In business, change is the only constant. As a result, dealing with uncertainty created by change, such as change in the business environment, separates good from bad leaders. In other words, organizations that survive changes are evidence of their leader’s ability to guide the personnel regardless of the challenges they face. This makes leaders tactical and strategic problem solvers. However, the uncertainties created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created a challenge and opportunity for leaders to showcase their importance today and in the future. Among the different COVID-19 related challenges leaders have to solve, personnel and human resource management are the most important. For instance, due to the increased uncertainty at the workplace, leaders are continuously becoming closer with their people. Furthermore, the uncertainties created by the pandemic have shown that certain leadership styles are going to play a bigger role than others. For instance, Azizaha et al. (2020) predicts that in the future, transformational and servant leadership styles will play a bigger role in shaping organizations than transactional leadership style. The purpose of this paper is to discuss leadership today and, in the future, in the context of dealing with challenges to the science and practice of personnel and organizational psychology as introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Importance of Leadership to the Science and Practice of Personnel and Organizational Psychology
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The science and practice of personnel and organizational psychology is intricately related to the organization’s management and leadership styles, and how it treats and manages its human resources. Note, however, the leadership style adopted determines the employee’s attitude towards their employers, their satisfaction, commitment, and motivation (Baptiste, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced various uncertainties that affect organizational performance at all levels, prompting another look into which leadership styles are best suited for helping manage the organization in the uncertain times. These uncertainties are described as follows.
Employee Wellbeing
As a black swan event, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact at all societal levels. Apart from disrupting business operations, the pandemic has also affected the employee’s personal lives in different ways. Furthermore, the work life balance that was before has been disrupted (Uddin, 2021). As a result, the scope of practice for different organizational leaders has increased. For instance, to facilitate continuity of operations, different organizations have had to virtualize a significant part of their operations, such as have the employees work from home, even when it is done in shifts. Yet, these alternative working arrangements have their unique challenges. For instance, to accommodate employees to work from home, organizational leaders have to account for other potential disruptors, such as taking care of children and unreliable network connections. As a result, instead of giving hard deadlines, tasks can be distributed by providing a certain number of man-hours and leaving it to the employees to organize their time. These are a few ways through which leaders have had to consider their follower’s wellbeing in light of the uncertainties created by the pandemic.
The uncertainties are not limited to employee wellbeing, however. Over time, different leadership theories and styles have been introduced, implemented, and evaluated. Different organizations have shown preference for certain types of leadership styles over others. In a similar manner, the pandemic is currently forcing leaders to re-evaluate their approach to leading their organizations in light of the various challenges. For instance, transactional leadership theory reduces the leader-follower relationship as a pure transaction (Supriadi et al., 2020). As a result, employees are satisfied and committed to the organization as long as their immediate needs have been met. In the absence of the benefits, employees are more likely to look for better options, leading to the failure of the organization. The pandemic is, therefore, challenging current leaders to be highly adaptable in their approach to leading their organizations. If a transformational or servant leader is what the organization needs to ensure the employee’s wellbeing and the organization’s success during and after the pandemic, current leaders are highly encouraged to implement the required changes. After all, transformational and servant leaders are transparent, authentic, and are not afraid to admit they are vulnerable. These are qualities needed to secure a follower’s trust and commitment even when the chances of success are not high.
Ensuring Trust
For organizations that survive and even succeed, the post-COVID19 era will still be uncertain. After all, the short-term impacts will have been solved, leaving the unknown and unpredictable long-term impacts. Facing an uncertain future also means that securing employee trust will become essential to the field of personnel and organizational psychology. Yet, sustaining employee trust regardless of the challenges will be difficult. After all, the established strategies to secure and sustain employee trust will not be as effective as before or even completely ineffective. For instance, the current work environment is changing the nature of organizational communication, where there is a gradual shift from interpersonal communication. There is also a large shift towards increased remote and virtual communication and management styles. For instance, emails and video calls are increasingly becoming popular among virtual teams. Yet, these communication channels are not effective in non-verbal communication, which is important ensuring trust. The challenge, therefore, is to find implement strategies that will ensure employee trust despite the limitations imposed by the communications channel.
Main Concepts and Theories
If the field of personnel and organizational psychology is to help manage the current and future uncertainties caused by the ongoing pandemic, leaders need to focus on their followers, make sure their needs are met and their goals are aligned with the organization’s short- and long-term goals. This can be achieved by adapting the correct leadership theory and style. So far, two leadership theories have emerged as possible solutions.
Transformational Leadership Theory
Transformational leadership theory is essential to leading organizations through uncertain times for it encourages the several qualities. For instance, transformational leaders are not transactional and do not offer inducements in exchange for their followers performing several tasks (Black et al., 2019). Instead, transformational leadership theory encourages leaders to inspire their followers into action. Ensuring employee commitment and engagement requires several other qualities, however. To inspire a follower, a transformational leader uses their idealized influence, provide an appealing vision, and the follower’s potential development. With the uncertainties introduced by the pandemic, employees are highly likely to start questioning their lives, their career decisions, and future direction. Whatever answers they find, such as through introspection and self-reflection, they will re-evaluate their value to the organization and if their goals are aligned.
At the same time, the status quo is changing and has yet to settle to a new equilibrium. As a result, transformational leaders are in a position to help their followers navigate the uncertainties, such as by helping them question and challenge the emerging status quo. At the same time, transformational leaders have the responsibility to communicate the organization’s vision, which is essential to ensuring employee commitment and engagement. After all, employees are highly likely to follow a leader or commit to an organization if they share the same vision.
