Our founding director, Vanessa Moon, writes about the leadership lessons of the COVID-19 and the social impact of the virus.

At Moon Executive Search, we have been busily trading, working, quizzing, and Zooming throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and like everyone else, feeding on all the media and articles surrounding us.

It certainly has felt like a deluge of information at times, but for me and the team there have been some very apparent strong themes emerging, which I wanted to share with you.

It is clear that the world of work and life in general is shifting and there are many changes that are emerging that are beginning to shape the ‘new norm’. For every leader, it is difficult to process all these potential changes, act on them and demonstrate genuine resilience to ensure your business emerges positively from the Pandemic.

So, what does the future hold and how can we maximise our potential?

I believe we can collect the new world themes into six areas:  The Three ‘R’s and The Three ‘C’s.

Let’s start with the three ‘R’s of Reputation, Respect and Responsibility:

Reputation

How a business has acted and reacted during this pandemic has felt really important, and as Warren Buffet said ‘It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.’   

In many ways, this virus has made us react differently. We have become more accustomed  to displaying our emotions more openly than this generation has ever done before – think of the clapping for the NHS, carers and all keyworkers every Thursday evening, or the national response to Captain Tom’s wonderful fundraising (approaching £33m at the time of writing) and then the other gestures such as sending cards and presents to co-workers working from home. All of these acts of kindness and consideration, whether large or small, have made a big difference to people and they will be remembered for years to come. Perhaps as leaders it is incumbent upon us to ensure we do not lose this as we look to develop our businesses for the future.

Respect

With the virus we have found that everyone has different drivers and key points in their life that they may or may not want to share (and it is absolutely their choice to do so or not), as well as varying home lives and support systems.

In many ways, because we have had to consider the impact of homeworking, work has become a new and better support system for us all. I sense we have developed a new understanding of how to share our thoughts and feelings, underpinned with a deeper appreciation of the proper rules of engagement. Essentially, leaders have needed to know when to be there and when to back off and to follow the old adage to ‘treat someone the way you want to be treated.’

’Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Respect is earned, not given.’

Hussein Nishah 

Responsibility

We have a common social and moral responsibility about how to behave and how to work with each other. This for me is about the power to do the right thing and having clearly defined goals and a social conscience. This virus has shown us that we have a greater and more urgent shared responsibility for everything around us from the greatness of the planet to our neighbours and co-workers.

‘You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

Jim Rohn

Let’s now turn our attention now to the three ‘C’s’ of Communication, Collaboration, and Community:

Communication

Throughout the Covid-19 crisis, communication has been at the top of everyone’s list and we have all been focused on keeping updated on the latest news, including Government advice and guidance.

Leaders naturally wish to be visible and maintain a consistent message to employees to minimise the risk of misinterpretation. However, I also believe that moving forwards it will be vital for leaders to appreciate that communication should be two-way – this crisis will undoubtedly change how our employees communicate with us, and we should be ready to listen.

It will also be important to remember that good communication is not always about statistics and formulas but sensitivity, kindness, and generosity. Perhaps therefore we should also consider delivering constant positive messages of hope and support.

‘I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  Maya Angelou

Collaboration

How many times have we seen people and organisations in the last few months rally together and support fighting the virus?  

Who knew at the start of this crisis how many collaborations could come out of such a turmoil?

From clothing manufacturers making PPE to electronic companies making ventilators – there have been some wonderful collaborations.

As leaders, I sense that we should recognise that many people will have significantly missed the social interaction they normally benefit from and as such it will be incredibly  important to bring people together – either formally or informally – to benefit from the and energy created by such interaction in the future. Put simply, the more sociability and collaboration there is in the workplace the better and this should also extend to businesses collaborating together to further advance a product, service or market opportunity.

 ‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.’ Helen Keller

Community  

And lastly Community – at Moon, social responsibility has always been an integral part of our business and that is why we hold a number of Trustee and voluntary community roles between us. We have all always felt that we should support our community in whatever way we can, and I have seen with the onset of the virus that everyone thinks the same.

‘The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.’

Coretta Scott King

So in summary, Covid-19 has created a disruption that has affected every individual, business, community and Government. It has fundamentally changed the way we have worked over the last few months, and as leaders we need to understand that its impact will continue to be felt for a very long time.

As we look to ‘build back better’ and grow our business reputations, we need to be mindful of also operating with commercial respect and appreciating our collective responsibility to create an inclusive economy that can mitigate against the potential ‘scarring effect’ of Covid-19.

It feels as if there is a great sense of change and re-imagining of work and the workplace following the pandemic and I think we all genuinely want to come out of this with more compassion, thoughtfulness and mindfulness.

So finally, to quote Mahatma Gandhi:

‘Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world; but to change ourselves.‘

We work with clients to search for the ideal candidates for their board. If you would like more information about our expertise and knowledge of executive search then please contact us.