The COVID-19 pandemic shows us that love has a place in business leadership

It is time to acknowledge the power of love to transmute negative situations in the workplace into positive ones. Companionate love can boost employee performance and create workplaces with higher levels of engagement and accountability. Burak Koyuncu discusses examples of business leaders who followed their hearts during the COVID-19 crisis and made decisions based on love for their employees.

 
The COVID-19 crisis has been a strong test for leadership. Under high levels of uncertainty and pressure, many leaders have made choices with fear of future regret.

In my conversations with more than a hundred business leaders since the beginning of this crisis, I noticed that they were all along seeking examples of other leaders who were bold enough to follow their hearts, despite opposition, and make decisions that would allow them to feel at peace – even years from now. Here are some examples of such courageous leaders.

John, a senior partner at a global accounting firm, was recently promoted to be the country leader of his business area. As soon as the crisis started, their business was hit and within a few months they started to estimate that the annual results would be far behind their targets. Despite this negative effect of the crisis, the firm was still quite profitable and not expected to have any survival issues in the near term. Yet, the regional leadership team started to pressure John to make more than 20% of his employees redundant. John resisted this pressure first and challenged his bosses for a while as he thought that they were just having a knee-jerk reaction to the crisis, and they would soon change their minds. However, as the pressure increased, he realised that he needed to make a decision. One day, he called his boss to say that he wouldn’t be comfortable making such an unhealthy/short-term focused decision and if the regional leadership wanted to fire people, they would also need to let him go. A few days after that call, John was relieved to hear that his courage paid off and he was allowed to keep his team – as long as he agreed to not promote anyone or increase salaries this year.

John was very happy with the outcome; however, he cared about his team a lot and still worried about those team members who have been waiting for their promotions for a while. When the annual promotions were supposed to be announced a few weeks later, he first called Mike, one of his senior managers who was promised to be promoted to a director role two years ago and was passed twice due to “suboptimal company-level results”.  John knew that Mike would possibly leave the company this time if he didn’t get the promotion again. When Mike answered the call, John said: “Mike, I apologise that I am not able to confirm your promotion today. Unfortunately, this year, we are not able to promote anyone. I know you have been hearing similar excuses for the last three years and this must be disappointing for you. I want you to know that I love you and would really like you to stay in this company.” Mike was speechless after hearing this. Despite his disappointment about the news, for the first time in many years, he could really feel how much his leaders valued him and cared about him. And he decided to stay.

Συνέχεια ανάγνωσης εδώ

Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk

Σχετικά Άρθρα