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LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES AND COVID-19: EMERGING CHALLENGES AND

OPPORTUNITIES

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LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES AND COVID-19: EMERGING

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Aayushi Mishra1, Srijan Anant2 , Anvita Raghuvanshi3, Ajai Kumar Singhal4

1
Research Scholar (SRF), Department of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj.
2
Research Scholar (JRF), Department of Commerce and Business Administration,University of Allahabad, Prayagraj
3
Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj
4
Professor, Department of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj

ABSTRACT:
With the medical, financial and social system on the verge of failing, the world is looking up
to the decisions of the leaders to survive in these decisive business times. As the current crisis is
exceptional in nature it is challenging to see how leaders would respond to such situation. The
purpose of this manuscript was to investigate leadership competencies required consequentially to
COVID-19. As Peter Drucker stated that “leaders grow, they are not made” but the foremost
question in these complex times is to determine how to grow leaders? The study highlights few
suitable leadership skills and competencies that are extremely useful to the existing HR practitioners
and organizations.
Keywords: leadership competency, pandemic, crisis management.

INTRODUCTION:
The Chinese authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), the first ever case
of corona virus, what went on to become a pandemic, on December 31st, 2019. As of writing there
are 181,007,816 confirmed cases across the world. The pandemic has resulted to hundreds of
thousands of fatalities, tested the health-care limits, and brought world in a great lockdown where the
economies worldwide are experiencing the worst recession since the great depression (Gopinath,
2020).
With the medical, financial and social system on the verge of falling the world is looking up
to the decisions of the leaders. As COVID-19 is increasing in an unparalleled pace, global leaders are
struggling how to address this worldwide inter-connected pandemic and to deal with its grave
repercussions.
The purpose of this manuscript was to investigate leadership competencies required
consequentially to COVID-19. In depth study of literature has been done in order to have an
overview about leadership competency. The question that has initiated this manuscript was what
leadership skills are necessary pre and post pandemic? How leaders can cultivate such skills? And
what competencies of leaders will help sustain in the post-pandemic era. We have explored
leadership competencies from some of the best examples around the world accompanied by
challenges and opportunities that will help and support leaders in this new era.

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCY:
An integral part of an organization that is responsible for alignment of individual as well
organizational goal is a „leader‟. Not only stakeholders but society also gets benefitted directly or
indirectly through a visionary leader. Peter Drucker in his book The Practice of Management (1954)
defined leadership as “The lifting of man‟s vision to higher sights. The raising of a man‟s
performance to a higher standard. The building of a man‟s personality beyond its normal limitations”
(Swain, 2016). Peter Drucker stated that “leaders grow, they are not made” but the major issue in
these complex times is to determine how to grow leaders.

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To acknowledge the challenges and opportunities during the time of a pandemic it is essential to
adequately address the competent leadership requirement in an organization. Earlier researches show
that organization these days invest heavily into acquiring competent leaders and enhancement of
their competencies. Personality traits, skills, values, knowledge, capacities that facilitate one‟s ability
to perform leadership tasks can also be termed as leadership competencies (Boyatzis, 2008).
Research shows that developing competency models significantly contribute towards identification
of individual abilities required to become a leader at work (Hollenback, McCall, & Silzer).
Under the study of social psychology authors such as (Platow, Haslam, & Reicher, The
Social Psychology of Leadership, 2017) emphasized on individual traits and personality of a leader
and defined leadership as “process of influencing others in a manner that enhances their contribution
to the realization of group goals”. These authors further asserted “how social influence emerges from
psychological in-group members”. On the other hand Sociologists such as (Guillén, 2010) undertook
his research by stating the “relationship between leader and the led [and] the different paths to
leadership”. Scholars such as (Bass, 1985) pointed out at transactional and transformational behavior
of a leader. Transactional leaders, according to (Burns, 1978) motivate the masses they lead to
deliver superior performance by making them aware about the relevance of their contribution to the
organization. Transactional leaders are generally task-oriented, focused on aligning organizational
goals along with employee performances. On the other hand transformational leaders are employee
focused, who engages in information exchange with employees and motivates them to follow
leaders‟ footsteps (Quintana, 2014).
Amidst existential crisis and epistemological struggle, the above given definitions and
perceptions of the said scholars somehow assist in clearing out the vague concept of leadership
competency. However with this comes the challenge of understanding the competencies associated
with leadership excellence that could help out in present day crisis.

