..Resilient CEOs who navigate their companies through the COVID-19 crisis have five important attributes of successful leadership. Learn how to take precise steps to lessen the impact of a crisis and help your company emerge stronger.

COVID-19’S fast global spread has quickly surpassed the magnitude and breadth of other recent outbreaks. The economic damage from this pandemic has a far-reaching impact. In addition, it has had a fatal human toll and the disruption of millions of people’s lives.

Business leaders are understandably anxious about how their organizations will be affected.. They want to know what they must do next in the face of certain hurdles and an unknown set of hazards. There are several historical lessons that can be used right now. We’ve gathered the perspectives of several successful leaders in affected locations throughout the world. Why? To provide practical advice to CEOs and their leadership teams on how to respond appropriately.

We know that businesses are at various stages of dealing with the outbreak. Thus, the effects vary by area and industry. However, regardless of the virus’s severity, we believe there are five basic attributes of resilient leadership. These elements distinguish effective CEOs as they lead their companies through the COVID-19 crisis: Read also: corporate learning

Five Elements of Successful Leadership

Design with your heart and your head

The softest things can be the toughest things in a crisis. Resilient leaders are really empathic, putting themselves in the shoes of their employees, customers, and larger ecosystems. Yet, in order to preserve financial performance from the inevitable softness that comes with such disturbances, resilient leaders must take a strong, reasonable stance.

Prioritize the mission

Resilient leaders are adept at triage, able to stabilize their organizations in the face of a catastrophe while also identifying opportunities among adversity.

Faster is better than Perfect

Resilient leaders take firm action—without overly worrying about failure—based on incomplete information because they understand the value of a quick and workable solution.

Own the narrative

Resilient leaders rapidly get a grip over the facts, to begin with. They are also accepting of current realities—including things they do not yet know. All this while, painting an engrossing picture of the future to inspire their teams to hammer away at the problems at hand.

Embrace the long-term view

Resilient leaders have a laser-sharp focus on the horizon. They anticipate the evolution of newer business models and sparking the innovations that will define tomorrow.

A typical crisis, we believe, occurs over three-time frames: respond, during which a firm deals with the current circumstance and maintains continuity. They recover, during which a company learns and grows stronger; and thrive, during which a company prepares for and shapes the new normal. CEOs have the significant and additional task of juggling all three time periods at the same time and allocating resources properly.

Within the context of these broad imperatives, resilient leaders can take specific tactical efforts to enhance these attributes throughout the current crisis, lessening the impact and assisting their firms in emerging stronger. Instead of returning to the old ways, this catastrophe can be turned into a chance to move forward and produce even more value and great social impact if handled correctly.

Design with the Heart and the Head

Recognizing the impact of uncertainty on the people who drive the company is a critical emphasis in a crisis. Emotional intelligence is crucial in these situations. Recognizing how radically their employees’ personal priorities have shifted away from work to be concerned about the health of their families, planning for extended school closures, and dealing with the overall angst of life-threatening uncertainty are just a few examples of how resilient leaders are sensitive as well as caring towards the human side of the upheaval in everything they do during a crisis. Resilient leaders also teach their followers to be calm and methodical in the face of adversity.

Understanding how the customer’s heart may have changed radically from what you previously believed is the first step in designing for the customer’s heart. Customers frequently retreat down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to basic demands like safety, security, and health in times of crisis. In the middle of the COVID-19 issue, how should the type and tone of your customer communications, as well as the sensitivity of your customer experience, change? Customers appreciate the same warmth and grace you offer your employees—they, too, are going through a crisis and want empathy.

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Prioritize Your Mission

During a crisis, organizations are confronted with a rush of pressing challenges on what appears to be an infinite number of fronts. Resilient leaders focus on the most critical of these issues, establishing priority areas that can spread swiftly.

We identified several key actions resilient leaders can take based on the analysis of leading practices of multinational companies in business continuity planning, particularly related to crisis management during the spread of infectious diseases, which can be grouped into the following categories:

• Establish a crisis command center and keep it operational.
• Talent and strategy should be supported.
• Maintain financial stability and business continuity
• Consolidate the supply chain
• Maintain contact with customers.
• Enhance your digital capabilities
• Participate in your company’s ecosystem.

Prioritize Speed Over Grace

Perfect is the enemy of excellent, particularly in times of crisis when quick action is essential. Most businesses lack the infrastructure to give perfect information or data on operations that may be impacted during an epidemic in real-time. In the days to come, there will be many “known unknowns.” Are you willing to accept that you’ll have to make decisions based on incomplete information? To avoid flying blind, gather as much proxy data as possible to guide your decisions. You will have the opportunity to do a full analysis after the crisis is ended to discover how to improve information quality in future crises—but you will most likely have to set aside during this one.

Take Control of the Story

As we’ve seen, there’s a narrow line to walk between communicating before all of the facts are in and being late to remark. Leading companies have adopted a philosophy of communicating in shorter, more frequent bursts based on what they already know and filling in the specifics later. Your teams and stakeholders may begin to fill the hole with disinformation and assumptions if you don’t provide a narrative. It’s crucial to maintain a consistent rhythm and speak clearly. Instead of offering greater advice, incomplete or inconsistent communications can slow down the organization’s reaction.

Step Back and Focus on the Long-term View

Take a step back and look at things from a different perspective. Any moment of turbulence can present possibilities for organizations. You must make preparations to take advantage of them. Organizations that take a more forceful and long-term approach to the COVID-19 pandemic can stimulate ideas that will define the “new normal.”

Firms that slash costs the quickest and deepest have the lowest chance of outperforming competitors after the economy recovered. The group most likely to emerge as victors from the crisis is the one that achieves the correct balance between short- and long-term goals. How? By investing broadly in the future while carefully decreasing costs to weather the storm.

Conclusion

Can you, finally, become the hub of a new, emergent ecosystem constructed for the “next normal” as novel business models surface from the crisis? Well, it all starts with how you build a successful leadership framework!