The door has opened WENDY COOK ON LEADERSHIP
W endy Cook, PhD, is an associate professor of management at CWU-Des Moines where she teaches leadership, management, human resources, and strategy. Cook’s research focuses on gender differences in the workplace and hidden conflict. She also has a private coaching practice. What does good leadership look like during the pandemic? I really love the question. And it is hard, I have to admit, not to talk about all the bad leadership I’ve seen. Really what I’ve seen as far as good leadership is showing up with the question: “What can we learn from this?” You saw a lot of large corporations really embrace the move to working from home, and in so doing, they have found all kinds of benefits. It’s really leaning into and embracing the idea that we can’t do things the way we’ve always done them. They did not resist the change, they learned from it. Can you share an example of this lean-in approach? One woman I met was working from home a few days a week while taking care of her kids. She felt very concerned because she was the only one in the office with kids. The business owner listened. What came from that was the recognition that she was important as an employee and so they helped her when she needed it. And she is now more dedicated to the firm than she would have been otherwise. This is not what we planned for and the good leaders out there are rolling with the change and letting it be. Among students, there is a fear that if I don’t work really really hard, I’m going to lose my job. I made the choice at the very beginning of the pandemic to accept late work (I usually don’t accept late work). I have said we will work it out. OK, let’s talk about some of the bad leadership you’ve seen. The bad is when leaders are in denial and trying to get back to normal. Getting people’s hopes up only to change again. ‘We are going back to normal today. No, it will be tomorrow. No, it will be the next day.’ It retraumatizes people. It would be far better to show compassion for what everyone is going through and to admit that we don’t know. Bad leadership has also been reacting to the pressure. People wanted answers, and bad leaders gave them answers that didn’t work out. Maybe saying, ‘I don’t know where we are headed, though I do know that none of us is going to face this alone.’
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