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Since last year, we have been living in an unprecedented period as the Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted the way we live and the way we work. It has also reshaped the world economically, socially and environmentally with all the challenges imposed on businesses and individuals. As many of us are still facing Covid-19 challenges and learning how to cope with its impacts, I would like to share our experience throughout these times, and how we navigated the uncertainty and beyond responsible.

The Way We Work Post-COVID19:

We cannot predict the future of work post COVID- 19 as we are still in the middle of it, however, some outcomes seem to be shaping clearly. For example, I think there will be a great need for reskilling and upskilling as the dynamics of work has changed tremendously during these times and many workers will need to keep up with these changes to adapt to the new reality of work. Also, we found that the pandemic speeded the adoption of digital transformation everywhere, when lockdowns were introduced to us, we had to ensure that our teams could securely access the platforms and data from their homes to continue working. Thus, we relied on remote working which I believe is here to stay, in addition to the virtual collaboration tools such as Zoom. We might still choose to go back to offices when everything goes back to normal but these digital tools will be the norm for conducting many of our meetings.

Pre COVID-19, businesses mainly focused on efficiency and invested heavily in increasing productivity, workflows and such. However, the global coronavirus crisis taught us the importance of protecting our employees and being able to continue serving our customers at the same time and the way to achieve that was through building a resilient environment at work. Resilience helped our teams adapt the strategies quickly to sudden changes, anticipate challenges and identify opportunities, and collaborate in many new ways. Once we strengthened our capacity for resilience, we became more resourceful, our work thrived and we felt that we are ready for these changing times.

Leading amid uncertainty and beyond:

As we all experienced difficulty, stress and complexity during the initial stage of the pandemic, we had to learn how to cope with constant changes and how to make decisions at uncertain times. Therefore, it is extremely important to apply the lessons learnt during COVID-19 to overcome the obstacles ahead and to create thriving solutions for the new reality.

In order to tackle the challenges posed by the pandemic, leaders need to turn the crisis into recovery by seeking out and seizing opportunities. I will share with you some of my leadership tips that are helping my teams and I to navigate these difficult times:

• Value Organizational Agility :
  With rapid change being the new normal, agility is not just an asset anymore, it is a necessity. By being agile, we managed to thrive in such times through different approaches such as creating human-centered experiences to achieve real-time engagement that motivates and empowers our teams. In addition, we embedded a culture of feedback in our different work streams allowing a safe space to give and receive feedback from our employees and customers. Doing so gave us the privilege of understanding the experiences our teams and customers go through providing us immediate results.
• Explore and Exploit Opportunities:
  In most business situations, we usually have two options either to exploit opportunities and build on existing work and knowledge or to explore new solutions and possibilities. I think during these times, we need to focus on exploring new trends and new markets and pivot while protecting our core business and exploiting on what we do best. This equation varies depending on the situation, explaining this to the teams along the pros and cons for each strategy empowers them enough to make the right call on when to explore and when to exploit.
• Communicate. Communicate. Communicate:
  Surprisingly, it is that simple, leaders need to communicate clearly and frequently with their team members during crises. Finding the bright spots and highlighting them makes employees feel safe and appreciated.

  Also, transparency is essential for to establish loyalty and trust between the leader and the employees.

The Way We Live Post COVID-19:

Gradually, countries will ease lockdowns with the vaccination campaigns starting everywhere and people will slowly start to go back to their old routines and life styles with the safety measures of wearing masks, keeping distance and avoiding crowds as it seems that these will be staying with us a little longer until we reach the herd-immunity. So many questions rise every day wondering how will our lives be after COVID-19 and it seems that it is impossible to have firm answers. However, the tough lessons of the global pandemic have provoked many major developments in our personal and professional lives, it turned our world upside down and disrupted many of our plans and goals, it also proved to us that working together on one shared mission is not impossible after all, we are only as strong as we are united.

Today, we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, although it might take us some more time to return to normality and the world of business will probably be different for a long time. Forward-thinking leaders will be the ones who look for the silver linings and embrace all the moments and lessons the past months have given us, real leaders will utilize the world’s pause to reimagine the future.