Covid’s Lack of Leadership

During this pandemic, people have been laid off in record numbers. If you still have a job, you most likely are on Leave Without Pay or worse, you’ve taken a dramatic pay cut. Or you aren’t taking a salary from your own business at all.

In Singapore, we’ve just started a long “circuit breaker.” And whether you agree it’s necessary or not, it doesn’t matter. This is Singapore and we will all go through this together. Again, there isn’t any good news.

Is there an end in sight? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak?

Here’s my problem with the current organisational situation. There’s very little visionary leadership stepping forth to give us hope. There’s no one telling us when this will all end. Yes, I know. No one knows when it will all end. The point is, that it WILL END. And there’s a considerable lack of leadership guiding us in that direction. There are no milestones. There’s no outcome. There’s no hope of a better future. There’s a lack of leadership.  And the reason, I’m guessing, is that we’re used to being very VAGUE at the top of the ladder.

It’s natural as you rise to the top of the hierarchy of an organisation you become less concerned about the specifics and more concerned about the overall. No one wants a micromanager as the CEO of a company. Being “big picture” is great when everything is status quo and you’re humming along.

NOW is not status quo.

Now is the time we need milestones. We need a vision. We need something to look forward to. For an organisation, it may look something like this:

When we have a month’s pre-COVID-19 revenue in the bank, we can return salaries to normal

It may be a month, it may be 2 months, it may be a quarter. Whatever, it is, it should be SPECIFIC! When we give people specific, measurable goals to obtain, then they are motivated to get there faster. Employees can feel their pain going away day by day as they get closer and closer to the goal.

When your salary is cut by 30% do you really feel like giving a 100%?

No. Most people don’t. Because they don’t have hope. There’s very little hope and because there’s very little hope people binge on Netflix, eat more junk food and drink too much. It’s a natural state of helplessness and hopelessness. A wise man once said,

“Leaders must take this as an opportunity to give hope. It is a very big ask of leaders. Nevertheless, this is where the tire hits the road, where the test of leadership steps in. Napoleon Bonaparte said leaders are dispensers of hope. Time to be truthful. Time to be authentic.”

If you’re a leader on any INC, if you are really a visionary leader then have a dream that people will rise up and fight for, will work hard for, will stay at home and lockdown for. Just have a light that we can all see.

Join the conversation:

LinkedIn post