How to Be a Good Leader When You've Never had One

11Calm, Cool, Collected: Leading Under Intense Pressure

Nothing tests your ability to lead like a crisis, and COVID‐19 was a big one.

I had a client named Rebecca (same Rebecca as earlier), who worked in health care (as you know). Early in the COVID outbreak, no one knew what to do. At this point, we were on month four, and the cases were piling up. We had started working together right before COVID struck, and the suddenness of the outbreak had blindsided us. As the case counts rose, we had to make a decision: How many patients with COVID do we allow? Or do we become a dedicated COVID facility, turning away anyone who didn't have COVID because other diseases didn't take vacations just because COVID was present. So many hospitals had to make that decision; it was difficult to meet the needs of people with non‐COVID medical issues.

At this point, the admin staff panicked because two out of every three patients had COVID, and the staff themselves were afraid of catching it. But as the staff panicked, Rebecca did not, though she was stressed. And, in a meeting, I could see it. She was unfocused on what we were talking about, and she had to pause every three minutes to answer a question.

So I asked her to talk to me about what was going on. As she told me about the crisis in her hospital, I told her that she was the leader no matter what. She had to have the cool hand as everything went crazy because if the leader panics, everyone else does, too. By not being the stable voice, ...