Leadership is the wind beneath our wings.: May 2020 Newsletter

We’ve learned a lot from 2020, aside from how to make sourdough. We’ve learned that decisive action and honest communication from leadership ignites success for companies facing uncertainty. The executives willing to take honest stock of and reboot their business models, communications and engagement strategies, market positioning and other foundational elements will be the ones paving a path forward for entire industries.The best leaders stay true to their business’s purpose, but adapt to the needs of their employees, customers and the broader market.

Strong leadership is critical to positive change, and it’s our main story in this month’s newsletter. Before we dive in, though, here are a few pieces of news you might be interested in:

NEWS TO USE
–      Big Tech was first to send workers home. Now it’s in no rush to bring them back.: Along with professional sports, big tech companies were among the first to send employees home and adopt remote work policies. Now, many are considering keeping those policies in place until 2021—or in Twitter’s case, forever—even as local and state governments push to reopen their communities. It’s a drastic shift from the collaborative, employee-friendly workplace culture and related perks Silicon Valley was instrumental in creating to attract talent. And as big tech goes, so goes a large section of the broader business community.

–      Mike & Sherry Project launches to provide mental health support to Austin’s service workers: Austin has earned a reputation around the world for its exceptional food and nightlife. Earning that reputation would not be possible without the men and women of our service industry, who often don’t have access to quality, affordable mental health services.That is, until the Mike & Sherry Project—in partnership with Capital Area Counseling—made its resources available to all of Austin’s bar and restaurant workers earlier this month. We’re incredibly proud to partner with such a community-driven organization and encourage you—if you’re able—to consider donating to the project and help us serve the minds and souls of the Austin service industry.

–      Working from home is redefining office culture: From our friend and partner Rajkumari Neogy, executive consultant, epigenetics expert and founder of iRestart, this piece is a must-read for leaders on building collaborative, open and connected teams through neuroscience.

COVID-19 has acted as a sort of proving ground for effective leadership in both business and political contexts, the latter of which was explored in detail in a recent New York Times piece that compared several countries’ responses to the pandemic. The Times found that several countries with female leaders—New Zealand and Germany, for instance—have been more successful in developing effective responses to COVID-19.

Our goal in analyzing the ‘why’ behind this observation isn’t to champion a particular political policy or affiliation, or to make a sweeping claim that female leaders are better than their male counterparts by default. But we do want to understand why some leaders have been more effective than others at gathering information, making effective decisions and communicating those decisions to their stakeholders, as well as the roles diversity and gender play in leadership style.

Leaders with the most effective response plans rely on a variety of perspectives and information sources to make their decisions. This may seem like a no-brainer, but the Times reported that several countries—Sweden and Great Britain, for example—have been relying solely on forecast modeling to dictate decision-making. Others, like Germany’s Angela Merkel, have been using information from a variety of sources to guide response plans. The juxtaposition of these two approaches highlights the need for leaders to foster a culture that welcomes dissent and diversity of perspectives.

This is just as true for businesses in everything from crisis communications to board appointments. Whether that comes in the form of gender, racial, cultural or sexual diversity—or simply ensuring you have people in your inner circle who think differently than you—cultivating a leadership style built on a collection of various perspectives is even more important than it used to be. Study after study has shown that diversity reduces the potential for groupthink, the psychological phenomenon that occurs when decisions are made out of a desire for conformity or in an environment that discourages dissent or different opinions. It’s the culprit of many prominent blunders in history: the Salem Witch Trials, Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, the fall of Swissair and countless others, so it’s well worth exploring how to mitigate it in the Situation Room as well as the board room.

For more tips on how to eliminate groupthink and improve self-awareness as a business leader, head on over to VentureBeat for this oldie-but-a-goodie article from a few years ago.

How leaders communicate during a crisis can tell you a lot about their leadership style. In its article, the Times outlined perception-driven responses some leaders have taken that are largely a result of gender and cultural norms. President Trump and Vice President Pence, for instance, have opted not to wear face masks during public appearances, which makes sense to some extent because their leadership style is that of “the strong American leader: one who projects power, acts aggressively and above all shows no fear, thereby cowing the nation’s enemies into submission.” We see this play out almost daily in executive communications, with the president frequently adopting an aggressively combative interview style.

A leader’s bravado and rhetoric alone don’t abate crises—particularly in scenarios like this one when the source of the crisis doesn’t care what tone you take with it—nor do they necessarily inspire confidence despite that being the reason for their implementation in the first place. Compare that approach to, say, that of Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand. As of this writing, Ardern is the most popular prime minister in New Zealand in more than a century. Part of that can be attributed to the response plan she’s enacted—92 percent of New Zealanders support the measures she’s implemented—but it is also a testament to her communication style. When she first announced the nationwide lockdown in late March, she did so via a Facebook Live Q&A from her home. It was direct, engaging, transparent and personal. Some may call it maternal, but that description doesn’t do it justice. To call a leadership or communications style “masculine” or “maternal” is a disservice to what great leadership can and should be: strong, compassionate, thoughtful and authentic in equal measure, transcendent of gender norms and stereotypes, and representative of the diverse perspectives that are so crucial to success in business, politics and everyday life.

Leaders in the manufacturing space are using COVID-19 as a chance to reduce their supply chain dependency on China. In a recent interview with Supply Chain Brain, Jacob Shapiro, founder of Perch Perspectives, tells manufacturers “how to use COVID-19 as a get-out-of-jail-free card,” and shares key strategies for transitioning the supply chain to other countries.