzy

and potential harm could be large, leaders confront what management

scholars call an ambiguous threat. Given the human desire to hope a threat

is small, we are drawn to act as if that is factually the case. Fiascos ranging

from NASA's Columbia Shuttle disaster in 2003 tothe2008 financial

system collapse have brought into sharp relief the unique challenge that

ambiguous threats pose to leaders: cognitive biases, dysfunctional group

dynamics, and organizational pressures push them toward discounting the

risk and delaying action, often to catastrophic ends.

It takes a unique kind of leadership to push against the natural human

tendency to downplay and delay. Far too many leaders instead try to send

upbeat messages assuring all is well – which, in the current tragedy, has

unfortunately led to unnecessary lost life at a scale that may never be

accurately counted. But this is by no means the only path for leaders to

take. Building on the cases of Silver and Ardern, we distill four lessons for

leaders in a novel crisis.

Overcome Your Instincts So You Can Lead Effectively

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1. Act with urgency.

A well-documented and pernicious problem with any ambiguous threat is

the (understandable) tendency to wait for more information and clarity.

The risks of delaying decision-making are often invisible. But in a crisis,

wasting vital time in the vain hope that greater clarity will prove no action

is needed is dangerous – particularly in the face of a pandemic with an

exponential growth rate, when each additional day of delay contributes

even greater devastation than the last. Against the natural tendency

toward delay, acting with urgency means leaders jump into the fray

without all the information they would dearly like. Both Ardern and Silver

acted early, well before others in similar circumstances and well before the

future was clear. It was what Ardern publicly described as an explicit

choice to "go hard and go early."

2. Communicate with transparency.

Communicating bad news is a thankless task. Leaders who get out ahead

risk demoralizing employees, customers, or citizens, threatening their

popularity. It takes wisdom and some courage to understand that

communicating with transparency is a vital antidote to this risk. As Ardern

stated in her early national address:

I understand that all of this rapid change creates anxiety and

uncertainty. Especially when it means changing how we live. That's

why today I am going to set out for you as clearly as possible, what

you can expect as we continue to fight the virus together.

Since that announcement, Ardern has delivered regular public addresses,

including some in a sweatshirt recorded obviously from home. Silver

similarly sent a barrage of memos throughout the NBA organization as his

decision-making process unfolded. As reported on ESPN, 16 (yes, 16!)

"Hiatus Memos" were delivered to the teams as of March 19.

Communicating with transparency means providing honest and accurate

descriptions of reality – being as clear as humanly possible about what

you know, what you anticipate, and what it means for people. It is crucial

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to convey your message in a way that people can understand, as Ardern

did by echoing the familiar four-level alert system. But communication

cannot be utterly devoid of hope or people will simply give in to despair.

Somewhere in that communication must be a hopeful vision of the future

toward which people can direct their energy, because without hope,

resolve is impossible.

3. Respond productively to missteps.

Because of the novelty and complexity of a pandemic – or any other large

system failure – problems will arise regardless of how well a leader acts.

How leaders respond to the inevitable missteps and unexpected challenges

is just as important as how they first address the crisis.

First, they must not revert to defensiveness or blame when mistakes are

made. Instead, they must stay focused on the goal and look ahead to

continue solving the next and most pressing problems. For instance, when

New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio lambasted the unfairness of NBA players

accessing tests that remained out of reach for the rest of America, Silver

publicly acknowledged the criticism, accepted it as valid, and emphasized

the (real) fundamental problem of the testing shortage – with an eye on

the larger picture. He said, "I, of course, understand [de Blasio's] point,

and it is unfortunate that we are at this position in this society where it's

triage where it comes to testing. So, the fundamental issue is obviously

that there are insufficient tests:'

In short, it is not our intention to suggest that the NBA's response to the

virus was perfect but rather to point out that Silver took the criticism in

and kept focused on the key issue of fighting the pandemic and making

tests more widely available. The important response to any misstep is to

listen, acknowledge, and orient everyone toward problem-solving.

4. Engage in constant updating.

An all-too-common misconception of good leadership is that a leader must

be steady and unrelenting in staying the course. Certainly, steadiness is

required in these times. But given the novelty and rapid evolution of the

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pandemic, it is wrong to think that the work of the leader is to set a course

and stick to it. Leaders must constantly update their understanding of

prior probabilities, even daily, deliberately using strategies to elicit new

information and learn rapidly as events unfold and new information comes

to light.

Doing this means relying on expert advisors and energetically seeking

diverse opinions. Silver drew on a long and diverse list of advisors as he

has made his way through this crisis: from the NBA's director of sports

medicine, John DiFiori, to his colleagues based in China who saw the virus'

early toll, to a former U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy. A leader's

advisory team in the face of an ambiguous threat may change over time,

because new information often means new problems have surfaced and

the necessary expertise will shift accordingly. Finding and leveraging the

right people for evolving problems is part of the updating challenge.

Tapping into Suffering to Build Meaning

Perhaps Silver and Ardern's proactive responses were accidents of history

rather than a special brilliance. When the first reports of the coronavirus

reached Silver, he was writing a eulogy for his longtime mentor, former

NBA Commissioner David Stern. It was also not long after former star

player Kobe Bryant and eight others suddenly died in a helicopter crash.

These events, although unrelated to Covid-19, may have put Silver in a

reflective mood that helped him to see the emerging threat of the virus

through a human lens. Similarly, Jacinda Ardern was feeling somber in

March, which brought the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch

mosque shootings that killed 51 people, the deadliest mass shooting in her

country's history.

Most people in positions of authority have seen great suffering or

experienced loss – or at least their advisors have – and yet far too many

failed to decisively take potentially unpopular action in the critical days as

the virus gained momentum. They might argue that they were trying to

remain professional: to stay rational and dispassionate, to keep their

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personal emotion at bay, and bide their time. But the cases of Ardern and

Silver suggest an opposite approach.

