By Adam Basor, Assistant Vice President at the SSA Consulting Pte Ltd (a member of the SSA Group)
Leaders everywhere have been programmed and equipped to operate in volatile environments. Despite this, when COVID-19 hit home and the situation became a pandemic no one country, business, and individual anticipated the real impact to us worldwide. Global lockdowns, mandatory business closures, quarantines, social distancing, panic buying are all recent phenomena across the world.
Our Singapore government leaders have displayed the “Gold” standards in dealing with the pandemic where the World Health Organisation (WHO) and mainstream news outlets such as The Washington Post and CNN lauded our leaders’ approach. At the international business front, senior leaders are taking voluntary pay cuts with some banding together to help their affected local communities.
What more can leaders do to help your business during these tough times? What approach should leaders adopt? What should you do? The way forward is to adopt Leadership Resilience. This is defined as the ability and capacity of a leader to recover from or quickly adjust to difficulties. The following is a brief guide.
Your Guide to Build Leadership Resilience
1. Be Decisive
Set the tone and do not wait for the bandwagon. Be the bandwagon instead. Analyse your own business situations and needs. Decide to split your workforce and allow remote working arrangements before the situation becomes dire for instance.
2. Empathy, Care, & Support
Staff and stakeholders are likely to be affected by the pandemic. Leaders need to sensitise to their needs and offer support, alternatives, and solutions to mitigate the impact.
3. Leverage Technology
With the prevalence of remote working and social distancing, using technology in dealing with clients and other stakeholders becomes even more essential as much as managing our own remote workforce.
4. Communicate
Communicate with confidence, clarity, and transparency. Keep employees, clients, and stakeholders informed and updated to provide assurance through your proactive measures in minimising disruptions/risks affecting them.
5. Accelerate Contingencies
Immediately activate your Business Continuity Plans (BCP) if you have not done so. In times of crisis, priority is towards continuity and risk management, and less of productivity. Revise the BCP to suit your specific needs.
6. Re-Invent Your Business
In every challenge, there is opportunity. “Carpe Diem” or seize the day. Use this period to re-train and up-skill your workforce and re-tune your business models, activities, and operations. Tap on the slew of government grants available such as the Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) and Skills Framework (SFw) for support.
Final Thoughts
How you lead your business during this Covid-19 crisis shall serve as the litmus test to your enduring leadership legacy, least to your respective organisation. Surely, this pandemic will not be the last. Leaders need to display the courage to lead and develop resilience to steer the organisation through this crisis. Stay resilient for the next wave of crisis while riding high on this one!
To nurture your employees to meet tomorrow’s challenges, you may consider enrolling them at SSA Academy’s leadership management courses. Browse through our course offerings by clicking this link.
About SSA Consulting Pte Ltd
SSA Consulting Pte Ltd offers a full suite of management consultancy, leadership training, and digital transformation solutions and services. Our Consultants are certified and experienced in various industries and sectors. We also help Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in seeking the Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) from the Enterprise Singapore and other related grants for their consultancy and transformation projects. Contact us to book for a no obligatory advisory session now!
