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What we’ve learned about leadership from the COVID-19 pandemic

As the director of the World Health Organization pleaded more than a year ago for leaders to act swiftly to arrest a quickly-worsening health crisis, he also stressed that the fate of the virus was in their hands.

“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom said in a news conference March 11, the day the organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. “All countries can still change the course of this pandemic,” if they put resources toward detecting, testing for, and tracing cases of COVID-19, as well as mobilizing their citizens to respond to the virus, he said.

The following weeks would prove to be a crucial test for world leaders and their governments to respond effectively to the novel coronavirus. Across the world, the rhetoric they used to convey the level of threat to the public varied drastically.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced on March 11 that the country’s borders would be temporarily closed , saying the government was “painfully aware that this will have severe consequences” on businesses and families, but felt it was the necessary response to take in light of the crisis. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged residents to go home after imposing what she called the most significant lockdown in the country’s history, warning them to “act now or risk the virus taking hold as it has elsewhere.” After Germany announced strict lockdown measures, Chancellor Angela Merkel warned the guidance was not optional : “These are not recommendations by the state,” she said. “They are rules that have to be followed in our collective interest.”

But not all leaders conveyed the same urgency in their message to the public. In China, state officials delayed releasing vital information about the disease in January, in turn hampering the WHO’s ability to respond effectively. Even after the novel coronavirus had been declared a “public health crisis” by the WHO, in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro described it “like a little flu or a little cold.” As top Iranian health officials tried to cover up some of the first deaths that occurred from the disease, the country’s health minister fell ill with the coronavirus at a news conference. In Washington, President Donald Trump also downplayed the severity of the virus, comparing it to the flu, and repeatedly promised that the country would “be open for business again,” even as public health experts cautioned that his message would give Americans a false sense of hope. Mexico’s president Manuel Lopez Obrador focused primarily on preserving the country’s economy, encouraging residents at one point to eat out at restaurants . In a video posted to his Facebook page, he told Mexicans to frequent local businesses rather than take health precautions, saying, “If you’re able and have the means to do so, continue taking your family out to eat … because that strengthens the economy.”

Experts who study crisis and leadership say while some aspects of the pandemic transcend any one person’s power, a few key themes have emerged from countries that have contained the virus and kept public trust: a clear messaging campaign absent of false hope or misinformation, as well as the prioritization of science over politics.

More than a year into the pandemic, some parts of the world seem to have finally turned a corner on the virus. A number of vaccines have been approved for use globally. Yet new, more aggressive variants of COVID-19 still pose a major threat, and are driving a new infection surge in countries such as India, Canada and Brazil. Leaders’ handling of vaccine distribution, as well as the spreading of these new variants, continues to attract public scrutiny. President Joe Biden entered office with a mandate to get the coronavirus under control, and the efficacy of the administration’s response could significantly shape his legacy. In countries like Brazil, where the death toll is continuing to climb, some public health experts argue inept leadership has cost countless lives.

“We tend to not think about leadership as being the most important thing in terms of pandemic response,” said Dr. Laura Kahn, a physician and research scholar at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School who has studied leadership during public health crises. “But the main thing that this pandemic has shown us is that it is absolutely critical.”

Effective leaders drew upon past experience, prioritized science in messaging

Michele Gelfand, a cross-cultural psychologist at the University of Maryland who has been studying cultural differences that have shaped the pandemic response, said that countries that have experienced more chronic threats throughout their history tend to be more adept at following restrictions in response to events such as a pandemic. This might explain why a number of East Asian countries — where the 2003 SARS pandemic is a recent memory and mask-wearing is a cultural norm — have been more effective at containing COVID-19.

Such was the case in countries like Taiwan, which had the third-highest death tally from SARS and took aggressive , and ultimately successful, steps to control COVID-19 in light of lessons learned from the 2003 pandemic. South Korea effectively contained the virus by developing a widespread testing and contact tracing program , having learned about the importance of early diagnosis during the 2015 MERS outbreak.

Gelfand added that while some countries had a natural advantage responding to the coronavirus because their public had dealt with other pandemics recently, the influence of political leaders cannot be discounted. “Leadership goes hand-in-hand with culture,” she said. “Any cultural shift can happen from the bottom-up, but has to be coordinated. When leaders minimize the threat, it goes along with the loose response.”

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks at a news conference on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Wellington, New Zealand, February 17, 2021. REUTERS/Praveen Menon

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been widely credited with spurring the necessary response from her constituents during the pandemic. When the country entered the strictest lockdown in its modern history last March, her government pursued an “enormous communication effort to try to mobilize collective adherence to these incredibly restrictive measures,” said Suze Wilson, a professor at New Zealand’s Massey School of Management who studied Ardern’s leadership style during the pandemic.

“It was so well communicated that people just got it,” Wilson said of New Zealand’s COVID-19 messaging campaign, which is called “Unite against COVID-19.” She described Ardern as “calm, focused, practical, and decisive” in her daily briefings and Facebook lives to the public, and said she was particularly good at using metaphors and framing — such as encouraging people to stay within their quarantine “bubble” — to explain what was needed to stop the spread of COVID-19 at a time when very little was known about it.

