In the second week of April, I had an interesting agenda less conversation with Anu Sirauthia, founder of Swadhaarani (a sustainable living start-up). The conversation meandered around economy, business, sustainability and leadership in the backdrop of the crisis and the rising numbers (in terms of infections and deaths) globally.

In the Leadership area, I shared four pairs that stood out for me while observing and reading about leaders in different arenas. The four pairs of leadership are:

Decisive & Creative – Leaders are required to take a call irrespective of data/no data/inadequate data and they need to be creative while gathering views and data, implementing/testing solutions etc.

Resilient & Positive – Ability to bounce back as ideas/solutions may not work or may not work for all as expected, at times you may not have any solid ideas/solutions at all, also being able to remain positive consistently as good news may not visit us so easily in a short span of time.

Open and Communicative – Leaders are not experts in all areas and when we are dealing with a crisis that is hydra headed, it is important to be open to hear out insights and information coming from different sections and corners. In the midst of panic and confusion compounded by speculations floating around in different social media, it is critical that regular and variety of effective communication channels are utilized. There is nothing called overcommunication by a leader in such circumstances.

Empathetic and Honest – Emotional connect and acknowledgment of what people are going through is at the core of leadership specially in scenarios where, lives and livelihood are getting impacted at a huge scale. Accepting and sharing with people what is being done and what is planned and how deep and serious is the impact and therefore possible actions that needs to be taken with adequate empathy, is not only challenging but at times at surface level appears contradictory. Taking a decision to cut salaries or announcing furloughs and doing it with an empathetic attitude doesn’t come easily to a lot of leaders. Napoleon defined the role of the leader is – ‘To define reality and give hope’, to do both in a crisis situation requires a strong leadership character which leaders build over a period of time.

The link to the complete 30 minutes conversation is – Watch the Youtube Video