Employees will be turning to their leadership for many things during the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking guidance and support for everything from tech support to benefits assistance. Under normal circumstances, it's important that every organization's leadership creates and maintains predictability to drive performance. However, when predictability simply does not exist, as with the ongoing impact of COVID-19, it has to be replaced with clarity, decisiveness and consistency.

Why is the distinction important? Being predictable means "capable of being predicted: able to be known, seen, or declared in advance," while consistency is "steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc."

Here is guidance on how leaders can deliver on consistency and the two other key principles during a time of crisis and uncertainty.

Clarity

Patterns of leadership behavior stem from the clear prioritization of these three most important things: employees, business continuity and company performance. We are in a unique moment in time where economic uncertainty is high and fear and misinformation are widespread. Grounding in your core principles sets a foundation for providing clarity, decisiveness and consistent leadership.

Employees' health and well-being should be the first priority. Your employees want to know that the company is doing its best to preserve the basic elements of their lives. For instance, do they still have a job? Are their benefits and pay in place to sustain their families?

Companies like Salesforce, JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft deserve kudos for their early work in guaranteeing pay for hourly team members or providing bonuses to help employees. Can they access health care as needed (which puts an enormous amount of pressure on HR and benefit teams)? Can they easily work from home? Companies like mine (Grand Rounds) and Workday provided a stipend to employees to establish a workspace at home. Is their work important to the ongoing success of the company?

Work hard to keep the message simple and, if needed for clarity, communicate large amounts of complex information in stages.

Decisiveness

It's time to enact your business continuity plan and be ready to adjust as the situation evolves. If you don't have a plan in place already, build it out and ensure leaders know their responsibilities. Be sure to take a look at the priorities mentioned earlier i.e. your employees, business continuity and company performance. Examine your practices to ensure they are aligned and stay aligned with your priorities as things evolve. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health agencies gather and distribute critical data and insights about COVID-19, you and your leadership team need to be collecting and processing all forms of data related to your company to ensure its ongoing strength and sustainability.

Clarity of decision making is paramount, so use the plan to establish that accountability. If time is of the essence, consider delegating and creating a team (and applying a responsibility assignment matrix) to achieve the same outcome.

Decisiveness can be a slippery slope, so don't try to move too quickly; our biggest mistakes can happen in over decisiveness; don't let the desire to communicate entice you to make decisions before you have the needed facts.

Consistency

To address company performance, meet daily or as frequently as possible with your decision making body to understand the latest data, assess and mitigate risks, and determine the best path forward. Surround yourself with people who are comfortable managing through ambiguity, who demonstrate good decision making capabilities and overall calmness. They also stay focused on making decisions in the best interest of your employees and customers, despite imperfect data, adjusting the strategy as new information becomes available.

One thing we have done in our organization is to create a consistent cadence of daily, weekly and monthly communications across a variety of channels. This will ensure our leaders and employees (including our leaders) are aligned and aware of how the company is responding to the given changing conditions and enable them to lead and contribute at the highest level.

Find a spokesperson or two so people consistently know the source of truth and be straightforward and honest. For us, we are fortunate to have extraordinary clinical leaders on our team, including a CDC-trained epidemiologist. Our clinicians have been able to share our perspectives on how to navigate this crisis through weekly Facebook Live and internal Zoom meetings to help people get the clinical answers they need from a credible source. It's not hard for folks to figure out if what's being told is authentic or the "company speak."

Thinking about long-term consistency at this stage is important too because, at this point, we know this is not a drill. We must all set some precedents that may become our new normal. Continue investing in building community and enhancing productivity as more people are working from home. Research and implement new tools to support collaboration, such as virtual whiteboarding, and determine how to leverage all the tools you have today, like Slack's video calling capability. This is a time when investing in your employees is critical to weather the storm. Make sure they are connected, healthy and productive. That will be what makes all the difference.

As we all weather and wade into the unknown, I have taken great refuge in the collaborative spirit that has stretched across industries. This is a new reality for all of our teams. I'm proud of the work our team is doing to support our employees and customers and the above tips are just a few of the practices that have worked for us. I encourage all of my peers and colleagues in other industries to do the same; share techniques you are trying and the unique assets you have so we can help all boats rise.

Peter Navin is chief human resources officer, Grand Rounds.

Instant Insights /

The other CDC: Clarity, decisiveness and consistency

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