Inspiring change in a time of crisis

At its heart, social leadership is about unleashing human potential to help build a better society. So while the Covid crisis has changed so much, what helps people to operate at their best is a constant. People flourish when they have control, autonomy, perspective and purpose.

These are the factors that create psychological safety. And when people are psychologically safe, they are flexible and adaptable. And with exhaustion setting in as we come out of the first shock of the pandemic, it will be too easy for teams to be frozen back into old habits.

Healthy, resilient teams will continue to exercise control and make the changes needed - however small - for their working lives to be sustainable and effective. They will be unafraid of shifting conventions in meeting formats, information sharing practices and role sharing that help make them more efficient.

Autonomy will flourish where leaders seize this opportunity for radical delegation, really living by a principle of trust in others to make the right decisions. Nurturing your relationships with colleagues in different roles or sectors will help you keep perspective. And taking the time to step back from the daily and ask yourself “What is the one thing I can do to really make a difference here ?” will keep you focussed on purpose.

In all of this, the importance of empathetic leadership and finding a way to role model how you are protecting your own emotional well-being cannot be overstated. This is, indeed, turning out to be a marathon not a sprint, so setting a sustainable pace for yourself and your organisation will be a big part of your future success.

Like so many others, we have been asking ourselves how we can help organisations and people flourish in such difficult times. That’s why we set up a weekly campfire of changemakers from across the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. It has been a source of warmth and learning for us - we’d love to have you join too.

All our services have gone digital and we have been learning live with our clients how best to deliver Board meetings, workshops and team planning. We have been pleasantly surprised by how effectively digital tools can support creative and strategic conversations. We are now developing more ways of supporting your strategy thinking in a world which may just have become digital first.

And we want to do more. From today we are opening up access to our most popular tools – the first of them is the grief cycle which you can find with our suggestions about how you can use this with your team right now. We look forward to continuing to share these with you over the coming weeks and months.