Leadership Challenges In The New Normal

By A.Abeku Haywood-Dadzie

"The domain of leaders is the future.The work of leaders is change. The most significant contribution leaders make is not to today's bottom line; it is to the long-term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow."?James M. Kouzes

Most people talk about leadership and all the privileges associated with it. Few talk about the challenges associated with it. Leadership in itself is a?challenge, and the challenges associated with leadership are threefold;?external, emanating from those being led; internal, stemming from within the?leader and his or her fears, and what I term "external," springing from the nature of the?leadership?role and the ecosystem.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has succeeded in ambushing humanity by attacking every layer of our existence, posing unparalleled challenges to leadership across the world. Arguably, it must be emphasised that the nature of leadership will never remain the same after COVID-19. And the manner in which contemporary leaders react to this emerging and complex crisis will redefine leadership?profoundly, separate great leaders from the pack, and author a "playbook" for developing the next generation of leaders.

But the question is, how can leaders be effective and make acute decisions in such a VUCA [?volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity] environment bedevilled with changing trends and shifting scientific understanding?

Man, by nature, has been programmed to overcome adversities, and man will overcome this pandemic no matter how long it takes. However, leading during a period when the stakes are high presents leaders with an unprecedented challenge. A challenge that is testing the mettle of leaders socially, economically, culturally, and physiologically. What has worsened the situation is the fact that there is no playbook for navigating this 21st century pandemic. There are no manuals or strategic documents to refer to as a guide, and every mechanism for measuring key performance has become very fluid. Consequently, navigating the new normal presents leaders with a colossal task that is difficult, if not impossible, to surmount.

No matter how effective some leaders were yesterday and today, tomorrow is likely to present different and difficult demands on them, especially when information for decision making is becoming obsolete by the hour. Leaders today can no longer manage today's problems with yesterday's solutions. To survive in this pandemic environment where rapid change and uncertainty are the norm and success requires consideration of multiple views and priorities by the minute, leaders must learn to manage today. However, to succeed, they must learn to manage tomorrow today by being extremely agile.

I have been reading many journals on how to lead during this COVID-19 pandemic. Most of these journals were written by experts and scholars of high repute from different backgrounds. The challenge, however, is that though some of these write-ups make sense academically, a number of them sound like the advice offered during pre-marital counseling because it's difficult to situate them within my ecosystem. But be as it may, the admonishing of my old educationist mother always comes to play; "reading makes a man; always read and you will learn something new." So, I guess my advice to you will be for you to read on. After all, you will learn something new. "

It is imperative to note that if ever there was a moment demanding a new leadership playbook and a superman, this is it. Leadership everywhere usually crafts their strategy, be it long-term or short-term, with some level of anticipated risk or contingencies and mitigating plan. "By crafting a mitigation plan, leaders reduce the probability of impact on the identified risk." Again, by including a contingency plan, though these leaders do not change the probability of the risk occurring, they plan to control the impact. "?Unfortunately, COVID-19 is a force majeure that is not more than 1% envisaged, and this may be accounting for the high level of eventualities.

What this means is that this new normal was not planned but imposed on us by nature. Until the arrival of COVID 19, work-from-home was a long-term strategy for most organisations and a novelty for some innovative organisations that were testing the policy. The evolution of the workplace was not an innovation incubated by innovation managers. It was something we had to adjust to as humans. After the survival instincts, the purpose shifted to social acceptance.

Unfortunately, the above is the challenge of man. According to Edgar Rice Burroughs, "We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us." This saying is at the core of some of the challenges most leaders are facing with the new normal; change. The pandemic has caused a massive change to our daily lives. This change has occurred rapidly and abruptly. These life adjustments have come with a wide range of experiences and emotions, and the transition to the new normal has been "choppy or downright bumpy". It almost goes without saying that the world has moved from the physical to digital within a split second, with its attendant challenges which are new to us all.

So, at the core of the leadership challenge today is our inability to abruptly adapt to change. Though we know change is inevitable, change is difficult, and what makes change difficult, and the reason why most change programmes don't produce the desired result in the end, is the human factor. All changes affect man to a greater or lesser extent. It requires us to throw away the familiar and jump headlong into the unknown. Man does not resist change; man resists being changed. The reason for this resistance is very simple, every change comes with a price and a sacrifice. This sacrifice is about giving up something old for something new. It's about giving up something we have become accustomed to for something we are unfamiliar with. So, don’t be surprised to hear the absurdities being spewed out at the town hall meetings across the world during this COVID-19 era.

For our generation, it's abnormal to have the entire family at home all day all the time. The normal thing was parents going to work, children going to school, and the family converging in the evening after the day’s activities. The normal thing was that children go to school and play with their friends, and parents go to work and engage in work and happiness with their colleagues and friends. The normal thing was for children to sleep over at grandma’s or friends’ houses and for parents to go out with friends after a hard day’s work. The normal thing was to attend social activities like the stadium to watch your favourite teams play, or the movie house to watch your favourite movies, or the church to refresh your soul.

Unfortunately, today, parents who do not know what their children do in-between breakfast and supper are forced to have a crash course on what their children do while they are away at work, and children have to learn to stay under the radial of their parents 24/7. If this is a challenge, how does one manage end to end with working from home and working with the family??

This calls for leaders to develop a sense of emotional and cultural intelligence; it calls for leaders to be counted on to say what they mean and do what they say, "do as I say, not as I do" or "take my advice, even though I am acting contrary to the new normal ". The greatest strength for leaders today will be their ability to positively influence others and inspire them to go the extra mile. They must appreciate the fact that they influence many others beyond themselves, and accept that loyalty is the bond that holds their teams and business together. It is what makes employees want to wake up every morning, with the chaos at home, and still go the extra mile with WFH.

The other side of the coin is that since leaders are human and they experience these same challenges emanating from the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic, how will they insulate themselves and provide support for their followers? This is the challenge COVID-19 poses for leaders every day.