10 Leadership Principles Discovered from the Healthcare’s Frontlines
What lessons about leadership can we learn from the healthcare workers and administrators during the first wave of COVID-19 — and what are the key take-aways for being better prepared for what’s coming next?
By Xenia Apena
Contributing Editors: Tracy DeLuca, Marina Terteryan, Rob Lister
EDC Project Team: Tracy DeLuca, Marina Terteryan, Rob Lister, Natasha Fong, Christopher Berger MD, Whitley Kemble-Williams, and Xenia Apena
True leadership, like character, shows up most vividly when the circumstances are extreme and unknown. Like character, it is not forged overnight — and it can also course-correct itself after having failed first. The conditions in the hospitals across the US in Spring of 2020, many of which filled with critically ill patients diagnosed with COVID-19, produced the kind of environment that truly tested people working on the frontlines, as well as the leadership teams that oversaw them. It tested not only their stamina and the strength of their nervous systems; it reached in the depths of their fears, challenged their beliefs — as well as placed them in such situations where their duty and dignity were often perched against the strongest of human instincts — self-preservation and the protection of their loved ones.