Ardern also worked closely with the country’s chief public health officer and deferred questions about science and research to him. She avoided criticizing, undermining or speculating about the virus, which Wilson said was “profoundly important” in managing the response, too: “If you ignore the science, from a strategy perspective, you’re putting yourself and your people in a very dangerous position.”

Although New Zealand had advantages in controlling the virus from the start due to its geographic isolation and population of only about 5 million, many still point to Ardern as an example of effective leadership. New Zealand was able to reopen last June after there were no new reported cases for 18 days, and although it has had to shut down two other times since — most recently in February to contain the spread of a more contagious UK variant — overall cases remain low, and the death toll, at 26 people, is dramatically lower than the thousands of deaths seen in other countries.

Voters recognized Ardern for leading an effective COVID-19 response: Her reelection victory in October marked the best performance her Labour party had seen in 50 years.

Not all leaders have been as visible as Ardern in their coronavirus response. But other governments have had similar success in thwarting the spread of the coronavirus by prioritizing science in their messaging to the public. In Vietnam, where the authoritarian government instituted mass quarantines and social distancing measures to tamp down COVID-19 spread early on , the health ministry put out a song about the importance of handwashing that went viral. Taiwan’s robust contact tracing and strict quarantine enforcement measures have been credited as a major contributor to the country’s successful fight against COVID-19 , but the digital ministry’s viral, humorous campaigns advocating the importance of social distancing and mask-wearing likely helped, too. And in Senegal, musician Youssou N’dour released a song encouraging citizens to stay at home and wash their hands. Graffiti artists painted murals promoting similar public health measures.

Some government responses that have helped contain the coronavirus have trampled human rights in the process. In China, the outbreak has been contained, but in large part because of a sophisticated surveillance system that is helping keep the virus in check for now, but could pose a longer term threat to privacy and human rights, experts say. South Korea also used surveillance technology liberally in its successful COVID-19 response, as did India , which is nonetheless facing a new surge in infections.

But it’s clear that when leaders do not take public health crises seriously, it becomes much harder to convince citizens to do so, too. Kahn said varying responses to the pandemic have underscored that the competency of a leader during a public health crisis “can be a matter between life and death.”

When political leadership faltered, the public suffered

Despite leaders’ efforts to push a “wartime” response to the virus, the COVID-19 pandemic has proved an elusive threat, and citizens have suffered at the hands of their governments for a variety of different reasons.

“It helps to have an enemy to galvanize the nation,” Kahn said. “And the enemy in this case was invisible and it was all around us. So that’s a bigger challenge than fighting your political foe in another country.”

In Italy, a strained health care system was unable to accommodate the high number of people who fell ill during the first months of the virus, many of whom were elderly. Belgium has one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world, which a number of experts have blamed on the country’s fiercely divided political system. More recently the Czech Republic has struggled to contain a new, highly contagious coronavirus variant after members of parliament refused a request to extend the country’s state of emergency.

And a number of world leaders used their platforms to boost misinformation and give false hope about the virus, resulting in devastating consequences for the public, experts argue.

“I never got the sense that the Trump administration was really focused or prioritized the idea of having a clear messaging campaign aimed at the homefront,” said James Kimble, a communication professor at Seton Hall University who specializes in studying domestic propaganda. Kimble wrote a column in the Washington Post last year about the lessons that could be gleaned from World War II in mobilizing the public against the coronavirus.

While the former U.S. president initially fashioned himself as a “wartime” leader, urging the public to “sacrifice together” to combat the virus, he was reluctant to institute a national lockdown and repeatedly flouted advice from the country’s top infectious disease experts. In responding to the crisis he pitted public health against the economy, saying, “the cure cannot be worse than the problem.” He promoted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for COVID-19 despite the fact that its benefits remain unproven , and in one highly publicized moment, suggested during a news conference that exposing patients to UV light and disinfectant could help treat the coronavirus, something that has never been verified by science. As their understanding of the virus grew, scientists at the CDC recommended the public wear masks to stop the spread of the virus, revising an earlier recommendation that masks were not necessary. But Trump was reluctant to embrace that message, waiting months to acknowledge it could be helpful in curbing the virus’ spread, and often appeared at his own political rallies without one. The president later told the public not to be “afraid of COVID” after contracting it himself in October, even as thousands of Americans continued to die from the virus each day, often without access to the advanced experimental treatments the president received.

Former White House response coordinator Deborah Birx recently told CNN that she believes hundreds of thousands of lives could have been “mitigated or decreased substantially” if the Trump administration had encouraged the public to take necessary safety measures earlier in the pandemic. The former president responded to both Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s criticism of his administration’s response, calling them “two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations.”

Trump was not alone in misleading the public about the severity and scope of the virus. He had counterparts in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who first reassured Brits that the country would be back to normal within 12 weeks, a goal the country hasn’t achieved nearly a year later, as Britain isn’t expected to fully reopen until June. Less than a month later, the prime minister came down with the coronavirus himself, and ended up in the ICU. Johnson later rolled out “moonshot” testing plans with quotas that experts said the government did not have the capacity to meet. The country at one point had the highest daily death tolls in the world, partly, some experts believe , because Johnson allowed families to travel and gather together during the holidays before instituting another lockdown.

