Leadership During COVID
What does leadership look like amid a pandemic? Drawing on his decades-long career in public health and finance, former World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim joined me for Episode 9 of the Reimagine podcast to share his perspective on the leadership we need during COVID-19 and what earlier crises teach us about the steps to take when all hope seems lost.
COVID-19 has cast a blinding light on the lack of global leadership and the deadly consequences of ignoring science and turning away from cooperation. We need leaders who are both humble and courageous — who understand the facts and realities of the challenges they face and the scale of the solutions they must pursue. Only then can they marshal the creativity and determination to shape outcomes.
The pandemic is a wake-up call for everyone to reflect on the kinds of leaders we’ll need to get through the challenges of the 21st century. My latest guest on Reimagine, former World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim, is a leader in the truest sense of the word, working at the forefront of both global health and finance to improve the world.
Every leader wants to win. They want to improve the situation they’ve inherited on terms they’ve defined. But, too many leaders have strategies that are not built on sound intellectual foundations.
We’ve watched this play out on a massive scale with the coronavirus. When the pandemic hit, we didn’t have the right mix of knowledge, planning, coordination, and empathy from our leadership. This was made blatantly clear in my conversation with Dr. Kim. He shared:
“I talked to Tony Fauci very early. Tony and I had worked on four different epidemics and pandemics before the outbreak of COVID-19. He confirmed to me that this could be really bad. And as we were watching, the thing that horrified me most was that we gave up on really mounting a vigorous public health response.”
Leadership during a global crisis demands transparency and an understanding of how interconnected our world is. It also demands empathy. It would have been empowering if leaders started every speech talking about our shared humanity, the amount of suffering represented by data and statistical analyses, and how we should all be helping one another. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, for instance, has won international acclaim by exemplifying this crucial empathy throughout the pandemic.
When she announced the country’s COVID lockdown in March, she made sure to also emphasize the humanity of everyone who would be going through the challenging but necessary measures. “Go home tonight and check on your neighbours,” she said during her speech. “Start a phone tree with your street. Plan how you’ll stay in touch with one another. We will get through this together, but only if we stick together. So please be strong and be kind.” Last week, Prime Minister Arden won election for a second term in a landslide victory following months of massively high approval ratings.
In the U.S., our leaders needed and still need to outline a more specific strategy to get the virus under control. Scientists made it clear that, if we wanted to limit the disease, we needed to get the transmission rates (“R0” in public health terms) well below one and keep it there.
Instead, the sum of the response across the states and federal government in America has been hard to watch. The federal government is the only source of money — literally printing trillions of dollars. And so little of that — under 10%, in fact — has gone directly to measures like increasing our testing capacity or PPE supplies that actually lower R0.
It’s not easy for someone to develop the knowledge, instincts, humility, and courage that are the essential tools of leadership. And in most cases they certainly can’t do it alone. I believe it takes decades of hard work and targeted mentorship to develop the sort of leaders we’ll need in the 21st century.
That’s why at Schmidt Futures, we’re not just focusing on today’s leaders, but also those of future generations. Along with my wife Wendy, we’ve pledged $1 billion to support and develop talent around the world. The anchor program of that commitment is Rise, a new initiative to bet early on exceptional young people and give them the support and resources to serve others throughout their lives. Rather than relying solely on test scores or GPAs, we’re looking for brilliance, empathy, integrity, passion, and potential. Our hope is to build a global community of tomorrow’s leaders who will create a better world for decades to come.
COVID is only one of the challenges demographic shifts and rapid technological development will create in the 21st century. But I truly believe that, if we cultivate leaders who are more able to employ evidence-based strategies in service of advancing our common humanity, we can make the hard decisions necessary to create a better, safer, and more prosperous world.
