Wael El Helou – Leadership in the Times of Crisis

Leadership in the Times of Crisis

An article by Wael El Helou

In a region that has been hit by adverse economic and market conditions for a few years now, crisis has become the new normal. Political turbulence, instability, wars, sanctions, corruption, and the list goes on and on making Maslow’s pyramid of needs go nuts over what to service first and what priorities look like, today.

On the individual, ‘person’ level, the reflection of those is even more severe with a duality of roles that stretches the most conditioned amongst us beyond their farthest comfort zone. Leaders, subject to personal, family, financial, life and corporate struggles, are there with an expectation to lead forward. Stress, helplessness, low morale, disengagement, ambiguity to the extent of blindness are among the few conditions the current environment has to offer.

Within all this, comes the pandemic causing a life threat, closing borders, locking social units in, and without any prior warning, disrupting most companies and their teams and putting them in an immediate survival state. They found themselves overnight playing a new game with new rules that almost no one is familiar with, let alone, savvy about.

Now, lead!

In this article, we will attempt to lay down 3 pillars of leadership under the current crisis, and to offer tools that can service plausible outcomes for each. These pillars are founded on the concepts of the paradox theory, and the tools shared aim at exploring ways to balance our approaches to self-leadership, business, and people in business.

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