A banner asking for the departure of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Vice President Hamilton Mourão during demonstration in honor of victims of coronavirus (COVID-19) in front Nacional Congress on June 28, 2020 in Brasilia. Photo by Andressa Anholete/Getty Images.

Like Trump, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro denied the severity of the virus even after contracting it himself, and promoted unproven treatments for COVID-19, such as hydroxychloroquine. He has shunned wearing masks in public , leading to similar politicization of a simple public health recommendation. The health ministry missed an opportunity to order 70 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine back in August , insisting it would produce vaccines locally, but pace has not kept up with demand. And Bolsonaro has continuously expressed skepticism about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, warning Brazilians back in December that they could “turn into a crocodile” if they were inoculated.

“[Bolsonaro] himself is the first one to disseminate misinformation,” said Marcia Castro, who chairs the global health and population department at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and advises its Brazil studies program. On top of that, she said, “the government never set up a communication framework or campaign so they can convey the right information to the population.” One of the most visible social media campaigns that Bolsonaro’s office put out — titled “Brazil Can’t Stop” — advocated for businesses to re-open and an end to social distancing, flying in the face of recommendations by the country’s own health department.

Kimble said that he believes that “a messaging campaign that’s clear, understandable, resonates with the public … has every potential to save countless lives.” But during the time that the leaders of countries like the U.S., UK and Brazil failed to deliver a strong, unified message about the virus, hundreds of thousands of people perished.

The public takes note of how leaders respond

International polling indicates that citizens have been observant of the way their leaders responded to the virus. A study by IPSOS Mori published last August found that leaders of the U.S., UK, Italy and Australia all experienced what the study’s co-author Will Jennings called a “rally-around-the-flag” boost in ratings during the first few months of the pandemic, but soon saw a decline in trust as the situation in their countries worsened. The only leader of that group who had experienced a rise in approval ratings as of June was Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, likely because Australia has done comparatively better at containing the virus.

“What we tended to find was that the leaders of the countries where the pandemic had gone worse in terms of deaths and cases were the [countries] where leaders were rated most poorly,” Jennings, a political science professor said, adding he believed these figures suggested that “the public are rational,” and “they respond to real objective performance.” In other words, “citizens are making judgments that reflect their particular context of how the pandemic is being managed in different countries.”

World leaders’ approval ratings during the first months of the pandemic, from March to June 2020. Similarly to IPSOS’ polling, Morning Consult ratings show a dip in countries where COVID death and infection rates were higher, such as Brazil and the UK. Graphic by Megan McGrew.

In Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in November, which occurred after the coronavirus had killed more than 200,000 Americans, the pandemic was the top issue on voters’ minds, according to an AP Votecast survey.

Since reaching a peak in January, coronavirus cases have begun to fall in both the U.S. and the UK, and the countries are now among the world’s top leaders in vaccinations.

Kahn said she found the changes instituted by President Biden — including signing a national mask mandate on federal property and public transportation, as well as speeding up production of PPE and vaccines — have been “vitally important in containing the pandemic.” Last month Biden announced that at least 90 percent of the U.S. population would be eligible for vaccination by April 19, but this came on the same day as a stark warning from CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who said she had a feeling of “impending doom” amid a spike in cases in certain parts of the country.

And the current situation in Brazil is worsening, serving as a stark warning of what other countries could face as more contagious COVID-19 variants continue to spread and potentially become dominant. Deaths are escalating and nearly all the states’ intensive care units are near or at capacity , prompting experts to warn that the health care system is “close to collapse”. Rather than changing his tone on vaccinations, Bolsonaro has started to push for an experimental nasal spray being developed in Israel as a possible treatment for COVID-19. In response to the recent deaths connected to the new variants, his message to citizens was to “stop whining.” During a recent Cabinet reshuffle Bolsonaro ousted three commanders of the country’s armed forces, suggesting he’s grown even more isolated in his haphazard response to the virus.

As COVID-19 cases rise elsewhere in Latin America, too, top officials are facing further scrutiny. In Peru, two ministers resigned after it was revealed after it was revealed that 500 government officials — including the country’s president Martin Vizcarra — took advantage of their positions to receive COVID-19 vaccines in February. With a week to go until the country’s general elections on April 11, Peru recently hit its highest level of single day deaths from the virus thus far.

Kahn says she hopes such behavior from powerful leaders will make voters think more carefully about how elected officials would respond to a public health crisis when they head to the polls in the future. “You don’t want a government that is just winging it,” she said. “The stakes are too high. And really, it makes the difference between lives saved and lives lost.”

Courtney Vinopal is a general assignment reporter at the PBS NewsHour.

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Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges

This article is the first in a series drawing together McKinsey’s collective thinking and expertise on five behaviors to help leaders navigate the pandemic and recovery. Separate articles describe organizing via a network of teams ; displaying deliberate calm and bounded optimism ; making decisions amid uncertainty ; demonstrating empathy ; and communicating effectively .

The coronavirus pandemic has placed extraordinary demands on leaders in business and beyond. The humanitarian toll taken by COVID-19 creates fear among employees and other stakeholders. The massive scale of the outbreak and its sheer unpredictability make it challenging for executives to respond. Indeed, the outbreak has the hallmarks of a “landscape scale” crisis: an unexpected event or sequence of events of enormous scale and overwhelming speed, resulting in a high degree of uncertainty that gives rise to disorientation, a feeling of lost control, and strong emotional disturbance. 1 Arnold M. Howitt and Herman B. Leonard, “Against desperate peril: High performance in emergency preparation and response,” in Deborah E. Gibbons, ed, Communicable Crises: Prevention, Response, and Recovery in the Global Arena , first edition, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2007.