Servant Leadership Theory
While transformational leadership theory has the potential to shape the future of leadership in a post-covid19 world, servant leadership theory is more valuable in helping organizations navigate a crisis, such as the ongoing pandemic. After all, the nature of a servant leader is that they exist purely to ensure the growth and wellbeing of their followers and communities. If traditional leadership theory is an organizational pyramid with the leader at the top, servant leadership theory is the inversion of the pyramid, placing the leader at the bottom. As a result, the leader’s function is to facilitate their follower’s success. This makes servant leaders crucial to managing a crisis because they are intuitively aware of the challenges their followers and the organization is facing. Furthermore, they are in a position of power to not only help chart a path to success, but also inspire organization and ensure they are optimistic about their future prospects.
Note that a servant leader’s success is measured by the organization’s success. As a result, servant leaders have to play the following roles if they are to lead their organizations through the challenges imposed by the pandemic. First, by communicating a common vision, servant leaders have to bring their people together. The pandemic will continue to force difficult decisions. If the organization is not united, they are less likely to collaborate and make the needed sacrifices that will ensure its survival.
Secondly, decision making during and after the pandemic will force leaders to make quick decisions and communicate them as effectively as possible. Leaders are no longer afforded the time to consider their decisions. Furthermore, with the deterioration of the situation, such as the unpredictably impactful and deadly waves, leaders have to make their decisions under conditions of great uncertainty. If the decisions are poorly communicated and justified, such as not providing a reason behind a decision, the employees will create their justifications, even if they are inaccurate. The result will be a source of conflict which will impact the organization negatively.
Scientific Studies on the Role of Leadership in Determining the Future of Organizations
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, different studies have been conducted on the role of leadership, leadership styles, and theories in navigating pandemic related uncertainties and challenges. For instance, Antonopoulou et al. (2021) conducted a study where they concluded that if an organization is to increase its efficiency and responsiveness to the challenges imposed by the pandemic, it needs to adapt the transformational leadership style. Apart from increasing efficiency, the researchers also conclude that transformational leadership style is essential to increasing employee satisfaction.
The pandemic has also revealed a gap in literature between how leadership theories can be used to help an organization’s crisis response and management strategies. After issuing questionnaires to 283 employees from different organizations, Ma & Yang (2020) discovered that organizations that applied principles of transformational leadership in their crisis management strategies performed better than those that did not. Furthermore, Ma & Yang (2020) discovered that transformational leadership theory was crucial in shaping the employee’s perception and attitude towards the pandemic and the nature of their work.
In another study, Novitasari et al. (2020) set out to determine the role transformational leadership theory plays in improving employee performance. By focusing on the medical industry (which has not only been at the frontline when fighting the pandemic, but has also been the most affected), the researchers concluded that while transformational leadership did not have any significant impact on the employee’s performance, it did change their attitudes towards change. By increasing the employee’s readiness to change, transformational leadership contributes significantly by making the change management process for most organizations.
In a similar manner, literature on servant leadership theory and the pandemic has increased. Piorun et al. (2021) discuss a case study of how servant leadership style was used to manage the changes at the Lamar Soutter Library in response to the pandemic. While the paper did not collect any data, it goes into further details on how to implement the servant leadership style to solve emerging problems. The paper’s other unique contribution is that it recognizes that the pandemic situation is not static. Instead, it is continuously evolving and an organization’s implementation of servant leadership should evolve with it. As a result, there is a possibility that a new perspective to servant leadership will emerge.
At the same time, compared to transactional leadership, existing research is showing a growing interest in transformational and servant leadership to help organizations deal with the pandemic. Note that there are currently more papers published on transformational leadership than servant leadership. However, that is not enough information to conclude that transformational leadership is more valuable in managing a conflict situation. Furthermore, as the pandemic situation continues to evolve, it is unknown which leadership theory or style will have the chance to shape the future of leadership and the approach to personnel and organizational psychology.
Daily Applications
With the evolving pandemic situation, organizational leaders need to be closer to their employees and ensure their wellbeing, regardless of whether they are transformational or servant leaders. This can be done by allotting time for informal chats through the various communication channels. Leaders need to start thinking of themselves as friends, which means regular calls, such as on a daily basis, to connect with the employees and help each other solve emerging problems. At the same time, leaders need to re-evaluate their approach to teambuilding exercises. It used to be that the exercises would be conducted after certain intervals or after a significant incident revealing an underlying problem. If leaders are to help teams maintain their productivity even through digital means, they need to engage their people in exercises that span days or weeks. For instance, enthusiasts can form a team to share their hobbies, their respective progress, and even support each other.
More importantly, leaders need to improve their communication styles. In a situation where there is little time to justify every decision and get all on board, leaders need to communicate on a daily basis about critical decisions and be transparent about why said decisions were made. At the same time, leaders need to solicit feedback from the employees on a daily basis to make them a crucial part of the decision-making process.
Related Videos about Research or Daily Life
There are a lot of videos on leadership during the pandemic, including those discussing how organizational leadership and management will change in a post-COVID world. There are two important (relative to this paper’s subject matter): a webinar on crisis leadership by RSNA (2020) and another talk on how to manage employees in times of the pandemic by EPSI Inc (2020). These two videos are important because they embody the content and arguments made in this paper.
Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, leadership today and in the future is bound to change. While it is still early to determine its final direction and the status quo, due to the evolving pandemic situation, it is clear that transformational and servant leadership theories will continue to play a bigger role. In a similar manner, transactional leadership will continue to diminish, except in situations where it is still needed. The science and practice of personnel and organizational psychology is intricately related to the organization’s management and leadership styles, and how it treats and manages its human resources. As organizational leadership evolves, so will it.
References
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