Leading in a Crisis

Supporting APAC Leaders Global business shaping electrical world

Business Need 

The APAC Leadership community identified the need to be trained virtually on aspects of Leading In A Crisis (this was May 2020 – the world was struggling with the sudden impact of Covid).

The organization, through informal internal feedback from various levels, was hearing that leaders were driving the outcomes and numbers in a tough manner and this was affecting the morale of the employees.

As everyone in some manner was affected by the pandemic, the employees expected the leaders to show more understanding of the human issues, and more compassion.

In addition, as the physical meetings/interactions had come to a stop, the informal opportunities for the employees to vent their emotions were also reduced significantly. With this background, the organization decided to have a leadership workshop that was focused on two essential qualities: Empathy and Trust.

Lumina Learning Solution

Initially, various approaches were discussed. As the four Lumina Leader domains (Leading with Drive, Leading with Vision, Leading through People and Leading to Deliver) resonated aptly with the requirement of building empathy and trust, it was the preferred tool for integrating into the workshop for enhancing Self Awareness in these areas.

Subsequently, the final decision was to use Lumina Leader 360, as this would give voice to those working for the leaders in a secure and professional context. We also deliberated whether to use the 360 immediately, or do only the Self version now and 360 later. Looking at the need, in the end we went ahead with the Lumina Leader 360 version.

The idea was to understand current individual and group scores around Leading Through People dimensions and then use the same to create the way forward. As we know Leading Through People is a composite of four important qualities: Integrity & Trust; Coaches and Develops others; Interpersonally Astute and Win-Win Partnering.

The steps were as follows:

1. All the participants took Lumina LEADER 360 as the first step.
2. This was followed by a group call where participants were made to understand their own report. This was a very engaging and energizing session as the insights and information that the Lumina Leader 360 provided for each participant was thought-provoking. Interestingly, as expected, out of the four dimensions, the Leading Through People dimension had lower ratings from Others and, in many cases, from Self as well. Thus the tone and need for the discussion around these areas during the workshop was easily established. Individual insights and actions were generated. The session generated questions and also created interest in going into more detail and understanding the application of the information generated.
3. Team pre-work on identified themes.
4. Group virtual sessions (two sessions of 90 minutes each) with a facilitator, combined with breakout activities and meaningful, honest discussions. The agenda of the sessions included:
• 4 dimensions of leading in a crisis
• Leading through people
• Best practice sharing
• Trust and Empathy
• Organization implementation opportunities

Group and individual implementation plans were made at the end.

What outcomes did the client want to achieve?

• Build shared understanding about Leadership in current times (crisis). The leaders, like in the past, were still driving numbers while the employees were emotionally drained. Not meeting colleagues due to all physical work being replaced by a virtual format had led to feelings and emotions accumulating within. Globally, the organization also wanted to convey that they were with the employees during these challenging times (no one had any previous experience of this)

• Enhance self-awareness around leadership dimensions

• Drive two important leadership themes: Trust & Empathy

Results

 The event resulted in following specific plans:

• Each APAC leader had an action plan to enhance the Leading through People dimension. This led to increased positive communication, engagement and initiatives between leaders and teams. One simple yet important shift observed after the event was that, even during virtual meetings, leaders planned and started spending some time on informal communication, checking on the well-being of employees and families, etc.

• Peer coaching partners were identified to help/support leaders on specific dimensions. For a good majority of participants, Leading through People (and qualities like Being Interpersonally Astute and Trust) were the need. This helped accelerate the assimilation and application of the qualities that each participant had decided on, based on the 360 feedback received.

• Each country/group had information on how they were perceived by stakeholders and made plans to improve the score on the same. The satisfaction score, as gathered from informal internal surveys and skip level leadership sessions, validated this change.