Recognizing that a company faces a crisis is the first thing leaders must do. It is a difficult step, especially during the onset of crises that do not arrive suddenly but grow out of familiar circumstances that mask their nature. 2 Arnold Howitt and Herman B. Leonard, eds, Managing Crises: Responses to Large-Scale Emergencies , first edition, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2009. Examples of such crises include the SARS outbreak of 2002–03 and now the coronavirus pandemic. Seeing a slow-developing crisis for what it might become requires leaders to overcome the normalcy bias, which can cause them to underestimate both the possibility of a crisis and the impact that it could have. 3 Nahman Alon and Haim Omer, “The continuity principle: A unified approach to disaster and trauma,” American Journal of Community Psychology , 1994, Volume 22, Number 2, pp. 273–87.

Once leaders recognize a crisis as such, they can begin to mount a response. But they cannot respond as they would in a routine emergency, by following plans that had been drawn up in advance. During a crisis, which is ruled by unfamiliarity and uncertainty, effective responses are largely improvised. 4 Arnold Howitt and Herman B. Leonard, eds, Managing Crises: Responses to Large-Scale Emergencies , first edition, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2009. They might span a wide range of actions: not just temporary moves (for example, instituting work-from-home policies) but also adjustments to ongoing business practices (such as the adoption of new tools to aid collaboration), which can be beneficial to maintain even after the crisis has passed.

What leaders need during a crisis is not a predefined response plan but behaviors and mindsets that will prevent them from overreacting to yesterday’s developments and help them look ahead. In this article, we explore five such behaviors and accompanying mindsets that can help leaders navigate the coronavirus pandemic and future crises.

What leaders need during a crisis is not a predefined response plan but behaviors and mindsets that will prevent them from overreacting to yesterday’s developments and help them to look ahead.

Organizing to respond to crises: The network of teams

During a crisis, leaders must relinquish the belief that a top-down response will engender stability. In routine emergencies, the typical company can rely on its command-and-control structure to manage operations well by carrying out a scripted response. But in crises characterized by uncertainty, leaders face problems that are unfamiliar and poorly understood. A small group of executives at an organization’s highest level cannot collect information or make decisions quickly enough to respond effectively. Leaders can better mobilize their organizations by setting clear priorities for the response and empowering others to discover and implement solutions that serve those priorities.

To promote rapid problem solving and execution under high-stress, chaotic conditions, leaders can organize a network of teams. Although the network of teams is a widely known construct, it is worth highlighting because relatively few companies have experience in implementing one. A network of teams consists of a highly adaptable assembly of groups, which are united by a common purpose and work together in much the same way that the individuals on a single team collaborate (exhibit). 5 Tantum Collins, Chris Fussell, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and David Silverman, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World , first edition, New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin, 2015.

Some parts of the network pursue actions that take place outside regular business operations. Other parts identify the crisis’s implications for routine business activities and make adjustments, such as helping employees adapt to new working norms. In many cases, the network of teams will include an integrated nerve center covering four domains: workforce protection, supply-chain stabilization, customer engagement, and financial stress testing (for more, see “ Responding to coronavirus: The minimum viable nerve center ”).

In many cases, the network of teams will include an integrated nerve center covering four domains: workforce protection, supply-chain stabilization, customer engagement, and financial stress testing.

Regardless of their functional scope, effective networks of teams display several qualities. They are multidisciplinary: experience shows that crises present a degree of complexity that makes it necessary to engage experts from different fields. They are designed to act. Merely soliciting experts’ ideas is not enough; experts must gather information, devise solutions, put them into practice, and refine them as they go. And they are adaptable, reorganizing, expanding, or contracting as teams learn more about the crisis and as conditions change.

Leaders should foster collaboration and transparency across the network of teams. One way they do this is by distributing authority and sharing information: in other words, demonstrating how the teams themselves should operate. In crisis situations, a leader’s instinct might be to consolidate decision-making authority and control information, providing it on a strictly need-to-know basis. Doing the opposite will encourage teams to follow suit.

Another crucial part of the leader’s role, especially in the emotional, tense environment that characterizes a crisis, is promoting psychological safety so people can openly discuss ideas, questions, and concerns without fear of repercussions. This allows the network of teams to make sense of the situation, and how to handle it, through healthy debate.

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Elevating leaders during a crisis: the value of ‘deliberate calm’ and ‘bounded optimism’.

Just as an organization’s senior executives must be prepared to temporarily shift some responsibilities from their command-and-control hierarchy to a network of teams, they must also empower others to direct many aspects of the organization’s crisis response. This involves granting them the authority to make and implement decisions without having to gain approval. One important function of senior executives is to quickly establish an architecture for decision making, so that accountability is clear and decisions are made by appropriate people at different levels.

