Strategies for Effective Leadership in Times of Turbulence: Insights and Best Practices

           The world today faces profound political, economic, social, and technological dynamics, which call for the highest levels of leadership ability at the family, organizational, community, and national levels. Leaders feel overwhelmed by a sense of disarray and anxiety. They have learned that piecemeal solutions for accommodating fundamental change do not work. Accordingly, they have realized that there must be a fresh framework that helps them make sense of the confusion of their times and obtain the clarity that would make possible practical solutions to their pressing challenges, as proposed by Imparato and Harari.    

           The two major conflicts in the world at the moment, namely the Russian invasion of and war with Ukraine and the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, have brought increased global uncertainty and held back economic recovery worldwide. While the war in Ukraine continues to impact most of the world seriously and distort the workings of poor economies through higher commodity, food, and fuel prices, the attack on Israel by Hamas militants threatens to roil the entire Middle East and interfere with global crude supplies leading to shortages, higher prices, and their attendant effects on vulnerable economies.  

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 stretched leaders’ abilities at organizational and national levels, forcing them to think of innovative ways to help their people fight the pandemic’s health, economic, and social impacts. They had to devise emergency responses to guide the development of vaccines, strengthen health systems, protect poor and vulnerable groups, support businesses, create jobs, promote growth, and expand social protections.

           Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic posed perhaps the greatest challenge the world has had to confront in the past three years to date. Although mercifully now past, emerging variants of the coronavirus, which cause the COVID-19 disease, keep popping up in various places across the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to warn governments not to relax their vigilance. An impact study conducted by the IFPRI suggested that the global recession caused by COVID-19 was deeper than that of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, with severe impacts on poverty concentrated in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.     

           The complex challenges facing the world today call for dynamic and competent leadership. It is now the leader’s role, task, and responsibility at all levels of society to provide productivity-enhancing solutions in light of increased populations, pressure on the environment caused by diminishing resources, and increased human interactions due to international migrations and globalization. The range of potential threats that leaders of today have to contend with span the whole gamut of poverty, disease, and environmental breakdown (identified in the Millennium Development Goals), threats from conflict between states, threats from violence and massive human rights violations within states, threats from terrorism, threats from organized crime, and threats from the proliferation of weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but also conventional ones. 

Exceptional efforts are today needed to promote and entrench transparency in the rule of law, put in place measures to save lives, protect the poor and vulnerable, support businesses and job creation, and rebuild resilient institutions that can withstand the shocks of disruptions of political, economic, social, and technological upheavals. The world’s leaders will also have to deal with the impacts of climate change through sourcing for and efficient deployment of finances to fight climate change, support adaptation and resilience, and cut emissions that generate greenhouse effects. 

In light of the happenings in the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe, it is now more pressing than ever before that leaders do more to fight racism in all its forms, ethnicity, incompetence and other malfeasances like corruption. It is a sobering fact that the vice of corruption seems to be intractable and is affecting the public offices from the smallest nation to the world’s leading nations. This makes ordinary citizens lose faith in the promise of good governance and democracy and erodes the gains that previous generations have made to entrench good values as guiding lights for succeeding generations. 

           Africa’s leaders (in all sectors: public, private, education, business, military, and religion) face special challenges in improving the resilience of the continent’s institutions and the welfare of its people. This is especially crucial given the continent’s past of colonialism, which effectively upset the traditional systems of governance and installed imported European models in their place.  

           Evidence of some of Africa’s special challenges can be seen in the failure of the democratic elements, particularly those that deal with elections for political leadership positions. Available data shows that African leaders, for the most part, have not been accountable to their citizens in this regard. A study by Brookings, a civil society organization, for example, observes that many African countries continue to lag behind as far as the deepening and institutionalizing of democracy is concerned. 

Government impunity, particularly that associated with the abuse of executive power and the violation of human rights, is an ongoing challenge.     

           History has taught us that, periodically, and often at the most inconvenient times, we need to make a sharp break with old habits and deliberately learn new ways of dealing with our emerging challenges. Our world today faces just such a moment. We need effective leaders who have the ability and wisdom to process the changes taking place around them. They will then work with their people to make sense of the new paradigms and experiment with a range of solutions until those that are pragmatic are found.  

           The first imperative of leadership in a turbulent time is to admit that we live in an unsettling time that demands intellectual honesty to acknowledge that burying our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich won’t solve the existential challenges of today. We must cultivate inner courage and the moral clarity needed to confront the major issues of our day.  

The author Paul Misati holds an MBA degree from the University of Nairobi. He has a special interest in management, strategy, market research and public governance issues. He can be reached at [email protected]