2020 BORDERS CLOSED_IDEAS OPEN

We keep wanting to cancel #2020, nope, 2020 is the game changer. Don't just stand by, DO SOMETHING!

I took this from my Facebook post, June 29, 2020 in response to the many posts and comments that 2020 should be forgotten, so many persons expressed that they wished to advance to 2021. By that time, the world was on already on lockdown. A total of 48 countries implemented partial or full lockdown and among these countries, Brazil, France, Italy, New Zealand, Poland and the UK have implemented the world’s longest and most restrictive lock downs. Spain imposed a state of emergency on 14 March 2020.  (Langton, 2020). This was merely a glimpse of the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, a beginning that morphed into a ‘new normal’ – a phrase that is most likely to most used phrase in every facet of life.

Given the onslaught of negative comments and commentary I felt it necessary to find the positive in the present circumstances, that as human beings, being bestowed with thought and expression that we ought not to simply lift our hands in defeat but as gesture of lifting ourselves out of the doldrums of pandemic lockdown and restrictions. The statement of Barack Obama, then President, whilst addressing the UK Parliament in May, 2011 rings appropriate in the present circumstances: “… In this century, our joint leadership will require building new partnerships, adapting to new circumstances, and remaking ourselves to meet the demands of a new era…” (President Obama Speaks to the Parliament in London: "The Time for Our Leadership is Now", 2020). This statement, in essence captures the mandate for 2020 in the context, Covid-19, the Pandemic.

My sentiment, although was made in general is now pointed to the business community, in response to the belligerent retort to government’s decision to maintain restrictions on specific business entities. Understandably, the effects of the Covid-19 cannot be downplayed; the ‘non-medical’ measures have negatively impacted various sectors, with the service sector being worst hit by the pandemic (Dev and Sengupta, 2020); the global economy is projected to contract sharply in 2020, much worse than during the 2008-2009 financial crisis (World Economic Outlook, April 2020: The Great Lockdown, 2020). Fernandes (2020) highlighted the impact of the Coronavirus on countries dependent on tourism – Greece, Portugal and Spain, to name a few whose GDP will likely fall by more than 15%, likewise in the Latin Americas. The hospitality sector faced losses approximating 24.3 million globally and 3.9 om the USA alone (Ozili and Arun, 2020).

 The words uttered by President Barack Obama during his speech in the UK Parliament, London, United Kingdom, were in the context of renewing ties between two countries of similarly momentous history. The President (then) alluded to the fact that the United States and the United Kingdom share a kinship because their past and their visions. Nevertheless, the statement is equally relevant to our current situation, mainly, our state of disequilibrium, worldwide, being knocked over by the pandemic. There is a need for leaders to ‘remake’ themselves: remake being defined as the action or process of reforming or making changes to something, no doubt, with the onset of the Pandemic, we have had to ‘re-do’ ourselves to adjust to the new normal of pandemic protocols. I dare say, that the first thing that needs to be redone and re-shaped in response to, or in order to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic is to revisit our own response, to face adversity and create opportunities, be innovative. The passive reliance of businesses on governments does not guarantee survival (Bailey and Breslin, 2020).

What is leadership?

There are countless definitions of leadership; good leadership, in particular, means different things to different people (Northouse, 2018). Of the many offerings of what the term means, I find the following to be most apt, for present day discussion and under the current circumstances of Covid-19. Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it and process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives (Yukl, 2019). This definition provides the perfect backdrop for leadership scenarios worldwide, scenarios in which according to Obama, leaders are required to ‘build new partnerships, adapt (to new circumstances) and remake to meet the demands of the new era…”.

Leadership models of the last century have been deemed irrelevant simply because they have been products of top down bureaucratic paradigms suitable for physical production not for knowledge-oriented economy. (Uhl-Bien, Marion and McKelvey, 2007). The advent of knowledge today has birthed the need for a dynamic and interactive framework of leadership to accommodate what Uhl Mien et al (2009) describe as the challenge of the ‘knowledge era’; citing Mckelvey et al 2007, Uhl Mien (2007) indicated that the success of a corporation is now more reliant on social assets, corporate IQ and learning capacity. These suggestions trigger the opinion that the positivity of the pandemic lies in innovation, via transformational leadership. The research by proposes that transformational leadership theory is one of many leadership theories that will likely bring a fresh breath of organisational change.

In her blog entitled Leading the Way (Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning) Shruti Dhupia commented that the Covid 19 Pandemic is redefining leadership narrative, stretching leadership boundaries; the author outlined key features of this shifting dimension in leadership, notably: (1) being ambidextrous – that leaders are required to navigate through the dilemma of decision-making in the face of uncertainty and constrained resources: (2) deeply connecting and aligning with the eco-system – “leaders are responding to this uncertainty and change with a heightened focus on collaboration, building new alliances both internally and throughout their overall external ecosystem” (Dhupia, 2020).

