Apart from being a deadly virus, COVID-19 has also managed to unleash and spread a significant physically benign ‘virus’ analogy, “Women vs Men to lead in a crisis” and a ceaseless reference to the ‘Glass Cliff’ phenomenon.
During this combat of COVID-19, our world leaders have been subject to close scrutiny on their crisis management skills. As the situation slowly unfolds, we start to notice stark differences in leadership styles between the female leaders and their male counterparts. The compelling female leadership approach to handling this crisis has created an immense impact behind their success.
Tsai Ing-wen, Prime Minister of Taiwan, was widely appreciated for her timely interventions in dealing with the crisis, while Mette Frederikson from Denmark, the youngest in the country’s history was hailed and appreciated for taking tough steps to close borders of her country to curb the spread of Coronavirus. Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand and Angela Markel, Chancellor of Germany helped in creating an environment of courage and determination.
Katrín Jakobsdóttir from Iceland, too finds mention in the list of women leaders who set an example. Katrín took timely action and set up a comprehensive tracking system and initiated free coronavirus testing to all its citizens. Sanna Marin from Finland, the world’s youngest Head of State and Erna Solberg from Norway, too displayed exemplary leadership by devising methods in tackling the crisis posed by the deadly virus.
Women lead differently and this is clearly evident in their remarkable display of leadership skills in managing the complexity of the implementation of key measures to minimizing the negative impact on the economy and their people, perseverance, grit, working with all key stakeholders, using social media and more. In this respect, it is a marked contrast with the male leaders from Italy to the US, UK and Spain. The core of the criticism was related to poor governance, resistance, downplaying the threat, personal and political issues, choosing economic growth over public health and failure of empathy.
With this rapidly changing external environment and evolving nature of leadership, women are being appreciated for their leadership traits and Emotional Intelligence is one of the many defining inherent strengths. These trends very clearly bring to the fore the conceived perception of the Glass Cliff. What contributes to the phenomenon? Decades of research show that it stems from a consistent support of the gendered history of leadership, perceptions based on our ideologies, attitudes and practices that we call leadership.
Women are naturally wired to survive and find their own rhythm which they transmit to the society, especially in the face of a crisis. This complete transformation of gender equity in leadership is changing the landscape from atop the Glass Cliff.
