BackWhat executives say about leading through uncertain times
Bill Gates, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other leaders sound off on constant adaptation; ‘Crisis is great revealer’
PremiumAs the pandemic stretches on, high-ranking leaders are confronting how best to keep their people from burning out while propelling their businesses forward.
Several executives who spoke at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on Tuesday, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates, said wise leaders need to prepare for change and help workers stay engaged.
“You’ve now got to make every part of an organization and every person’s mind adapted to the idea that you’re going to have to be constantly adjusting," said retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the top commander in Afghanistan and co-founded the McChrystal Group.
Technology has allowed millions to keep working, even as many offices stay closed and business travel is hampered, but the ability of teams to fully collaborate and build momentum is curtailed, said Simon Sinek, the executive coach who wrote books “The Infinite Game" and “Leaders Eat Last."
“The thing to do is not pretend that the old system just forced into the new system is going to work," Mr. Sinek said.
Gen. McChrystal said many companies experienced a surge of relief after the initial successful transition to remote work. Now firms are contending with the isolation that many workers feel and the need to empower them to get their jobs done well.
“Many of the things we do in the workplace are nonverbal," he said. “We’ve got to find ways to fill that void now—what’s not happening. We’ve got to remember that we’re all separated, and many people feel very, very alone."
In the military, Gen. McChrystal said leaders put a plan together and subordinates want tasks assigned to them. “They’d like to be told, ‘Do this this way. Achieve this.’ And sometimes you have to look at them and say, ‘Do whatever it takes to achieve this outcome. I can’t tell you what that’s going to be.’"
He sees parallels between his time in Afghanistan and the pandemic. “I found that because conditions across the big country were so different in villages and remote valleys, I had to change our guidance," he said, adding that he would tell those under his command, ‘If you get on the ground and find that the order that we gave you is wrong, execute the order we should have given you.’"
Mr. Sinek said leaders of companies faring the best through the pandemic and maintaining morale have cultivated the outlook of a whole new company.
“They’re pretending that they’re start-ups. No matter how much success they’ve had in the past, no matter how big they are, they’re saying ‘OK, this is day one, we have a product, we have a service, this is the marketplace, how are we going to build a company around what we want to sell?’"
The pandemic has spotlighted the lack of leadership in many organizations, Mr. Sinek said.
“Crisis is the great revealer," he said, adding that an often overlooked aspect to leadership is the ability to humble oneself. “Humility is being open to the ideas of others."
Companies adapting most successfully are bringing workers at the front-lines together with decision makers, Mr. Sinek said. “The most successful pivots are happening when we include the rank and file."
To better deal with future crises, companies should aim to cultivate rising leaders with active listening skills, empathy, the ability to give and receive feedback and to have difficult conversations, he said.
While many executives have effectively harnessed technology to connect their workforce, Mr. Sinek said truly effective leaders have also doubled down on their humanity.
“Many of them picked up the phone and called up their people and asked, ‘How are you?’ In other words, they were human. That’s just called good leadership. That should have been happening prior to the pandemic, and I hope that habit lasts after the pandemic," he said.
Advances in technology, such as Microsoft Teams, have allowed companies to keep operating effectively while workforces are remote, but finding new ways to replicate how workers interacted in groups when they were in person is essential, said Mr. Nadella.
Video meetings tend to be transactional, so leaders need to be cognizant of re-creating the conditions that occur before and after meetings when off-the-cuff conversations while walking down a hallway, for instance, can result in inspired ideas, he said. Mr. Nadella also warned that hours of consecutive video meetings trigger burnout.
“Thirty minutes into your first video meeting in the morning, because of the concentration one needs to have on video, you’re fatigued," he said.
Mr. Nadella emphasized the need for regular breaks to replicate the physical and mental transition that occurs when an employee leaves a meeting to help preserve cognitive function.
“When people say you’re working from home, it feels sometimes like you’re sleeping at work. And so the real challenge is, if that is the case, how do you have the transition?" he said. “In some sense it requires even more attention personally to your schedule so that you really do book in those moments of transition."
Mr. Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, talked about lessons in leadership he learned from his father, who died recently. Chief among them: lead by example.
Mr. Gates cited his father’s civic activism as inspiration for his own philanthropy and said he is hoping that corporate managers will lead by example on the vaccine.
“I hope in the trust network of people, various companies’ leaders can have credibility on this, particularly in the health sector. Because we’re not going to get that strong of [leadership] from government this time around," he said. “The health sector, even local doctors, will need to be a voice of reason."
Write to Kathryn Dill at Kathryn.Dill@wsj.com
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