Business leaders globally are facing unprecedented challenges and uncertainty driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to economic and societal upheaval.

As Linda had conversations with executives and board members across the globe to understand what it takes to lead in these extraordinarily challenging circumstances, one leader, Dr. Rakesh Suri, Executive Officer and Chief of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, said “It’s like leading through a fog”.

To paraphrase, he said, “I am trying to steer a ship when I cannot see what’s ahead of me, conditions are constantly shifting, and every choice I make feels perilous.”

Leading through this uncertainty requires leaders to adapt their leadership style and approach.

• How can you lead when your vision is obscured?
• How can you achieve clarity when the situation is changing rapidly? And
• What can you do to help your team gain speed and confidence in its decision-making when reliable data is elusive?

Throughout Linda’s 20+ years of field research building agile teams, she has found that great leadership involves three imperatives:

1. Managing yourself
   • As in, using yourself as an instrument to get things done;
2. Managing your team
   • By creating a motivated and high-performing “we” out of all the “I’s” who report to you; and finally,
3. Managing your network,
   • Meaning, understanding how power works in your company, and building a system of mutually beneficial relationships with people both inside and outside your organization.

Together these imperatives comprise the fundamental activities of effective leadership and influence.

Linda will discuss how to think about them in the context of guiding your team and organization in this “new normal.”

The Three Imperatives

1. Managing Yourself
   • Being an agile leader in times of crisis requires a continued commitment to your own well-being and development so you can care for others
   • Work harder to build strong emotional connections with others and demonstrate empathy and compassion for what they’re going through
   •  Set the stage for your employees to harness their creativity and resourcefulness as you need “all hands on deck”

1. Managing Your Network
   • Proactively manage your ecosystem and be aware of growing interdependence
   • Avoid the trap of being a powerless boss when resources are scarce and business models are challenged
   •  Reach out to customers, suppliers and vendors to offer assistance to help them weather the pandemic

1. Managing Your Team
   •  Reinforce your team’s purpose and tie it to your team’s work as a way to energize and unify your team
   •  Establish values and clear rules of engagement of how your teams work together, including in an inclusive way
   • Drive an agile organization that empowers and leverages your people to be innovative problem-solvers and game changers to ensure business survival

Presenter: Linda A. Hill Ph.D., (LinkedIn profile) is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (HBS bio); the faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative and has chaired numerous HBS Executive Education programs, including the Young Presidents’ Organization Presidents’ Seminar and the High Potentials Leadership Program. Linda is the coauthor with Kent Lineback of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader and Breakthrough Leadership, a blended cohort-based program that helps organizations transform midlevel managers into more effective leaders. She is also the author of Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership. In 2014, Professor Hill coauthored a book entitled Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation.