Just sharing the summary of my recent webinar: ‘How should leaders lead and support their people during COVID-19?’ (28th April 2020, hosted by Creative Technology).

We cannot find solutions until we ask the right questions? As a leader how are you dealing with the challenges of COVID-19? What role are you playing? How are you supporting your people? How are you contributing to society? What are you doing in terms of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility? Have you given any of these a thought? 

Being a leader of an organisation is never an easy job and in the current times during the crisis of COVID-19, it brings massive challenges and changes!

These changes are not minor – these are radical changes! Radical changes need radical, creative thinking and fast action, leading to transformation. But, the challenging question is ‘How do you as a leader do all that’?

This is an unusual situation we are all in. People have to work differently, working from home or off-site. People have families to look after, schools are closed and there is a surge in homeschooling. Customers have to be served differently, mostly over a device, telephone or a laptop. 

During this time of radical change, how has your organisation changed?

How have you changed as a leader? What are you doing differently?

Work patterns are changing and changing at a fast pace. Employees are unable to cope with the pressures of work and family, which has an impact on stress and mental health.

There is ONE thing which is vital as a leader that you need to do right now during COVID-19, that is, EMPOWER your people. 

This is a time of crisis and as a leader, you cannot do it by yourself. You need your people and your team, and equally, your people and team need you to support and lead them.

At a critical time such as this, employees need to be empowered, they need to be able to use their own initiative, able to make decisions and know how to be responsible for their work and be part of the team. 

Being empowered helps employees to get on with their jobs confidently and be psychologically empowered and develop resilience. But, the question is ‘how do you as a leader empower your employees’?  A word of caution. It is evident from my research findings that as a leader you cannot empower people without the knowledge about ‘how to empower people?’ What tools should you be applying to empower employees? Where do you start? 

As a leader, clearly there are a number of things that need your attention. During the webinar, I highlighted the three areas that need a rapid response from leaders, empower people to:

1.     Achieve their Tasks

2.     Achieve Positive Mental Health

3.     To Serve Customers

However, a word of caution, as mentioned in my previous articles as well. Empowerment is complex, it is not a magic wand. There is a need to understand the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, that is, what is employee empowerment and how should it be implemented?

The findings of my research revealed that leaders in organisations who tried to empower people without the knowledge and understanding failed to do so and did not achieve what they set out to achieve. This is evidence-based knowledge.  

Extraordinary measures are needed during these extraordinary times – what extraordinary things are you doing? If you are still doing the things that you did pre COVID-19 than you haven’t changed at all. Help yourself to change, take charge of your change and then help your people to cope with change. This is the time to communicate.

Get the knowledge, get the insights from my case studies. 

Thank you for reading, until the next #HuqPost ….

© Dr Rozana Huq, May 2020

http://www.rhmtraining.com