BY MUSAIB BHAT
The year 2019- 2020 will be remembered as the year of global pandemic. COVID-19 pandemic surprised nations, leaders and organisations. It impacted the work culture of small and big organisations.
From Government organisations to Non-Govt organisations (NGOs) everyone suffered and many suffer even now. The information technology proved to be a solution for maintaining organisational performance, during the COVID 19 pandemic.
At international, national, and community level, leaders across all sectors have responded to both direct and indirect effects of this crisis, with little time for preparation and in a constantly changing environment.
For leaders, this significant uncertainty exacerbates the challenges associated with decision making and requires a rapidly adaptive response not usually associated with leadership in more business-as-usual times.
The pandemic demands effective leadership wherein the leaders need to have a high spirit that exceeds the enthusiasm of their employees so that trust is very strong.
This will help to run the organisations and keep the morale high. However, it is not easy to carry out effective leadership, especially in pandemic times.
Leaders must follow the latest that has evolved in the Information Technology sector especially in last one decade. A leader needs to be an information bank and must always use communication technology to apply it to his/her employees.
The e-Leadership is a term that juxtaposes “e” as a symbol for matters relating to electronics, the internet, or the digital world with “leadership” which means a person’s ability to move or influence the people he/she leads for achieving organisational goals. E-Leadership is the leadership that combines the concept of leadership with technological development.
Furthermore, the question arises about what are the challenges and opportunities for organisational leaders in managing their organisations during the pandemic? Limitation of social activities and instructions for doing work from home will certainly have an impact on organisational performance and leadership.
As such, it is necessary to explore how organisational leaders face these challenges and how they are able to create opportunities for organisational development and leadership during the pandemic? A leader should not surrender during a crisis but must fight back.
There are various challenges faced by leaders in a situation of e-communication as face-to-face interaction is not possible. Lack of technical know how on part of employees (as well as leader himself), time management are other issues.
For example: during COVID-19 pandemic crisis, schools, colleges & universities adopted the online mode of teaching-learning. Unfortunately the teachers & students were not having good knowledge of online teaching-learning apps especially in developing countries which posed a challenge for most of the leaders. But with the passage of time things settled down.
The leader has to take all the employees into confidence during pandemic so as to take control of the situation and make his staff understand where we are, where we are going and how? So, leaders’ perception is extremely important. In order to secure a good job for others, the first thing a leader has to do is a good and deep analysis of the situation like acknowledging reality & communicating early as often. The leader has to show trust in his/her employees even if the performance is not optimal.
Tailpiece
Enforcing lock-downs or closing schools or public places is not the way real leaders work. It is an irony that our leaders in Govt sector (bureaucrats and health administrators) have issued orders to shut down OPDs in Govt hospitals? Our schools are shut for last 2 ½ years. Despite facing many challenges in the times of pandemic, there are many opportunities too for a leader.
The employees as well as the employer (leader) can develop more skills and techniques around things like work-from-home, flexibility in work time etc. The pandemic taught us many things. We used to waste a lot of time during the pre-COVID 19 time, in physical meetings and traveling from one city to another. I think this is a long term gain.
Musaib Bhat is Masters Student in Commerce at University of Kashmir Srinagar
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.