THE NEED FOR COMPETENT LEADERSHIP:

The unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic crisis disrupted the entire global market of trade and
services. The world saw complete shutdown of the economies in the form of a lockdown. A number
of service providers such as hairdressers, hotels, airlines and tourism sector found themselves jobless
in times of pandemic. Contrarily education, media, financial services had to resort to unanticipated
ways in order to operate (Bartsch, et al, 2020). With highly transformational and pandemic induced
work environment, the bar of competent leadership is raised.
The response to this pandemic brought on some impressive innovative decisions that made
organizations rethink customary working boundaries. Specifically, Amazon can be used as an
example of exemplary leadership competency. Amazon significantly extended its delivery segment
by including online grocery delivery to provide essentials to those in need [ (Amazon, 2020) as cited
by (Aguinis, et al, 2020)]. Amazon India‟s „Covid Warriors‟ initiative setup an ecosystem to assist
employees‟ medical emergencies during India‟s second COVID wave. The team had a leader in all
the major cities that worked round the clock to assist employees find hospital beds, isolation centers,
insurance and salary queries (Abrar, 2021). Evidently research based on crisis situation and its
management emerges generally from man-made threats such as terrorism and civil unrest, hardly
anything can be found on peculiar kind of crisis such as COVID-19.
COVID-19 situation brought unmatched challenges such as lack of medical assistance,
oxygen shortages and the biggest of all among the corporate world was losing good employees.
Losing good employees rendered irreparable damage on the part of the organizations. During such a
hostile environment the need for competent leadership arises. The significant challenges during these
times are „undependable information, situation novelty, unclear and shifting goals and ill-structured
situations‟ (Kayes, Allen, & Self, 2017) that eventually lead to increased lay-offs.

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POST-COVID LANDSCAPE: CHALLENGES FACED BY LEADERS:

Organizations require leaders who can make difficult choices during such abrupt situations.
The pandemic has impacted the lives of people ruthlessly and as Forbes said “employees look at their
leader for examples of what behavior is acceptable” (Ali, Anum, Nasir, & Ahmad, 2021).
Organizations have seen dramatic shift in the working parameter of employees and although they are
working rigorously for the welfare of employees, there still remains a gap at the actual ground-level
reality.
Some Changing Work Practices
● Isolation Due to severity of the disease employees sometimes have to work
in isolation. This leads to reduced physical, moral and spiritual
support.
● Workload The working hours have notably lengthened. Long on-call timings
reduced rest period and have increased stress among employees.
● Threats to livelihood Due to decreased production and lockdown in most of the
countries across the world several organizations are reducing
work hours, cutting down on non-urgent roles in organizations
and have resorted to layoffs.
● New Technology There is a learning curve but the use of technology is time-
consuming and stressful.
● Health and Safety Lack of medical assistance and shortage of supplies have forced
Fear people to live in constant fear of their health and safety.
● Unknown, unclear In reality there are no certain answers for the disease and the
and uninformed future of employees.
future

Table 1.1: Some changing work practices

Source: (Rosa, Schlak, & Rushton, 2020) (Parks, 2020)
Pandemic‟s heightened rate of risk, volatile environment and ambiguous future have
ultimately led to the question do we need more skilled leadership? (Reiche, et al, 2020.) Generally
leaders of the organizations were advised to follow the guidelines and directions of the experts,
especially the authorities of the World Health Organizations (WHO). But proactive thinking and
prompt decision-making such as in the case of New Zealand Prime Minister, is what makes you
stand out. New Zealand‟s first case was detected on February 28th, 2020 and within the span of less
than three weeks the country went into complete shutdown. The country‟s Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern was applauded for quick and drastic measures such as closing the national borders for outside
travelers, instituting level-4 lockdown where people were allowed to interact with members at home
only. As of this writing New Zealand reported 2382 cases with 26 deaths (WHO COVID-19
Dashboard, 2021).
Similar exemplary example can be seen in Australia. Australian Prime Minister imposed
complete travel ban from travelers from China much before other countries thus, defying the WHO.
Taiwan helped its patients by providing stipends to infected people and with whom they have come
in contact with for better observance to public health recommendations. The government of Denmark
covered a large portion of salaries in private companies in order to avoid large-scale lay-offs.
Notable mention also goes to India that provided free meals and rations to lower-income group
people (Frieden, 2021).
The above given examples of numerous countries shows that political system, healthcare and
medical facilities are not the same everywhere. But when the reality struck in the form of a global
pandemic it showed that neither the political power nor the financial circumstances can help the

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countries, only competent leadership. Even the mightiest (United States of America) have suffered
piteously the only thing that led the countries to manage the crisis successfully is leadership; the
ongoing pandemic is the best argument we have seen in generations.

IMPACT ON WORK CONTEXT: WHAT DO EMPLOYEES WANT?

