By Sevil Harika
The COVID-19 pandemic touched and changed everyone’s lives in one way or another, and it has also made leaders’ jobs more difficult, especially those in healthcare. Leaders working on the front lines to fight COVID are faced with challenges that are greatly affecting their role as a leader. Being a leader on one of these teams, I have personally experienced how tough it is to lead my team day after day. How can we, leaders motivate team that had faced so much suffering and saw too many deaths? How are we able to get our team to perform at a high level, day after day? How do we do it?
A key to successfully leading a healthcare team during these difficult times is Awareness: awareness of yourself, awareness of your surroundings, and awareness of what your team feels. Tweaking your leadership skills to actively listen, support, and inspire, are the important components to a great leadership.
LISTEN – ACTIVELY
One of the most important skills of a leader is the ability to actively listen. During difficult times, especially during unforeseen times like the pandemic, this skill has become a necessity for us leaders. Mastering the skill of listening, will open the door to understanding what is not said. The ability to listen with an open mind in a way that you, as a leader can hear, see, and feel. Also, listen to read between the lines, and understand your team’s feelings, is the key that opens the door to the path of leading your team successfully.
SUPPORT – ALL HANDS-ON DECK
During any difficult time, all hands-on deck is vital because we all need support, or a shoulder to lean on. So does your team. You MUST be the leader who will step in, pull up your sleeves, and be hands on. Your team needs your support! Being on the front line, next to the patient in bed, and doing it together with your team will boost the team’s morale. Your presence, even if it is silent, will speak very loudly and will have a great impact on your team performance. Besides the physical support, your team is also in need for emotional support. As a leader you must be strong and be that shoulder in need. Your team looks up to you and depends on you to pull through the difficult times. So, be that strong shoulder for your team to lean on.
INSPIRE
Inspiring is the most difficult task of all. We all can guess the morale of a team who has seen so much suffering and death, despite their best efforts. The ability to inspire is critical in these moments. As a leader, you already know the power of positive feedback. Starting and ending the day with an inspirational quote and a simple thank you for each team member’s effort goes a long way. Acknowledging the bad outcomes but placing the main focus on the positive ones is a great approach to remind the team that their effort is well worth it. Celebrating each patient’s success as a team success marks the positivity to motive the team to continue towards success.
These simple steps: active listening, all hands-on deck and inspiring, can help all leaders to have a positive impact on their team members. A positive impact that is especially needed in these difficult times during COVID. Our country as a nation is dealing with the biggest challenges we have faced yet, but as leaders we need to be able to step up and help our team to lead the way into positivity. I know, I am not alone in this and there are many other healthcare and non-healthcare leaders that are faced with this challenge. What do you think? How would you lead your team through the pandemic?
Your blog is really informative and interesting! I like the first point where you mention that listening should be the most important skill of a leader. I totally agree on that fact and especially during the pandemic. Employees need not only to be listen work related but as well as personal life and that’s why the Human Resource Department is important.
I can only imagine the difficulty of managing a Health team during the pandemic. Inspiring is certainly the most difficult one but like you said it is critical.
I wish you the best of luck and stay safe.
Thank you for your comment, safety should be everyones priority at this current situation…stay safe too!
Thank you for the great comments everyone.
The first thing I would like to say is Thank you for being on the front line during this challenging time. Apart from that, I would like to highlight how important is to offer support to others. As a manager, and besides organizing the daily work or planning future work, I know that I should also show my human part. Showing the human behind me helps me to build trust and also helps others to feel better. As with any other relationship in life, it is really important to be empathic and worried about others.
Thank you for your post, it was very informative and contained a great deal of specific tools that I can use when leading a team during the pandemic
it is definitely hard to inspire people and i would agree with you here. Positive feedback can go a long way. Leadership is a never ending work and thank you for what you do. Liked reading your Post!