As a leadership consultant working in financial services organisations for the past fifteen years, I have been witness to the peaks and perils of leadership in high-stress and high change environments. What is different about the current moment? Navigating the intense pressure at work requires resilience, but this time of change is special—it also requires leaders to take a step back, to engage their most innovative and strategic thinking, and to practise a unique self-discipline that will enable them to activate their organisations for a new world.
It is in the most stressful moments that leadership is the most important. In a crisis, others look to you for answers, for a calm mind, and a strong perspective. They want to hear that they are part of something larger than themselves, that you have got their back, that we are all for one and one for all, and that we will help each other get through the crisis and potentially come stronger out it.
We are up against some significant challenges. In the four years after the initial SARS infections
in Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong discovered that over 40 per cent of SARS survivors ‘had an active psychiatric illness, most commonly PTSD or depression’1. These disturbing research findings are the tip of the iceberg of what we will begin to see as a follow-on to the global impact of Covid-19 which is ratcheting up levels of anxiety worldwide. Employee and consumer stress levels are high, which means performance is down and pressure on leadership is up.
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