Senior leaders must also make sure that they empower the right people to make crisis-response decisions across the network of teams. Since decision makers will probably make some mistakes, they must be able to learn quickly and make corrections without overreacting or paralyzing the organization. At the start of a crisis, senior leaders will have to appoint decision makers to direct the crisis response. But as the crisis evolves, new crisis-response leaders will naturally emerge in a network-of-teams construct, and those crisis-response leaders won’t always be senior executives.

In routine emergencies, experience is perhaps the most valuable quality that leaders bring. But in novel, landscape-scale crises, character is of the utmost importance. Crisis-response leaders must be able to unify teams behind a single purpose and frame questions for them to investigate. The best will display several qualities. One is “deliberate calm,” the ability to detach from a fraught situation and think clearly about how one will navigate it. 6 Helio Fred Garcia, “Effective leadership response to crisis,” Strategy & Leadership , 2006, Volume 34, Number 1, pp. 4–10. Deliberate calm is most often found in well-grounded individuals who possess humility but not helplessness.

Another important quality is “bounded optimism,” or confidence combined with realism. Early in a crisis, if leaders display excessive confidence in spite of obviously difficult conditions, they can lose credibility. It is more effective for leaders to project confidence that the organization will find a way through its tough situation but also show that they recognize the crisis’s uncertainty and have begun to grapple with it by collecting more information. When the crisis has passed, then optimism will be more beneficial (and can be far less bounded).

Just as an organization’s senior executives must be prepared to temporarily shift some responsibilities from their command-and-control hierarchy to a network of teams, they must also empower others to direct many aspects of the organization’s crisis response. This involves granting them the authority to make and implement decisions without having to gain approval.

Making decisions amid uncertainty: Pause to assess and anticipate, then act

Waiting for a full set of facts to emerge before determining what to do is another common mistake that leaders make during crises. Because a crisis involves many unknowns and surprises, facts may not become clear within the necessary decision-making time frame. But leaders should not resort to using their intuition alone. Leaders can better cope with uncertainty and the feeling of jamais vu (déjà vu’s opposite) by continually collecting information as the crisis unfolds and observing how well their responses work.

In practice, this means frequently pausing from crisis management, assessing the situation from multiple vantage points, anticipating what may happen next, and then acting. The pause-assess-anticipate-act cycle should be ongoing, for it helps leaders maintain a state of deliberate calm and avoid overreacting to new information as it comes in. While some moments during the crisis will call for immediate action, with no time to assess or anticipate, leaders will eventually find occasions to stop, reflect, and think ahead before making further moves.

The pause-assess-anticipate-act cycle should be ongoing, for it helps leaders maintain a state of deliberate calm and avoid overreacting to new information as it comes in.

Two cognitive behaviors can aid leaders as they assess and anticipate. One, called updating, involves revising ideas based on new information teams collect and knowledge they develop. The second, doubting, helps leaders consider ongoing and potential actions critically and decide whether they need to be modified, adopted, or discarded. Updating and doubting help leaders mediate their dueling impulses to conceive solutions based on what they’ve done previously and to make up new solutions without drawing on past lessons. Instead, leaders bring their experiences to bear while accepting new insights as they emerge.

Once leaders decide what to do, they must act with resolve. Visible decisiveness not only builds the organization’s confidence in leaders; it also motivates the network of teams to sustain its search for solutions to the challenges that the organization faces.

Demonstrating empathy: Deal with the human tragedy as a first priority

In a landscape-scale crisis, people’s minds turn first to their own survival and other basic needs. Will I be sickened or hurt? Will my family? What happens then? Who will care for us? Leaders shouldn’t assign communications or legal staff to address these questions. A crisis is when it is most important for leaders to uphold a vital aspect of their role: making a positive difference in people’s lives.

Doing this requires leaders to acknowledge the personal and professional challenges that employees and their loved ones experience during a crisis. By mid-March 2020, COVID-19 had visited tragedy on countless people by claiming thousands of lives. More than 100,000 cases had been confirmed; many more were being projected. The pandemic had also triggered powerful second-order effects. Governments instituted travel bans and quarantine requirements, which are important for safeguarding public health but can also keep people from aiding relatives and friends or seeking comfort in community groups or places of worship. School closures in many jurisdictions put strain on working parents. Since each crisis will affect people in particular ways, leaders should pay careful attention to how people are struggling and take corresponding measures to support them.

McKinsey’s COVID-19 executive briefing

Lastly, it is vital that leaders not only demonstrate empathy but open themselves to empathy from others and remain attentive to their own well-being. As stress, fatigue, and uncertainty build up during a crisis, leaders might find that their abilities to process information, to remain levelheaded, and to exercise good judgment diminish. They will stand a better chance of countering functional declines if they encourage colleagues to express concern—and heed the warnings they are given. Investing time in their well-being will enable leaders to sustain their effectiveness over the weeks and months that a crisis can entail.

A crisis is when it is most important for leaders to uphold a vital aspect of their role: making a positive difference in people’s lives. Doing this requires leaders to acknowledge the personal and professional challenges that employees and their loved ones experience during a crisis.

Communicating effectively: Maintain transparency and provide frequent updates

Crisis communications from leaders often hit the wrong notes. Time and again, we see leaders taking an overconfident, upbeat tone in the early stages of a crisis—and raising stakeholders’ suspicions about what leaders know and how well they are handling the crisis. Authority figures are also prone to suspend announcements for long stretches while they wait for more facts to emerge and decisions to be made.

