LEADERSHIP DEBBIE DAWSON
What's the best
leadership response to COVID? It would be easy amid the horror stories of redundancies and business collapses in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown to think the end of the New Zealand economy is nigh. Debbie Dawson has a different perspective and shares how we all have a role to play.
T
he media hyperbole relentlessly describes what has happened with COVID-19 as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘extraordinary’ and yet, when we stand back and take a wider look at what has been before, we see this isn’t really true. It feels true because every country in the world looks to have been affected in one way or another, and we are continually receiving ‘news’ instalments about this. Yet there have always been catastrophic things happening. What we make this significant event mean for our workplaces and our future is entirely up to us.
Leadership perspective
One of the principles I share with my senior professional coaching clients is that the world is 50/50. This means that, at any one time, 50 per cent of what is happening is great and 50 per cent of what is happening 36
HUMAN RESOURCES
SPRING 2020
is not so great. I have come to think of this as a natural law of the universe – just like night and day. Modern psychology tends to suggest we should aim for 100 per cent happiness all the time, but if we didn’t experience the adversity that comes along we wouldn’t recognise the good stuff when it happens. And if everything that was happening fell into the happiness category, it would quickly become bland. In other words, many of us know that to recognise joy we need to know what it is to suffer. It is widely agreed in leadership circles that growth comes from the challenge of change. Not much growth will be gained from doing what we have always done and what we have got comfortable and capable doing. The personal and leadership growth tends to happen when we are in places of discomfort and awkwardness doing unfamiliar things. It may be hard to accept, but this global pandemic is part of the natural ebb and flow of life and the natural order of things. And like everything, it will involve sadness and silver linings. I live in Christchurch, and I saw that happen here after the earthquakes. For example, many of our beautiful buildings fell down, but others with considerably less charm also went, and this was a blessing.
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll
When my older sisters were growing up, I remember my parents agonising over the proverbial ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ that seemed to be the big disruptors in our lives. The modern version for those of us who are parents is now more likely to involve the internet, alcohol, online pornography, bullying and loneliness, which I believe are variations of the same theme. If we were to do the same with global events, we would see we have had these issues before. My parents were looking for their first jobs in the depression of the 1930s and then encountered a world war. My mother’s brother died of diphtheria when he was seven and later, in the 1980s, there was AIDS, and now we have COVID-19. I am sure that, at the time, these crises all rated at least as high as the current pandemic. Recently, my husband and I watched the television mini-series on Chernobyl, dramatising the most significant nuclear incident of our times with terrifying human and environmental consequences. We both felt shocked to realise ‘this wasn’t all that long ago’ because it was around the time our eldest children were born.
