As I watch the world navigate the complex landscape created by the COVID-19 pandemic, I cannot help but reflect back on my own lifetime. Over the years my path has brought me my own fair share of crises and I’ve learned many leadership lessons along the way. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that having a shared purpose, vision and values on the part of those involved creates the calm required to persevere through the crisis. Afterall, we cannot manage crisis alone.
Take for example my experience during The Russian Constitutional Crisis. I was charged with creating a foreign patient department at The Kremlin Hospital. As US Advisor, one of our team’s goals was the creation of a western-model International Patient Department in the coveted main building. The team included physicians, chief nurses, the chief doctor of the hospital, and multiple interdisciplinary professionals, with whom I’d worked for the past 8 months. Turf protection was a concern and the physician-led leadership group was hesitant to change, and more hesitant to accept suggestions from a non-physician American female. Professional exchanges between hospital leadership and their counterparts at my U.S. affiliates in New York and Chicago led to trust and a willingness to work as a team to deliver outstanding care, educate staff in western care, and empower them to advocate on the part of patients.
On October 3rd, 1993 Moscow’s White House was shelled. Quickly rising to the challenge, the chief nurse and nurse manager identified those patients in need of more complex care and created a triage and escort/transport team to lead 61 patients to safety. Staff nurses accompanied ambulatory patients to safety and facilitated transfers to a more obscure government hospital. The local staff at the new location acted quickly to accommodate the influx of new patients, as well as those who had been injured on the frontlines. Communication was key and although language barriers existed, they did not preclude us from offering exemplary emergency care. Trust and transparency were key to our success. With personal responsibility for the ex-pats from the United States, Canada, and local embassies, I led by example. I wanted my peers to see me as a leader willing to do what was needed to ensure positive outcomes, including providing care for a New York Times photographer who was shot that day. I communicated with his family, treated his gunshot wounds, and brought a sense of calm to what was an otherwise horrific situation for those who sought refuge. Team members rose to the occasion and supported our purpose and values.
How did I lead through this crisis? I relied on principles of leadership gleaned throughout my multi-cultural career, including these six tips:
Lessons Learned and Takeaways
Be the leader on whom your team can rely. You don’t need to know all of the answers, and some of the answers may come to you from your teammates as the crisis, or pandemic, continues. Don’t be afraid to say that you don’t know. Sometimes the most challenging situations steer us to the right decisions – decisions that speak to who we are, the leader we want to be, and the best of what our teammates have to offer.
Sharon M. Weinstein, MS, RN, CRNI, FACW, FAAN, CSP
Sharon is an experienced speaker, author, consultant, and former nurse executive who has "been there, done that" when it comes to crisis management. She knows crisis, and how to lead individuals and organizations through the stressors, focus on the goal, find balance, and prepare for the unexpected. For over three decades, Sharon has worked with C-Suite executives in the healthcare, hospitality, and human capital spaces across the country and around the globe. She directed the Office of International Affairs for the U.S.-based hospital alliance, Premier, for over 10 years and created the multidisciplinary healthcare infrastructure for the eleven new countries of the former Soviet Union. She holds the coveted Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, the highest earned international recognition for professional speakers.