Neither approach is reassuring. As Amy Edmondson recently wrote, “Transparency is ‘job one’ for leaders in a crisis. Be clear what you know, what you don’t know, and what you are doing to learn more.” 7 Amy C. Edmondson, “Don’t hide bad news in times of crisis”, Harvard Business Review , March 6, 2020, hbr.org. Thoughtful, frequent communication shows that leaders are following the situation and adjusting their responses as they learn more. This helps them reassure stakeholders that they are confronting the crisis. Leaders should take special care to see that each audience’s concerns, questions, and interests are addressed. Having members of the crisis-response team speak firsthand about what they are doing can be particularly effective.

Communications shouldn’t stop once the crisis has passed. Offering an optimistic, realistic outlook can have a powerful effect on employees and other stakeholders, inspiring them to support the company’s recovery.

The coronavirus pandemic is testing the leaders of companies and organizations in every sector around the world. Its consequences could last for longer and present greater difficulties than anyone anticipates. The prolonged uncertainty is all the more reason for leaders to embrace the practices described in this article. Those who do will help establish or reinforce behaviors and values that can support their organizations and communities during this crisis, however long it continues, and prepare them well for the next large-scale challenge.

Gemma D’Auria is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Dubai office, and Aaron De Smet  is a senior partner in the Houston office.

The authors wish to thank Ruth Imose, Ana Mendy, Monica Murarka, Mihir Mysore, and Ophelia Usher for their contributions to this article.

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• 1 Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine , Monash University , Melbourne , Victoria , Australia
• 2 Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation, Monash University , Clayton , Victoria , Australia
• Correspondence to Professor Susannah Ahern, Monash University Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia; susannah.ahern{at}monash.edu

https://doi.org/10.1136/leader-2020-000271

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Introduction

The year 2020 will be remembered as the year of the most significant global pandemic since the Spanish influenza. As Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) gradually encompasses the globe, it leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. Hundreds of thousands of direct lives lost, millions of persons affected with the disease, potentially with long-term health consequences, disruption to global travel and trade, and dislocation of communities and individual lives. At an international, national and community level, leaders across all sectors have been required to respond to both direct and indirect effects of this crisis, with little time for preparation, and in a constantly changing environment.

The importance of trust

Trust is an individual’s expectation or belief, often in circumstances of vulnerability, that the actions or motives of another person are honest, fair and based on integrity (follow sound ethical principles). 3 Trust can be at a system, organisational or individual level. It can be inspired by confidence from past behaviours, however, it is also dynamic, being developed de novo from individual or organisational relationships.

Trust allows a person with less knowledge, power or ability to process complex information, to rely on another individual or institution to make decisions aligned with their well-being. Thus, trust has historically been a cornerstone of clinical care and clinician–patient relationships, and healthcare systems and providers have traditionally been highly trusted. However, where once the public received their health information primarily from health professionals, social media has allowed broad sharing of information via peers, which may be viewed as equally credible, posing a modern challenge for leaders. 4 The so-called COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ on social media has disrupted the key tasks of crisis leadership. 5 Nevertheless, in a pandemic, scientific and public health experts remain more trusted by the public than non-health leaders. 6

The Trust–Confidence–Cooperation framework of risk management, developed by Earle, Sitgrist and Gutscher states that the community must have trust and confidence in its leadership for it to cooperate with restrictive public health measures. 7 Pandemic responses and the related social and economic upheaval are huge change-management exercises, and there will inevitably be resistance to change. 8 Herein lies the issue of trust. ‘So many aspects of successful leadership, warfighting, and command and control are built around the framework of trust that, without it, we would meet with persistent failure’ (p.30). 9 However, public trust in governments, leaders and businesses has been declining over recent decades. Without trust in the leading organisations, support for policy implementation is difficult to achieve, particularly where short-term sacrifices are demanded but long-term gains are less clear.

Trust is a key foundation of relationship-oriented leadership frameworks including situational leadership, 10 authentic leadership and servant leadership; with transformational leadership also relying on leader and follower value congruence. 11 In this paper, we will explore leadership during uncertainty through the lens of situational leadership, that is, through both a focus on leadership actions that can create trust in a crisis and the importance of leadership relationships and human connectedness with followers that can sustain trust.

Creating trust through action

Preparedness and planning.

The last two decades have provided glimpses into what the world is now experiencing. These include H5N1 avian influenza in 1997 in Hong Kong; SARS in 2002–2003 in Hong Kong and Singapore; the 2009 influenza pandemic, also in Asia; and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in 2014–2015 in Saudi Arabia. Countries that experienced significant impact related to these previous outbreaks, particularly in Asia, have in general responded more promptly to COVID-19 and have had broader community compliance than other nations for whom this is a new experience. 12 13

Without specific or large-scale pandemic experience however, leadership can still be prepared and proactive. Pandemic planning can learn much from these previous exposures, including the benefits and risks associated with particular management and containment strategies. Emergency management and armed forces sectors stress the importance of regular organisational, sector, and cross-sector-level simulated exercises for building capability for crisis event management. 12 Investment in public health, such as through the establishment of independent or government-managed national centres of public health or disease control, infectious disease physicians and disease outbreak response systems, provides a critical mass of available expertise.