Dhupia’s suggestions echo those of “Regenerative Leadership author, Laura Storm. Laura and Giles (and the five principles) first met three years ago, their shared conversations quickly led them to conclude there was a “missing link” between our inner and outer living systems in the field of how we lead and operate organizations and communities. The term ‘regenerative’ and by extension ‘regenerative leadership’ is not new in the world of business. Hardman (2009) initiated a proposal that this type of leadership was intended and most suitable for sustainability in business, education and community. The theory itself is, according to Hardman (2009) an offspring of sustainability leadership, both a mind set and a process by which leaders engage themselves and their followers in actions that promote environmental, economic and socially sustainable outcomes (Hardman, 2009. Pg. 18). The theory of regenerative leadership as proposed by Hardman (2009) is a fresh response to the demands of currents times: to be applied by formal and informal leaders at all levels of organisations (Hardman, 2009). 

Storm and Giles in developing the theory suggest that we begin the shift in perspective by seeing the organisation as a live entity; that we should see organisations (and leaderships) living systems that are constantly evolving.

Thus far, the reading on leadership in response to Covid and beyond have all the preceding issues and concerns. Reading “Leadership in the New Now”, the author, Freeman advised that empathy and flexibility are two critical leadership qualities for guiding people through (this) uncertainty and into the new reality.

To hone their empathy and ability to adapt, leaders require three elements:

• The head, to envision the future and the priorities required to succeed.
• The heart, to inspire and empower employees.
• The hands, to ensure innovative and agile-execution capabilities. (Freeman, 2020)

(Bailey and Breslin), 2020 point out that organisations need to be resilient to be able to respond to external threats such as Covid-19. The authors further cite Linnenluecke to highlight the need for organisations to develop adaptive business business models in order to accommodate rapid innovation, such as distilleries shifting to producing hand sanitizers; supply chains must build their resilience to maintain global competitiveness and that there must be decisive leadership (Bailey and Breslin, 2020).

The year 2020 most likely marks the shifting of the leadership paradigm once again, adding to the already lengthy timeline of the its evolution. The present landscape of Leadership is tenuous, constantly undergoing tectonic shifts due to learning and development. We would fare better to be flexible rather than unbending in order to mitigate any turbulence such as we are now experiencing with the Pandemic. Akin the sounds of ‘natural disasters’ the warning is brief and requires quick response and agile thinking; that does not come overnight, it must be developed and guided by vision.

 

REFERENCES

Bailey, K. and Breslin, D., (2020). The COVID-19 Pandemic: What can we Learn from Past Research in Organizations and Management?. International Journal of Management Review, [online] Available at:<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb-assets/assets/14682370/IJMR%20COVID%20VI%202020%20Editorial_2.pdf> [Accessed 27 October 2020].

Dev, S.M. and Sengupta, R. (2020), Covid-19: Impact on the Indian Economy, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India. [Accessed 03 November 2020].

Dhupia, S., (2020). How COVID-19 Is Redefining The Leadership Narrative. [online] Harvard Business Publishing. Available at: <https://www.harvardbusiness.org/how-covid-19-is-redefining-the-leadership-narrative/> [Accessed 13 October 2020].

Fernandes, N. (2020) Economic Effects of Coronavirus Outbreak (COVID-19) on the World Economy (March 22, 2020). IESE Business School Working Paper No. WP-1240-E, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3557504 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3557504

Hardman, J. (2010). REGENERATIVE LEADERSHIP: A Model for Transforming People and Organizations for Sustainability in Business, Education, and Community.

Herrington, V., and Flynn, E., (2015). Toward a Profession of Police Leadership. New Perspectives in Policing: Harvard University/National Institute of Justice

IMF. (2020). World Economic Outlook, April 2020: The Great Lockdown. [online] Available at: <https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020> [Accessed 03 November 2020].

Langton, K., 2020. Lockdown: Which Countries Are In Lockdown? How Many People?. [online] Express.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1260709/lockdown-which-countries-are-in-lockdown-how-many-people-coronavirus-cases> [Accessed 27 October 2020].

Northouse, P. G. (2013). LEADERSHIP: theory and practice. Los Angles, Sage Publications.

Freeman (2020). Step Up Leader with Susan Freeman: Leadership In The Now. [online] Available at:<https://www.stepupleader.com/leadership-in-the-now/> [Accessed 12 October 2020].

Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R. and McKelvey, B., (2007). Complexity Leadership Theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4), pp.298-318.

Yukl, (2020). Leadership In Organisations, Global Edition.

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