As an epilogue to my previous thread, I wanted to get off my chest what I think leadership looks like in a crisis. I’m not an expert, as a registrar I lead my juniors but I don’t hold any major positions, so take what resonates here.

Leaders listen. Listening is a whole of body thing - it’s not inviting people to your office where they’ll tell you what you want to hear. They’re doing the shifts with you, they’re overhearing the corridor convos, they’re there in those brief moments when you lose your filter.

And because they are present, because their face is there consistently, they have everyone’s trust. If no one trusts you, you’ve failed before you begun. Our HoD was on the ground and listening well before the pandemic began and the trust was already there.

Also the food. If you’re not feeding people in a crisis, you’ve lost. This goes back to Maslows hierarchy of needs. Meet their basic needs. Food and safety.

If people perceive their basic needs are being met, they will trust you more. Listening, trust, basic needs - all of this needs to be met consistently on not just when the TV cameras go on.

The good leaders push back when they see that their workers needs aren’t being met. They are not sycophants willing to place their own career above worker safety. Even if bigwigs are trying to virtually arm wrestle them into changing their opinion.

Conversely, indecision is still a decision. There was a LOT of paralysis in upper echelons which was quickly replaced by calling us ‘hysterical’. We were the calmest in all of this because we had to be. For our juniors, for our patients, and for their families.

We were just asking for what we needed based on what was happening in front of us. No hysteria. So when we were called ‘hysterical’ by people with no skin in the game, we felt abandoned. ‘Hysterical’ was really just them projecting their own internal paralysis.

The leaders who have no relationships with us, who refuse to pivot because dogma, who are sycophants to the top, whose ego won’t let them be wrong, who attack others because they lack the ability or courage to communicate their own feelings are now easily recognised by us all.

Those leaders who are with us on the ground, listening and responding and making changes minute to minute, hour to hour, based off what they see and what we say, whose lines of communication are constant, two way, and consistent, are the ones you need in a crisis. Thankyou.