Using Virtuous Leadership in Chaos to Reimagine Beneficial Practices of Employee Cognitive Psychology

• In Event: Presentation | Changing Leadership Cultures in Healthcare

Short Description

A pandemic, global economic strife, aggressive weather patterns, and widespread civil unrest has beset the 2020s and has created shifts in managing people remotely and where social distancing allows, managing them in person. Those in charge of leading during these unprecedented times have come to understand the potency of human emotional reaction to the various socio-environmental phenomena encountered. What we have learned is that employees must continue to be nurtured through a virtuous leadership model and techniques such as mindfulness and motivational cognitive psychological practices are a powerful people elixir to help accommodate this effort as levels of chaos grow.

Detailed Abstract

A pandemic, global economic strife, aggressive weather patterns, and widespread civil unrest has beset the 2020s and has created shifts in managing people remotely and where social distancing allows, managing them in person. Those in charge of leading during these unprecedented times have come to understand the potency of human emotional reaction to the various socio-environmental phenomena encountered. COVID-19 is an unprecedented world event. In fact, if we look back over other epidemics such as SARS back in 2003, current reactivity and community response ushers in some similar parallels witnessed before. However, as the world has encountered a variety of crises over the years, and each unique event provides a different set of variables, COVID-19 has challenged leadership perceptions and tested the rigor of cogent decision-making abilities. What we have learned is that employees must continue to be nurtured through a virtuous leadership model and techniques such as mindfulness and motivational cognitive practices are a powerful people elixir to help accommodate this effort.
Recently, there has been a renewed interest in virtuous leadership. According to Hendriks, et. al. (2020), “virtuous leadership is defined here on a global level as a leadership style where the leader’s voluntary (i.e. intrinsically motivated and intentional) behavior consistently exhibited in context-relevant situations aligns with the virtues of prudence, temperance, humanity, courage, and justice.” (p. 955, para 1). Thus virtuous leadership is a style that can most certainly be applied to managing employees at a distance, a common phenomenon since the pandemic took hold, but it grew rapidly as it was ushered in unexpectedly for many leaders and their employees. Such chaos challenged everyone to work and live differently for their own protection.
But in all of this, there have been both good and bad decisions by leaders when engaged in rapid onset of change events that impact employees. As decision-makers struggle and continue to look for better ways to lead during all this mayhem, we ponder: What have leaders learned and what tactical strategies can we begin to embrace for the future in this new era? Secondly, how do leaders in a new era of conflated potentials for socio-environmental impacts ensure their staff is also prepared as well?
For leaders managing employees, there should be an oriented focus on helping employees not only understand but deal with the “psychological shift” that can occur because of burnout and fatigue amidst their experiences during rapid onset of change events. In late February 2021, leaders in Texas experienced a weather disaster that left 4 million people without heat, electricity, water, and access to food. Many grocery stores struggled alongside other businesses to react swiftly, to manage the arc or tidal wave of unanticipated impact. The stressors on employees became evident quickly.
Those in the healthcare field, who have been particularly battered as frontline workers have seen firsthand the pandemic’s toll on life let alone weather-related fatalities and stressors, but who have been trained to focus during emergency impacts have felt the confluence of events psychically, “For Ramirez, a nurse at Houston Methodist Hospital, five years of catastrophes made the ice storm feel almost routine. Like so many others in Houston’s health care industry, the 29-year-old nurse has come to expect the unexpected — chaos on top of chaos” (Downen, 2021, para 5).
To date, the evidence of compromised mental health and well-being and the consequences of enduring exposure to a variety of lethal socio-environmental phenomena have begun to take their toll on people. The unbridled tenacity of social ingressions experienced in the past year have become unprecedented, and the burden to the psyche has not been without costs. An example based on benchmarking data obtained from the University Career Optimism index that surveyed 5,000 nationally represented adults with oversamples of 300 adults, as well in 20 various regions of the United States, reflects the following: The survey revealed 51% of Employed Americans say the pandemic has negatively impacted their work-life balance, 40% of employees fear losing their job due to the pandemic and 35% of Americans say the pandemic held them back in their careers (Edelman, 2021).
The possibility of implementation of psychological methods in dealing with stress offers great potential to leaders, especially when combined with Mindful Leadership practice. The need to act has never been greater and recent larger-scale studies have revealed what we have learned over the year about where the next level of focus and training should zero in on. A Denmark study utilized comparative analysis from an online survey implemented that was administered to 162 hospital leaders, of which approximately 70 % completed.
The results of the Denmark study revealed that leaders who were heads of departments felt better prepared to communicate during crises than their ward manager counterparts who were also challenged with their own emotional valence during COVID-19. To this end, those who had management education had a greater perceived locus of control as well as those with 5 or more years of experience (et al. “Health Professional Frontline Leaders’ Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study,” 2021). Leaders must be able to transfer and nurture employees, training to important regular mental health hygiene led as a gauntlet to the possibilities on massive scale burnout and reactivity in stressful situations.
These examples open the door to evidenced-based methods of circumventing and fostering enhanced resilience and hardiness through Mindful Leadership and Cognitive Psychology practices that when combined, can change the overall outcomes of employee’s ability to deal optimally amidst rapid onset of change impacts. This can serve to reimagine the importance of cognitive psychology so leaders along the entire public spectrum of non-profit, for-profit, government, and academia, can help subordinates stay motivated and optimistic, a virtuous leadership model, to do good while still staying true to return on investment and other corporate goals (Wang & Hackett; 2020).

Participants

• Rodney James Luster, University of Phoenix
  Presenter

• Erik Bean, University of Phoenix
  Presenter