Leadership in lockdown: Socia’s response to the COVID crisis
We have produced a practical weekly note – to support leaders who need easily digestible hints and tips to help them cope in these exceptional times. As the lockdown has progressed the advice has moved from leading your team through the short term survival phase to dealing with the longer term demands on leaders as they shape their organisation to respond to a new normal. You can read the full series of these notes below.
Unlocking Leadership #5 – Managing Performance
In our last blog we discussed the challenges of establishing a new team in a new workplace. Leaders are increasingly aware that there will be real tensions balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the team and ultimately the business. Already we are...
Unlocking leadership #4 – how do I lead my team?
In some ways ‘how do I lead my team?’ might seem an unnecessary question for a leadership blog – after all we’ve all been working incredibly hard to lead teams over the last 14 months of lockdown and learnt a lot in the process. But as we take cautious steps along the...
Unlocking leadership #3 – What do I say?
Back in the office for the first time and I realised that the transition from home of office working is not a trivial change. It felt exciting, unsettling, and disorientating and that was just the commute! And working so close to other people will take some getting...
Unlocking leadership #2 – How do you look?
In the second of our reflections on the leadership challenges of unlocking the economy, and steering teams through a phased return to a mix of office and home based working, we consider the unspoken signals you will send in your first face-to-face interactions with...
Unlocking Leadership in 2021 – post #1
It was 12 months ago this week that we signed up for a Zoom account and started to work out how to ensure the sustainability of our business when the emerging pandemic had run its course. One element of our plan was to share our thinking and our experience with...
Not knowing and still leading – February reflections
“TS Elliot may have said that April is the cruellest month - but February is giving it a run for its money this year” There's no doubt that leading an organisation is a tough job right now – as that quote from a colleague shows. And there's nothing about your status...
Leadership lessons for a New Year
The turn of the year is always a time for both looking back, reflecting on the highs and lows of the last 12 months and looking forward with hope to the Spring to come. Given the exceptional circumstances of 2020 it’s all too easy to want to put last year behind us as...
From fast food ads to Abraham Lincoln – 2020 leadership lessons
In early November Burger King posted an advert on Twitter with the title ‘Order from McDonald’s’. Whilst at one level this was an eye-catching bit of marketing, the text which addressed the question of supporting take-away food outlets of all kinds as we enter another...
What teams don’t talk about on Teams
As leaders come to terms with the prospect of not being able to get their teams back into the office for face-to-face meetings for some months, it’s timely to reflect on what has been working well in on-line team meetings and what people are missing. It’s remarkable...
Preparing for a new term…
As a very strange Summer begins to turn to Autumn many people’s thoughts are of a return. Return of children to school or University, return to the daily commute, return to leading office-based teams. But these are rarely if ever going to be returns to things as they...
Managing virtual Board meetings
Board members and chairs have generally been impressed with the commitment of Board members to adapt to the constraints and realities of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, they report that in a virtual environment, Board meetings take more active management and more...
Week 15: What have we learned in 100 days?
Life before the lockdown feels an age ago. In fact, it’s just 100 days and so we’ve been reflecting on the changes that leaders have faced as the weeks turned into months. At the beginning, the sudden shock of lockdown was a problem that had to be addressed with...
Week 14: Time for more cross-organisational conversations
As high streets cautiously re-open their doors to shoppers and people look forward to the possibility of enjoying some sort of summer holiday, public health officials try to forecast the likelihood of a second wave of the epidemic and business leaders explore multiple...
Week 13: Leaders have tough choices ahead
Leaders have been on an unprecedented journey in the last three months. The shock of the dramatic lockdown in March prompted the need to control events. The government acted in a necessarily directive manner telling sectors who could trade or not, enforcing home based...
Week 12: Little things can make a big difference
Nearly 3 months into lockdown, it’s a good time to review what we’ve learned and, assuming we’re going to be leading teams remotely for some time to come, to invest some time and effort in improving the experience for all concerned. Here are some of the tips we’ve...
Week 11: Leaders use what they can control – to make things better
More than two months into lockdown and some leaders report a sense of powerlessness. For the first few weeks, the talk was of a quick ‘bounce back’ to normality, but the reality is becoming clear. There is no simple reset button that restarts organisational life as it...
Week 10: Leadership endurance & sharing control
New policy announcements and changes to government lockdown advice across the UK mean that for many businesses and their leaders this week feels like the transition to a new phase in dealing with this epidemic, and as with any transition this can bring both enhanced...
Week 9: Creating a better virtual conversation
Two months into the lockdown and many of us have become regular users of the various digital conferencing media products that now are available - Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and others. These products are essential leadership tools to keep decision-making...
Week 8: Many rivers to cross
Many analogies for leaders planning a major change use the image of crossing a river. They talk of building a bridge; starting with pathfinders feeling their way on stepping-stones, before raising bridge supports on solid foundations to carry the weight of the...
Week 7: Two strategies for coping with uncertainty
Coping with uncertainty. As we enter week 7, talk is of recovery plans and exit strategies. But deep down as leaders we know that these public pronouncements will only present a new set of challenges for our organisations and our staff as the environment of...
