Leadership test

THE coronavirus pandemic is a global test of leadership.
Sadly we see in the Parliament, our so-called leaders arguing about the best taro, betel nut, border funding, and human rights under declared state of emergency (SOE).
How shallow in understanding can our leaders be when our very existence depend on the decisions they make! Now all our leaders want to go and save their people in the villages and rural areas.
Not like before where they appeared to be driven by self-conscious of survival, building their own wealthy empires and enjoying the luxuries of the cities while their people suffer. We will see many things that frighten us as we walk along the various threads of the coronavirus pandemic.
But whether it’s about panic shopping, closed borders or social distancing, it will be the leadership or lack of leadership that will stick in our minds when we come out the other end.
As this pandemic stretches our leaders, we’ll find out whether they can make the necessary adjustments to enable us to thrive rather than just survive.
The ability of leaders to shift their thinking and the thinking of those around them will be key to our successfully managing our personal and professional lives through the current crisis.
To do that, these leaders, our leaders, will have to grasp the need for a change in thinking focused on actions that can create and achieve the best results.
Being inspired is important, but it must be more than simply inspiration, which often ends after the ‘feel-good period’. Instead, we will need to see transformation to successfully traverse this extreme situation.
There may be no better quote than this: “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”.
We find ourselves with no clear path, but with an expectation that leaders will make one for all of us.
We know that in battling this pandemic, leaders will have to make decisions quickly and implement the steps required to try to stay ahead of the virus. We are better off overreacting and apologising than underreacting and being sorry.
We will quickly see that not all leaders are created equally.
Some will innately take the role they have been given, and, as Churchill said, make this their finest hour. Others will prove they have no finest hour.
Let’s hope that those who are leading us through this pandemic, more than ever before, will be able to say that this was their finest hour.

Samuel Ilau
LAE