Infrastructure investment in isolation facilities, additional bed capacity, equipment, personal protective equipment and therapeutics provide needed resources for the response. 14 Health sector surge workforce capacity can be created through relationships with workforce agencies, regulatory bodies and academic institutions. Planning also needs to address the unintended economic and personal consequences of the crises, including clear processes and procedures so that they can be implemented quickly and appropriately. However, not all scenarios can be anticipated or controlled, so comprehensive and regular risk assessments of the situation will still be needed, with leaders being willing to change their strategy rapidly and at any time. 14

Supported with information and data

Leaders at times of significant uncertainty should constantly seek relevant information and intelligence regarding the crisis’s course and impact from reliable sources. This includes from health professionals, researchers, managers, industries and related sectors, but also from shared stories and experiences from international colleagues, networks and collaborative partners. Although intuition plays a role, leaders need to ultimately act in accordance with credible expertise and advice.

Surveillance systems including testing and contact tracing are crucial to understand the local scope and spread of a pandemic. 15 Clinical data collection within the health system is equally important to understanding local requirements for health resources, patterns of disease and care and what interventions are providing the best outcomes. Examples from the Australian context include the Australian SPRINT-SARI (Short PeRiod IncideNce sTudy of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection) database collection of COVID-19 inpatient data across intensive care units 16 ; other real-time aggregated case reports from international patient registries 17 ; and the rapid development and continual evolution of treatment guidelines for COVID-19. 18 It is vital that academics and governments publish their data as soon as possible, and many academic journals and media outlets are supporting this. 19

International information sharing and global surveillance through research institutes such as John Hopkins University in the USA provide globally transparent, aggregated and real-time incidence and outcome data. 20 Predictive data modelling can leverage this to provide leaders with a range of scenarios based on specific assumptions to help guide decision making. Informed leaders will consider all available intelligence and information, seek alternate perspectives and reflect on the various decision options available to them. There is increasing emerging evidence that rapid, comprehensive, national responses aligned with health guidelines have resulted in better health and economic outcomes and high levels of trust in the leadership, as has occurred in New Zealand. 21 22

Adaptive and coordinated

In complex and unpredictable situations, leadership must be adaptive at all levels. 23 Clinicians and researchers have constantly updated and adapted their definitions and understanding of the clinical course and management of COVID-19 in the face of emerging international data. Urgent requirements for population-level testing have led to the adaptation of alternative laboratories and settings to take on this huge task. COVID-19 tracing applications have been developed and used in many developed countries, with the aim of assisting manual contract tracing, although their effectiveness and privacy implications are still being debated. 24

General practitioners are triaging persons with symptoms via telehealth, taking swabs from drive-through clinics, and manning super ‘fever clinics’. Pharmacists are collating and sharing pharmaceutical stock data with the government to assist in the management and rationing of the national supply. In Australia, non-urgent elective surgery and procedures, typically the mainstay of private hospitals, have been ceased as they prepare to share the medical load of COVID-19 patients with their public counterparts. Examples of adaptable governance structures include in Australia the creation of a new ‘National Cabinet’ with the Prime Minister and the Premiers and Chief Ministers of the constituent Australian states and territories. This has been a very effective body that meets regularly and has led to high levels of response coordination.

In order to build trust and the confidence of followers, leaders need to make decisions and provide a sense of control. Local command centres and other task-oriented leadership structures are critical in supporting intelligence gathering and timely decision making. 25 However, leaders must remain connected with the communities that they lead throughout this process, to be informed by those at the coalface, as well as to receive feedback critical to decision making. New teams within existing structures may need to be created and conduits developed to allow two-way interaction with the frontline. Emergent and decentralised leadership should be encouraged, within an overall shared strategy. 25

Leaders are responsible for the coordination of responses, including beyond the health sector across public, private sectors and non-government organisations. These collaborations may be hastily created, but form a crucial network of relationships, alliances and horizontal coordination mechanisms. The greater the communication and coordination, the more resilient the system is in the face of adversity. Leaders must engage the community through local groups to ensure there is local ownership, and that interventions are appropriate and acceptable. Communication is also critical for coordination and alignment with leadership planning and goals. 26 As well as coordinating the response, leaders must also coordinate initiatives to support the well-being of their followers, including mental health support, organisational continuity planning, and staff and community welfare.

Sustaining trust through connectedness

Responsibility and transparency.

Crises require leaders to take responsibility and do this visibly. By being visible and responsible, they are showing accountability and sharing risks with their followers, an important sign of solidarity with the many health workers and others who face personal risks during the pandemic. By being responsible, they show and model personal vulnerability. Taking responsibility also means that leaders exhibit constancy and resilience, that they are in this for the long haul and can be relied on to continue to persevere on behalf of their followers.