It is hard to imagine post-pandemic work scenario across the world. Once the pandemic subsides we
might see that there would be a cluster of workforce that would prefer working remotely from the
comfort of their homes, while others would be eager to work with in-person collaboration with their
colleagues and friends. In the following section we have discussed post-COVID what leadership
support should be extended to employees during such extraordinary times and how it might benefit
employees in the future.
1. Be Proactive: Generally being proactive is considered to be a basic trait of a good leader. But
the crisis of COVID-19 appeared to be a true test of it. As people were forced to remain
inside closed doors this gave educational institutions golden opportunities to proactively
grow their business along with helping students by shifting to online mode. For example:
Zhejiang University of China started operating online from February 24th. Its online teaching
programme covered all the students including international students. The experimental
initiative of online teaching was a hit and the university offered 5000 online courses to
students worldwide (Wade & Bjerkan, 2020). Looking at the up surged demand for medical
equipment like ventilators and shortage of automobiles in the market companies like Ford,
Tesla and General Motors swiftly switched their idle production into making ventilators
(Dirani, et al., 2020).
2. HRD Support: When jobs are threatened and market growth is stagnant, employees tend to
lose their morale and confidence. Communication constantly from team-leaders, ensuring the
safety and well-being of employees and staff members, coordinating stakeholders, offering
emotional support to the grieving can go a long way at the time of a pandemic.
3. Creating a digital legacy: This pandemic has pushed the organizations to the cliff of a digital
revolution. In his article Adi Gaskel put forth several positive innovations such as installing
plexi-glass by grocery stores and other retailers, robots in hotels and digital transformation in
the health care and education sector (Gaskel, 2020). The authors have suggested that the
organizations should think about “hybrid virtual model” of having workforce employed both
onsite and at home (Alexander, Smet, & Mysore, 2020). Researchers in China have utilized
AI technology to disclose differences between computed tomography scans of COVID-19
patients (Farrugia & Plutowski, 2020
4. Communication: Constant communication will help resolve fear and adjustment issues of
employees during the time of pandemic. Since person to person interaction is rarely
happening during the crisis and is also unknown about the future, leaders must make sure that
they make most of the digital communication. Virtual meetings, e-mails, podcasts, social
media and so on can be used to interact with the members. HR department plays a pivotal
role in ensuring consistent communication between leader and employees and assisting them
to set achievable and realistic goals.
5. Fostering Empowerment and Positivity: Mental health wellness has become of chief
importance and leaders of the organizations are at such powerful position that their single
step can influence masses. In an article of Forbes (Brower, 2020) predicted that leadership
and mental health would be at focal point of the crisis, working from home would be the new
normal scenario, team-engagement would be frequent, gap between work-life disparity would
increase, and there would be noteworthy increase in flexibility and development of
technology.

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The ability to reach out to their people and motivate them to work for common goals during
working hours and emphasize on self-care during non-working hours, connecting with friends
and families and more importantly looking out for one‟s safety, what truly make one a global
leader.

FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES:
The journey of an individual towards a competent leader must be characterized by adequate
technical competency, resilience, effective communication and malleable inter-personal
relationships. Competencies are ubiquitous but to channelize them at the organizational level to
identify the required skills and attributes is quite complex. This shift towards creating competent
leaders performing during a crisis such as COVID-19 has paved way for some future research. The
field of leadership competency during the times of a pandemic like COVID-19 has broadened its
horizon for researchers and scholars to draw potential findings from past research and draw
conceptions regarding the future.
Without collective and collaborative leadership any country or any organization cannot
survive a situation like this, as it evident from the example of the United States to the crisis, where
lack of coordination can be seen. Grave risk of joblessness and financial hardships, children lacking
the access to basic educational infrastructure, need for innovation and invention in the field of
science and tech are all the major factors that should be looked upon as opportunities.

CONCLUSION:
COVID-19 has impacted every individual around the world in one way or the other. The
danger of this pandemic is still persisting and poses grave danger to everyone. At the organizational
level things were and still are unpredictable and hostile. Although we are living in difficult times
COVID-19 has reflected light on some of the best leadership practices.
The article aimed to demonstrate the challenges and opportunities for leaders in the present
pandemic situation. We have attempted to discuss some literature based crisis required leadership
competencies. As it is apparent the study highlights the leadership skills necessary at the time of a
crisis, discussed some finest leadership examples and reflection on leaders‟ actions in the post-
pandemic circumstances. Post-pandemic leaders will look up to the future but employees will
definitely peek into the past and onto the performance of their leaders. Considering the losses that we
have suffered due to this crisis now is the time to unite tor efforts and work collaboratively to emerge
stronger than ever.

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