Reflecting and Learning in Lockdown: Leadership Approaches to Crisis Management

This chapter shares reflections and learnings gained during the lockdown in the UK. The authors explore leadership approaches to crisis management. They link their analysis, first of all, to the instinctual response of organizations to survive in order to then explore how to thrive in times of crises. The authors underline the importance of shared leadership, unity of purpose, and attention to people. While these aspects play a crucial role in humanistic resources management, they also highlight that managing people has to be sensitive to both individual circumstances and collective needs. During a crisis, the personal and the professional can be easily blurred, with both positive and negative consequences; inequality and belonging are powerful and complex dynamics that must be explored and addressed at the singular, organizational, and systemic levels. As such, a diffused, empathic, inspirational, and open style of humanistic leadership that focuses on organizational unity in diversity and on the people, and that maintains a greater focus on behavior and relationships rather than authority and position, could be the sine qua non of leading in times of crisis.