Sureish Nathan, the managing director of leadership development consultancy DDI Singapore, has spent over 25 years in leadership development, executive education, and HR across the Asia Pacific, including running his own consultancy. Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 outbreak approaching pandemic levels and leaders around the world struggling to calm the fearful public, People Matters asked Sureish for his thoughts on how leaders can cope during periods of crisis and, indeed, what qualities make a leader successful in such volatile and trying times. Here are the highlights of the conversation.

As we’re seeing around the world with the coronavirus outbreak, there’s a lot of panic during periods of crisis: even if the leadership and the key people know what to do, the average person may react with fear simply because they are confused and uncertain. What can leaders do to manage the situation?

Firstly, on an organizational level: when you face any sort of crisis, whether it’s a corporate scandal or something completely out of the blue, one critical thing is to ensure that you have leadership at every level of the organization. Take the current crisis we are facing: just look at the healthcare system here in Singapore. From the ministerial level, all the way down to the frontline workers in the clinics and the wards, you have leaders at every level. You need that in order to get your message out and keep reinforcing it.

Communication is essential. And in times like this, you have to over-communicate, and keep communicating.

You have to mobilize the people. The apparatus—the infrastructure—has limitations; you have to get everyone to play a part. You cannot just leave it to a certain group to manage events. You have to go right down to the grassroots and ensure that people are able to self-manage. The only way to do that is through communication.

And on the level of the individual leaders? What should they be doing?

They need to conduct themselves with authenticity. The way you communicate has to resonate with people. You can’t say one thing and do another. And that authenticity has to be physically displayed: symbols are very important in managing a crisis, because people are paying a lot of attention to the imagery. For instance, you don’t see our leaders going around wearing masks.

They also need to be transparent. It’s important that people know what’s going on, both the good and the bad. If you look at how the information during this DORSCON alert is being handled, there is a constant stream of updates about new cases and also about cases who have recovered and been discharged. People are being allowed to see the situation as it is.

And, the speed of response is important. It lends to authenticity if you’re able to step forward swiftly, be vulnerable, and say truthfully: “This is what’s really happening.” 

The leaders set the example, and when they are able to do these things, the organization will follow.

Are there certain traits that can make leaders more effective in times of crisis?

They must have empathy. I cannot stress this enough. You might be trying to manage collective safety, but you also need to balance this with individual concerns. Your decisions must be made with empathy. Take the pharmaceutical industry, for instance: let’s say you find out that a drug is tainted. Do you take the risk that only a few people will be affected and let it die down, or do you take the ethical route and order a recall because you have the empathy to say that there is more than profit?

In situations of crisis, you have to look at the gray areas, because you’re dealing with perceptions and emotions. Not everything is black and white; you have to manage both the broad and narrow views, the whole range of reactions that people may have. That’s where empathy is critical.

Agility is another thing. Leaders must have the agility to understand that a crisis is contextual. The policy you follow may be a good guide, but it may also have been set at a different time, in a different context, and you must be able to step away from that and see what is needed for the here and now.

If you look at the different concerns that come up during a crisis, let’s say the many different sectors that are affected by the coronavirus: travel, tourism, hospitality, and so on. There are no firm answers as to how to balance the different needs. It’s possible to put thought into the needs of various stakeholders, have something for each of the different segments, as Budget 2020 did. But there will always be trade-offs—the resources must come from somewhere. And this is where agility comes in.