For followers to trust their leaders, they need access to objective information and to be able to speak up and ask questions. Being open and transparent are two of the most important behaviours leaders can demonstrate to maintain the trust of their constituents. This includes being accessible, available, open and willing to answer questions, as well as providing credible up-to-date information for their followers to consider. It has rightly been said that the midst of the pandemic is not the time to identify detailed failings by leaders with the best of intentions, 27 however, leaders also need to show honesty in admitting when they have made missteps and when there have been failures. 28

Authenticity: ethical and values-based leadership

When leaders’ responses to crises are based on ethical and values-based principles, they provide a shared sense of purpose with their followers. 22 Personal and professional values that support acting ethically in the face of adversity will then be the guiding framework that informs decision making. Frontline healthcare workers are particularly at risk, and all efforts must be made to prioritise their health so they feel valued and protected. 29 Examples include ensuring that guidelines for their and their families’ protection are enacted, sufficient workforce is harnessed and workload and well-being are managed.

Beyond this, leaders should speak with candour and frankness about the uncertainties that exist. Strong empathic responses are important at times when many people’s lives are disrupted and families have lost loved ones. Responses that acknowledge and ‘apologise’ for the illness, the interruptions to care, and the specific work and relationship-related personal impacts of social restrictions show a deep connection with the community, as does personally thanking individuals and collectives for their effort and commitment to the task. A leader’s constituents will also be likely to forgive less favourable outcomes if they consider the criteria and tools used in the decision-making toward those outcomes have been reasonable. 30

Authentic leadership encompasses honesty, concern and benevolence towards followers and their peers. A pandemic and its associated responses such as restrictions of mobility cause uncertainty and anxiety and have the potential to paralyse action and divide communities. Social trust may increase following natural disasters; however, distrust in governments and institutions may lead to disinformation and conspiracy theories and social unrest regarding perceived authoritarian control. In particular, stigma may be associated with infected persons, whether via individual non-compliant actions or not. Their privacy and dignity should be respected.

Both leaders and followers play an important role in creating and sustaining trusting relationships. Leaders must trust their followers, especially if they are to delegate responsibility or share decision making. This of itself requires leaders to take risks and display vulnerability.

Trust in leadership is needed for transformative, collective action in times of uncertainty, such as during a pandemic. For leaders to instil trust in their followers, they must take appropriate action via preparation and planning; seeking out information and intelligence; leading adaptation; and ensuring a coordinated response. However, to sustain trust, leadership requires taking ongoing responsibility and accountability, and remaining closely connected to those on whom their decisions impact. Developing and maintaining leader trust in circumstances such as a pandemic is a dynamic process, changing over time from pre-existing trust, to trust based on actions, to trust in the strength of the authentic relationship. As COVID-19 continues to play out over the globe, it is becoming clear that trust ultimately also requires leaders to offer hope, a credible vision of our lives for the future and guidance on how it can be achieved.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not required.

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Contributors SA conceived and drafted the article, and EL also materially contributed to the drafts. Both authors approved the final paper.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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COVID-19: What makes a good leader during a crisis?

Covid-19: what makes a good leader during a crisis.

The true test of a leader isn’t how they perform in good times — it’s how they handle a crisis

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” It’s easy to do the right thing and say the right words when times are good; it’s a lot harder when you are navigating an unprecedented crisis like the coronavirus pandemic.

But as participants of June’s virtual UN Global Compact Leaders Summit pointed out, it’s in these moments that we see some of the most inspiring leaders emerge. So, what does it take to be a good leader during a crisis? 

Bring everyone to the table

In difficult times, it can be tempting to move fast and make decisions without seeking input from others. Fluid situations mean things change from one minute to the next, which can make consensus-building hard. 

But as Philip Jennings, former General Secretary of UNI Global Union, noted, the best leaders bring everyone to the table. “Those who have come through this crisis best have listened to their workers, have had dialogues with their labour movements and civil society, respected them and relied on them for advice,” he said.

Put the collective good ahead of business or political goals

A great leader never has tunnel vision. Whatever field or industry they operate in, they understand that they can’t make decisions in a vacuum. But this type of approach is even more important in a crisis, as many leaders have shown since the start of the pandemic. “I admire the way the business sector has come together,” said Karmany Reddy, Digital Innovation Manager of Distell. “They’ve put aside differences, competition and profit and loss statements to actually find their place to survive this pandemic that we’re facing, and it’s redesigning of business models, mobilizing groups within businesses to actually focus on crisis management.”

Think on your feet

In a crisis, new information is being learned all the time. Great leaders understand that while they might have a plan, they will also need to adapt it to these new realities — sometimes even tearing the plan up and starting from scratch.

“We can learn from this. We know we can become an agile society — COVID-19 has proven that to us,” stressed Karmany Reddy. “I think more importantly, it has proven to Governments and businesses the importance of having that agile, adaptive mindset when faced with a crisis.”

Never lose sight of the bigger picture

When you’re in the middle of a crisis, it is all too easy to move into survival mode. Working through the latest issue comes at the expense of longer-term problems, which can wait until tomorrow. But the best leaders understand that this is short-sighted.

“COVID will one day go away. We will find a way to manage it, but the bigger picture is that there are many other things that are impacting the world economy, such as climate change, inequality [and] unemployment — we can’t lose sight of these issues,” remarked Suphachai Chearavanont, Chief Executive Officer of Charoen Pokphand Group Co., Ltd. In fact, rather than putting off these bigger challenges, great leaders seize the opportunity that a crisis offers to rethink how things have always been done — ensuring that the post-crisis world is better than the one that came before it. As Chearavanont put it, “a crisis always comes with great opportunity.”

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