BartonRoss Blog — BartonRoss

Covid 19 - Competence, Courage and Communication with Clarity

While BartonRoss has every intention to, as best as is humanly possible, 'Keep Calm and Carry on' in the face of Covid 19, we believe that it's timely today to reflect on those leadership behaviours that serve us well in such testing times.

The global reach of Covid 19 continues to create turmoil in the international Markets. And, it will be difficult for any of us in business or otherwise not to be impacted in some way. However, the damage to specific sectors of the local and global economy is in some cases very serious. The Aviation Industry and Tourism in particular, and the associated interdependence of the many related players running the whole gambit from small local cafes in regional areas to some of the large internationally acclaimed tourist experiences - the Fun Parks to International Arts Festivals and everything in between; none of these will sail through Covid 19. Those sector leaders responding to the economic damage of Covid 19 (some have gone to the wall already and others speak of a 95% fall off in business) will require ingenuity, intelligence, care and courage to, in many cases, simply survive, let alone return to 2019 performance levels. In such a challenging context, what does 'Keep Calm and Carry on' look like from a leadership perspective?

The courage to act and communicate with confidence and clarity

One respected economic commentator noted recently that going for 'Perfection' in responding to Covid 19 is not the answer. He explained that this is not the time for deliberation within committee trying to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t.’ What’s required right now is action. Gather information quickly from wide-spread input - including those at the coalface. Then, act quickly. Speed is of the essence. Acting so decisively however, requires courage and the willingness to allow oneself to be truly vulnerable in the complex and volatile world of Covid 19.

And, then of course, it's imperative in a climate of fear and, with misinformation flooding social media, to be a leader who communicates with confidence and absolute clarity. Already, we've seen some highly inadequate communication from country leaders which have had unintended negative impacts. And, while we reflect on the quality of our communication, it’s also critical to remember to communicate not just well, but far more regularly and widely than perhaps might be the custom in ‘normal’ circumstances.

So, being courageous, clear and decisive as to what needs to be done, communicating that with clarity and confidence is leadership in a global crisis. Such leadership behaviours enable leaders to demonstrate genuine care for people because leading them out of the paralysis of fear into a healthy focus of action and contribution is how we’re all going to put Covid 19 behind us. We are going to need a commitment to ‘all hands-on deck’ - the full engagement of our people in order to re-position and re-build from the global disruption that is Covid 19.

Integrating Vision into Everyday Actions

Businesses regularly allocate substantial slices of their annual budget to develop or refresh values and vision statements. It’s not uncommon for them to employ independent consultants to conduct ‘focus groups’ throughout the organisation to ‘hear’ (and be seen to ‘hear’) from their People – they must first uncover what ‘matters most.’

The outputs of such time consuming and expensive activities (often spanning many months) are then presented back to the business in the form of glossy imagery. The leadership commences the obligatory Road Show process – taking the ‘good news’ to the People. And, then what?

Without a doubt, leadership is well intentioned in commissioning such projects. Indeed, having a well-articulated vision and values framework provides a filter for strategic planning and decision-making. As such, it’s an asset to any business.

However, the real value to business is attained when vision and values frameworks are embedded throughout a business developing principle-centred decision-making at every level. And, that’s where the rubber hits the road.

More often than not, leadership, believing that the ‘job is done’ once the Road Shows have been rolled out, miscalculates significantly. The Road Show presentation is but the beginning.

The critical success factor for embedding vision and values in an organisation is the intentional and creative identification of all the business touch points. Then, integrating the vision and values framework far and wide, thereby embedding them down into the bowels of the business.

So, from casual water cooler conversations to recruitment processes, from formal performance management to business Linkedin messaging and Facebook posts; from formal and informal team and service line meetings – the more such activities are imbued in some way with the vision and values, the more they are understood by employees and seen to be far more than mere corporate speak.

Yet many businesses never succeed in taking their vision and values frameworks beyond the senior leadership. As a result, they never enjoy the return on their initial investment. Why so? Possibly because leadership assumes that ‘buy in’ at their level in the business equates to ‘buy in’ at the coal face – ‘we’ve told them!’ Such assumption sadly breeds disengagement and cynicism amongst employees.

If leaders want to see heightened engagement, innovation and productivity from their investment in culture building, then they need to do just that – ‘build!’ Perhaps they might view themselves as skilled, highly talented and experienced gardeners - always looking for the opportunity to introduce a new plant; always conscious of their role to nurture and most certainly to ‘prune’ as the plant requires. And, of course to root out the weeds as soon as they are detected encroaching on the beauty and success of the garden. But, that’s another story…