Leadership Post Pandemic: What has changed? What needs to change further?
Last week I was speaking at the UHUK conference by answering two questions: Leadership Post Pandemic What has changed? What needs to change further?
Let’s begin with the first question - what has changed for leaders?
What has changed is the realisation how connected and interconnected the world is today. Not just in how quick a virus can spread but how a global market impacts us all. We see that just by walking through our homes and seeing where the items contained are from including our clothes, white goods, and especially the kitchen cupboard and fridge. We have gone blindly into trading with the world because of an assumption and belief that the more we trade the longer we will have peace. As such, there has been no risk assessment and analysis. Some are now questioning that assumption as we struggle to heat our homes and watch as inflation rises due in part because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and trade being weaponised.
Many of the changes we are experiencing today began long before the pandemic. This will be fine if we can adapt – but there is a problem. Our brains do not like change! Our brains can deal with masses of data. To cope, they are programmed to process information as efficiently as possible, with minimum thought and attention. This has the side effect of making behaviour change difficult. The ‘automatic’ brain processing area, the basil ganglia, requires low energy, has vast capacity, runs under our radar, and allows us to be very efficient. Humans are ‘cognitive misers’ neurally programmed to maximise routine mostly from our assumptions and expectations.
To demonstrate let’s pretend that I’m a heart specialist and tomorrow I must inform seven patients that unless they change their lifestyle, are unlikely to live beyond the next eighteen to twenty- four months. On receiving this information, you would change your diet, exercise more and cut down on alcohol, wouldn’t you? In fact, out of the seven patients only one would be likely to change. Why is this?
We are our brains and how we see the world including the assumptions we make about the world. Those assumptions are very powerful and can include:
I can’t afford healthy food, it’s too expensive
?I work full time and have kids I don’t have time to cook healthy meals,
I don’t enjoy doing sport, everyone used to laugh at me in school doing PE
I’ve always been big, it’s just who I am
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These assumptions are so strong, they override the need to change without the right support.
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The second question was: ?What still needs to change for leaders?
What still needs to change is that leaders need to understand and learn how to deal with complexity and recognise that management won’t suffice. Complexity is not a scientific theory but a mathematical theory of relationships and patterns. When we look at complex social issues such as poverty, global pandemic, or mental health, trying to resolve them in isolation doesn’t work. It requires looking at the relationships between each not just break them up into separate parts.
Secondly, leaders need to recognise how to deal with different problems as they are not all the same. For example, day to day problems such as a key person phoning in sick. A manager can organise their role to be taken by a colleague. A manager can resolve this as it is a problem that has occurred before and is resolvable. However, how does a leader react to a crisis such as a bomb going off and the emergency services having to deal with it. ?Here, management is too slow and so a leader must go to ‘command’. The problem with command is that it is addictive and so individuals who have had to deal with a crisis over a long period or crisis after crisis then try to resolve complex challenges with command when the only way is through leadership.
However, this is not the ‘hero’ leaders who will come in and save the world. Leadership that resolves complex issues is collaborative, working with other leaders and together using different perspectives, are more likely to move forward. Command and management will not succeed. A lesson for business, governments, and public services today.
In the last one hundred years the study of leadership has become a series of models such as situational leadership, transformational leadership, deliberative leadership, compassionate leadership, servant leadership and so on. Most of these have come from the USA who have turned leadership into a commercial concept for Business Schools and training companies. Yet when we trace the concept of leader and leadership back to it’s source thousands of years ago, the true meaning is clear for both men and women. ?To lead requires all of yourself including your head, your heart and your voice.
Hilarie Owen