We believe that leadership is strengthened by continually referring to the

big picture as an anchor for meaning, resisting the temptation to

compartmentalize or to consider human life in statistics alone.

Leadership in an uncertain, fast-moving crisis means making oneself

available to feel what it is like to be in another's shoes – to lead with

empathy. Perhaps in the coming weeks the unfortunate scale of this

pandemic will make empathy easier for many leaders. But awful scale can

also have a numbing effect. It will be incumbent on leaders to put

themselves in another's suffering, to feel with empathy and think with

intelligence, and then to use their position of authority to make a path

forward for us all. Crises of historical proportion can make for leaders of

historical distinction, but that is far from guaranteed.

Michaela]. Kerrissey is an assistant professor of management at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and

Management at Harvard Business School. She is the author of The

Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for

Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley, 2019).

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HBuasrvinaersds Review

-m Digital Article

The Psychology

Behind Effective

Crisis Leadership by Gianpiero Petriglieri

Crisis Management

HBR / Digital Article / The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership

32

The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership

by Gianpiero Petriglieri

Published on HBR.org / April 22, 2020 / Reprint H05KQR

David Crockett/Getty Images

When I ask groups of managers what makes a good leader, I seldom have

to wait long before someone says, "Vision!" and everyone nods. I have

asked that question countless times for the past 20 years, to cohorts of

senior executives, middle managers, and young students from many

different sectors, industries, backgrounds, and countries. The answer is

always the same: A vision inspires and moves people. Expansion,

domination, freedom, equality, salvation – whatever it is, if a leader's

vision gives us direction and hope, we will follow. If you don't have one,

you can't call yourself a leader.

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This enchantment with vision, I believe, is the manifestation of a bigger

problem: a disembodied conception of leadership. Visions hold our

imagination captive, but they rarely have a positive effect on our bodies. In

fact, we often end up sacrificing our bodies in the pursuit of different kinds

of visions, and celebrating that fact – whether it is by dying for our

countries or working ourselves to exhaustion for our companies. Visions

work the same way whether mystics or leaders have them: They promise a

future and demand our life. In some cases, that sacrifice is worth it. In

others, it is not. Just as it can ignite us, a vision can burn us out.

When a leader's appeal rests on a vision alone, leadership is not whole.

And the limitations of such visionary leadership become painfully obvious

in times of crisis, uncertainty, or radical change. Take the coronavirus

pandemic. No one had anything like it in their "Vision 2020:' Crises

always test visions, and most don't survive. Because when there's a fire in

a factory, a sudden drop in revenues, a natural disaster, we don't need a

call to action. We are already motivated to move, but we often flail. What

we need is a type of holding, so that we can move purposefully.

What do I mean by holding? In psychology, the term has a specific

meaning. It describes the way another person, often an authority figure,

contains and interprets what's happening in times of uncertainty.

Containing refers to the ability to soothe distress and interpreting to the

ability to help others make sense of a confusing predicament. Think of a

CEO who, in a severe downturn, reassures employees that the company

has the resources to weather the storm and most jobs will be protected,

helps them interpret revenue data, and gives clear directions about what

must be done to service existing clients and develop new business. That

executive is holding: They think clearly, offer reassurance, orient people

and help them stick together. That work is as important as inspiring

others. In fact, it is a precondition for doing so.

Holding is a more obscure and seldom celebrated facet of leadership than

vision, but no less important. And when crises hit, it becomes essential. In

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groups whose leaders can hold, mutual support abounds, work continues,

and a new vision eventually emerges. When leaders cannot hold, and we

can't hold each other, anxiety, anger, and fragmentation ensue. In a study

of BP during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, for example, my INSEAD

colleague (and wife!) Jennifer Petriglieri observed both outcomes. She

found that BP's top talent, which the company needed to resolve and

recover from the crisis, had different reactions to the crisis. Some lost faith

in the company and in its leaders. Others doubled their effort and

commitment. The difference between the two groups? The former was

exposed to the top brass' upbeat messages. The latter had bosses who

drafted them to help clean up the mess. Despite the stress, working closely

with one's boss and colleagues on the response was more containing and

informative. It reassured those who did it about the company's integrity

and long-term viability. Being held as we work through a crisis, the study

concluded, is more useful than being told how bright the future is.

It was Donald Winnicott, a pioneering British psychoanalyst, who first

conceptualized holding in this way. He observed that being held well was

necessary for healthy growth in children. Parents who were available but

not demanding, reassuring but not intrusive, responsive but not reactive,

present even if not perfect, Winnicott observed, provided a "holding

environment" that made children comfortable and curious. Holding made

space for them to learn how to make sense of, and manage, their inner and

social worlds-and to develop a robust sense of self. That is, a self with a

healthy regard for its abilities and limitations, a self that can learn, play,

work, face hardships, and sustain hope through it all.

Caretakers who held well, Winnicott noted, did not shelter children from

distress and turns of fate. But they buffered children enough that they

could process distress, and helped them find words to name their

experiences, and ways to manage it. "Are you angry, love? Is that why you

kicked? Come here. How about we tell your brother to leave your bear

alone, instead."

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Children who are held well, Winnicott discovered, became more sociable

and independent as grown-ups. They neither became paralyzed when

faced with challenges, nor sought rescue from parental figures. They did

seek help when needed and made good use of it. Winnicott called such

selves true, meaning that they were free to make their way in the world,

and he saw such strength and freedom as the result, one might say, of a

competent kind of love. He also observed that they could offer it in turn.

They had learned to hold themselves and others too.

Good holding, i