Leadership in times of grief

By Kim Jong-nam

Last Sunday, I turned on the TV to see what has been going on in this country since the coronavirus outbreak. I rarely watch TV, but I wanted to see, concretely and vividly, how people were coping with this unprecedented disaster. I took this as a good sign: the fact that I was showing an interest in the outside world again meant that I was recovering from the depression that had been causing me to feel hopeless.

My timing was perfect, the channel I had selected was showing a report on Daegu, which has been hit the hardest. The program showed how the city was recovering and interviewed ordinary people such as restaurant and store owners, and health care workers. It was heartbreaking to see so many people in so much pain and suffering anxiety due to their financial situation, worried about their job stability, or just the trauma of the general situation.

One restaurant owner lamented that he had only made 20,000 won last week, which is a little bit less than 20 dollars. He added that his restaurant is on the busiest street in Daegu. After this, there was an interview with a nurse who had volunteered to come to Daegu, which was a place most people tried to avoid. The nurse said, "My mother was sick when I was young and so I naturally became a nurse while taking care of her. Of course I felt the need to come to Daegu." I had tears in my eyes without knowing the reason. Who would not be moved by this?

The Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross popularized the five stages of grief. I myself had gone through all five stages, and I saw the people interviewed in different stages as well. These stages can also be seen sometimes when organizations go through difficult periods that are also highly emotional. During crises or critical changes, it is common for many employees to feel emotions like denial, anger, or frustration. This is particularly true when there is a hostile M&A or an acquisition by a buyout fund. The uncertainty of the future causes employees to go through psychological difficulties. They wrestle with fears of being singled out by their managers as the "weakest link" and laid off, and begin to think about what they should do if they lose their jobs. It is natural for even the most faultless workers to experience a lot of stress and anxiety. This unstable psychological environment disrupts organizational cohesion and relationships. The more unstable the environment, the more individualistic employees' outlooks tend to be. Thus, what is pivotal in times of crisis is leadership.

Good leaders are excellent connectors between the past and the future, between the rank-and-file workers and those who have the corner offices, and finally between culture and strategy. Maintaining balance is usually difficult, but losing it will only increase the confusion and thereby make the situation harder to overcome. Thus, leaders need to be resilient in order to prevent grief in their organizations.

Kim Jong-nam is the founding CEO of META (www.imeta.co.kr) and the author of three books on organizational culture and leadership. He works as an organizational development consultant globally. He has an office in Jakarta, Indonesia, as well as in Seoul.

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