Leadership in Crisis: Lessons from a Childhood Survivor

July 23, 2020 | by Ed Hoffman

Now is a difficult time for almost all businesses.  Some are shuttered and experiencing the worst economic trauma imaginable. For others, the demand for their products might be soaring, but the health and well-being of their employees seems almost impossible to ensure.  Each of these situations have employees, managers, and executives in places that they could not have imagined just a few months ago.  For most generations alive today in the U.S., this level of fear is a new and completely foreign reality.  While I feel fortunate not to have experienced firsthand the same tragedies as generations past, I believe there are effective strategies that we can pull from history and that we as leaders can deploy to change today’s potentially negative outcomes to something very likely positive.

As I consider some of the greatest perils of our world history, I can’t help but recall the story of a WW2 survivor who, despite the living nightmare of her childhood, found a way to maintain a positive outlook and endure.  As a young girl, she had been deported to Poland where she spent her childhood growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto. Later, she was held prisoner in  a labor camp from which she was eventually liberated by the Allied Forces.  This woman’s memories were vivid, her childhood horrific, yet she survived. Her name was Jola Hoffman—my mother. While my brothers and I were growing up, my mother would speak to us about how she endured such trauma.  She discussed in detail the importance of school, not just for the sake of education but for the sake of routine and familiarity.  She enlightened us about all the people who had helped her at their own personal risk, and she spoke lovingly about how her mother’s resourcefulness kept them both alive.

In 1994, at age 62, Jola died, but what she left me was a framework of how to endure times of crisis. This is not a theoretical framework; it is a real-world application that is as relevant today as it was during WW2.  In this blog, I will explore how during times of great crisis, all people within an organization from executive suite to employees on the front lines can have a profound impact on how we persist in a crisis and recover.  In times of turmoil, as business leaders we must:

• establish normalcy and a sense of calm within our organizations and businesses.
• recognize the extraordinary folks among our ranks and reward these individuals; and
• promote resourcefulness and effective problem-solving to achieve desirable outcomes.

Establishing Normalcy

By “establishing normalcy,” I mean keeping your organization on a regular rhythm similar to how you ran your business before the COVID-19 crisis. Do this by using whatever creative techniques you can muster.  In my mother’s case, she always spoke about the importance of school being open each day.  This kind of accessibility allowed for a routine where not only was she learning in the classroom, but she was able to stay in contact with children her own age.  Although the ghetto was a new and terrible place, school and friends were familiar, and Jola was able to hold onto those moments as an anchor of normalcy.

Though our challenges are different today, we can apply similar concepts.  For example, if your team used to be social and enjoyed eating lunch together or having coffee breaks, then make it a point to have a virtual lunchtimes and coffee breaks with the team.  Encourage your team to join for at least the first several sessions to help them adapt to this new routine. In many cases, people will opt out because it feels strange or different, but if you can get those folks to try just 5 sessions, you will likely find that they will continue to participate.

These kinds of gestures might seem small, but establishing a sense of routine and normalcy will pay off in all sorts of ways such as your team staying connected, improved information flow and an overall increase in esprit de corps . Right now, people’s personal lives are troubled by a tremendous number of unknowns. Fortifying their workplace connections and sense of community will be critical in establishing a sense of normalcy. Brainstorm with your team different ways you can establish new routines.  Try them, and if they don’t work, try something else.  Continue to learn, but once you decide on different strategies, stick with them.  Most importantly, lead the initiatives by example.

Extraordinary People

In my mother’s case, when the bad situation turned even worse in the Warsaw Ghetto, two women emerged and chose to do an extraordinary act of humanity and bravery. They hid my mother after she was smuggled out of the ghetto.  These two extraordinary women were not recruited or paid, but with nothing to gain and everything to lose, they stepped forward to help fellow citizens and people being persecuted.  This might be an extreme example, but people like these two women still exist in our communities today.

In your organization, look for the people who are stepping forward to do extraordinary things.  They’re there if you look for them. For example, it might be an employee that redesigns a workstation to increase  social distancing without increasing square footage or a team member that volunteers to take on actions items for someone who is out sick. These kinds of folks have a strong sense of community, of what is right, of what needs to be done to withstand a crisis.  When forming taskforces or working groups to develop solutions for different problems, promote these people to lead these groups.  They are likely not your senior managers but the people within your organization that have a strong sense of what is right and what needs to get done.   With a little guidance, they can pull your company through the turmoil.

Resourcefulness

Continuing with the parallel of my mother’s story, while good fortune may have been on her side, she and my grandmother survived because of their ability to cultivate and employ the things they did well.   Proficient in many languages, my grandmother was able to translate German, French, Russian, and Polish.  She had been a concert pianist who could think quickly on her feet, stay calm under pressure and exude tremendous confidence.  Armed with these resources, she was able to plan and smuggle my mother and herself out of the ghetto.  This resourcefulness kept them alive in the labor camps.  Though in no way guaranteeing my family would make it, these skills did increase their odds of surviving the war.

Resourcefulness in challenging times of crisis is crucial to coming out as strong or stronger than when the crisis started. Right now, there are vast numbers of employees working from home instead of at the office.  What tools have you put in place to enable your team to be more productive at home than they would have been in the office?  This is a great moment for all of us to learn additional skills and cross-skill train to increase flexibility as businesses and markets change post-COVID. How  you operated your business pre-COVID 19 will certainly be different after this has all passed.  How have you positioned your organization and company to excel in this new environment?  As a leader, if you are not thinking and acting on this, then no one is.

Final Thoughts

In times like these, the best of us will shine brightly—individually, organizationally and as a company.  There are no guarantees, and just as in Jola’s childhood, circumstance and chance certainly play a role.  The questions for all of us as leaders are: How can we best position our organizations to be successful using all the leadership skills we know, and how can we recognize and swiftly acquire the skills we still need to learn?  Stressful periods in business can bring out the worst in us, but this time, we need to bring out our best.