Business Leaders must ADDRESS during the COVID-19

India is under the 3^rd country wide lockdown announced first by the Prime Minister of India first during the last week of March 2020. The country will thus, remain deactivated continuously for almost 60 days unless the lockdown is extended further.

Business leaders and senior managers in India have a critical role to play during and after the ongoing COVID-19 infected economy and organizations. Employees who has knowledge about remote jobs, want their leaders to address them, motivate them and keep them together for meeting the unprecedented economic challenge.

While every leader will likely choose his or her words, passion and strategy to share, I venture to offer the following ADDRESS (an acronym here) listing the following speaking points:

1. A: Accept the fact that business performance, productivity and profitability will decline though will bounce back sooner or later as per the resilience of the business.
2. D: Dedicate yourself relentlessly to the company mission and revival and draw inspiration from the care given by the company, family and friends.
3. D: Digitize work processes and documentation as much as feasible and reduce the reliance on physical person and office.
4. R: Restrict negative behavior, emotions at work and include metrics of cost cutting, innovations and customer retention.
5. E: Empathize with those employees who need more time to return to normal work life from the long lockdown, isolation, trauma or tragedy.
6. S: Speak to the employees proactively on employment related fears or anxieties like layoffs, downsizing, cuts, and medical benefits. Keep direct lines of communication open.
7. S:Support the supervisors in raising the morale and their employability of employees at all levels. Encourage digital training and continuing education from national and international credible providers and business schools towards gaining new skills and competencies. Many of them are now tuition free

Leadership is a critical element during times of crisis, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One powerful leadership style that can help is servant leadership, which prioritizes serving the needs of employees first, and then the needs of the organization. Many articles like this one discuss the benefits of servant leadership in action, especially when employees are facing unprecedented challenges and need support from their leaders. Through frameworks like the ADDRESS model, leaders can demonstrate their commitment to serving the needs of their employees and the organization by accepting the challenges faced by employees, dedicating themselves to the company mission, empathizing with employees, and supporting them in gaining new skills. It is only by adopting such a servant leadership approach that we can hope to navigate through the challenges posed by the pandemic and emerge stronger on the other side.