Reflecting and learning in lockdown: leadership approaches to crisis management

A crisis can be defined as ‘a time of great confusion, disagreement or suffering’, and ‘an extremely difficult or dangerous point in a situation’ (Cambridge Dictionary Online, 2020). In conducting our inquiry for this publication, our attention has been focused primarily on the crisis caused by the Covid- 19 pandemic that, since early 2020, has been impacting globally, nationally, locally and personally at exponentially bewildering rates. However, whilst this has tended to overshadow all others, we are mindful of the coexistence of other significant, overlapping crises. Nested within other concurrent existential crises facing the United Kingdom (UK), such as Brexit, and more global issues such as the climate crises, the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements, initial corporate responses to the Covid- 19 pandemic were characterised by the speed with which organisations had to respond to the need to re-organise and restructure their work, and to re-think their relationship with their staff and customers/clients/membership. This was the case both in the immediate aftermath of the lockdown, and as restrictions were eased as the first wave of the virus began to wane. To a certain extent, traumatic though it was, locking down proved less problematic than subsequent attempts to restart business.