COVID-19: An opportunity to ACT

The way to address challenges created by COVD-19 is to ACT. I’ll explain what is ACT (I don’t mean just an act). Let us first see the challenges it has created :

Fear

This pandemic has created too much fear – fear of its spread, fear about its deadly nature and most importantly fear that there is no formulated cure available at the moment. There is a fear of potential job loss, there is fear about incurring financial hardship.

Uncertainties

It has created immense uncertainties in everyone’s mind. Uncertainties as to when would this pandemic get over, how would it end, what would really help end to this pandemic. There are uncertainties about local and global economic condition; uncertainties about the impending situation – if things would get better or would get worse before getting better, when local and international travel would start, when would we have normal life.

Mistrust

The way this situation has unfolded, and the way local and global leader have responded to it, has created lot of mistrust. There are many situations and statements that are playing on people’s mind. There is a mistrust at a fundamental level itself – if we are being told the truth or not and there are many examples to quote.

As late as March 1^st week, WHO was giving message that COVID-19 is localized to China, Hongkong. Even if its intentions were to  keep things under control, people are questioning why it did not nudge countries to take action faster.

Some of the global political leaders right from USA too scoffed at COVID-19 as ‘China only situation’ and did not take actions in time or enough aggressively.

Italy’s leadership, in the initial days looked at it totally differently and actually celebrated CNY in a big way in some parts.

When it comes to business leaders, we have mixed results. Some companies acted well in time and took measures such as advising teams to work from home. I am happy to mention here that at Ashnik we were one of the early companies to start working from home. But there were many businesses who tried to underplay the threat and took risks.

Also, there is a big variation in the initial narratives and present-day situation about what causes of the spread, how to avoid etc.

These kinds of issues have created mistrust and have destabilized emotional level of people.

How do you overcome these challenges?

There are three things that are required in such situations and they can be summarized as ACT

A – Assurance

C – Communication

T – Trust

Assurance

As a leader, it has become important to re-assure people that ‘this too shall pass away’ Most people understand that there are always challenges at personal level, national level, global level and in businesses. But they want to know that there is a plan, there is a resolve, there are means of addressing these challenges. People just want to be reassured that leadership team is working hard, even though they might not have a solution on hand at that point of time.

Communication

Continuous communication assumes great significance during such challenging times. During this period, people are working remotely for extended period of time. The remoteness, at times, creates insecurities. The usual work-from-office environment create lots of opportunities to meet and interact with the team face to face, there are lot of things discussed and clarified through informal discussions. A simple high-five and words of appreciation like ‘well done’ communicated in person go a long way in creating positive environment. Now, working remotely, such opportunities are reduced and chances of team feeling left out or insecure are higher.

The only way to keep teams positively engaged is through continuous communication. It is important to create opportunities to communicate company status, team’s progress, key wins, market environment, company’s plans etc.

Trust

Establishing trust has assumed a sense of great urgency besides being important aspect of building teams, organizations and nations. As a leader, it is important that your people have trust in your intentions and capabilities. Given that challenges posed by COVID-19 have created additional skepticism, mistrust, fear and uncertainties, the task of creating or retaining this trust has become difficult than earlier times. There are many ways leaders can establish trust factor, but most importantly actions speak louder than words.

Hence, if you are in leadership position, in these challenging times, you have to ACT!