"Being approximately right most of the time is better than being precisely right occasionally"

It's a sad but true fact that leaders are humans, and as all humans do, leaders make mistakes.  Leaders of organizations everywhere (and when I say "everywhere", I truly mean every single organization in every single industry in every single country, except maybe Antarctica - which technically isn't a country - all over the world) are making mistakes dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.  Nothing like this pandemic has ever been seen, at least in the last hundred years (for the most recent lessons learned, see the 1918 Influenza Pandemic).  It's not like leaders can open up a textbook in their reference library or search for "How to deal with a worldwide pandemic and economic shutdown" on Google.

Every leader will look back at the decisions that he or she made during this crisis and say (likely in a number of cases), "If I had to make that decision all over again, I probably would have decided this instead."  The same statement could be made for leaders in any crisis situation.  Case in point.  During the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the leader of the expedition, one of my personal heroes, Ernest Shackleton, made a decision to proceed despite warnings from several whalers at the Grytviken Whaling Station on the island of South Georgia that pack ice conditions in the Weddell Sea were worse than they had ever seen.  Shackleton and his crew departed in their ship, the Endurance, on December 5, 1914, and almost immediately, they encountered the severe pack ice conditions.  Shackleton would say, "I had been prepared for evil conditions in the Weddell Sea, but had hoped that the pack would be loose. What we were encountering was fairly dense pack of a very obstinate character."  Just a few weeks later, the Endurance became trapped in the pack ice, and the rest, as they say is history (if you don't know the rest of the story, please check out my previous posts on Shackleton: The Last Voyage of the Endurance, "To the Edges of the Earth...", and Now is the time to lead).

In retrospect, perhaps Shackleton's decision wasn't the best decision to make under the circumstances that existed at that time.  Some will argue, fairly I might add, that leaders like Shackleton succeed on expeditions like the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition exactly because they proceed in the face of danger.  The key point here is that Shackleton was an incredibly resilient leader who could quickly adapt and lead through a crisis to turn failure into success (in this case, not the successful completion of the expedition's goal but having all of the expedition's crew survive and return to England).  The important lesson for us is that resilient leaders learn from their mistakes and become even better leaders in the end.  Shackleton became exactly the kind of leader that his crew needed in incredibly difficult circumstances.

The Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author Charles Duhigg recently wrote an article in The New Yorker comparing the leadership response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Seattle versus New York City.  I highly recommend the article, but in essence, the take-home message is that the crisis leadership team in Seattle followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pandemic leadership playbook (see the CDC's Field Epidemiology Manual), while the crisis leadership team in New York City did not.  Duhigg's main point is about communication (the CDC's Field Epidemiology Manual dedicates an entire chapter to just communication entitled "Communicating During an Outbreak or Public Health Investigation").  Perhaps the most important recommendation is to identify a consistent spokesperson with a "Single Overriding Health Communication Objective" that is repeated at the beginning and the end of every communication with the public.  In addition, the designated spokesperson should "acknowledge concerns and express understanding of how those affected by the illnesses or injuries are probably feeling."  Empathy is incredibly important.

The CDC's Field Epidemiology Manual also recommends that the lead spokesperson should be a scientist!  Duhigg relates a conversation he had with former acting CDC Director, Dr. Richard Besser, who said, "If you have a politician on the stage, there's a very real risk that half the nation is going to do the opposite of what they say."  Seattle's lead spokesperson was a scientific expert, while New York City's lead spokesperson was Mayor Bill De Blasio.

With this in mind, dear reader, consider who has been the lead spokesperson for the federal government's COVID-19 response.  At times, it has been either Vice President Pence or President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.  Most of the time, the lead spokesperson has been President Trump himself.  How has that gone?  If you haven't been paying attention, consider his suggestion that disinfectants or bleach could be used to kill coronavirus in patients.

As I have mentioned several times in previous blog posts, great leaders, especially those who lead during a crisis, lead by example.  Again, as Charles Duhigg suggest in his New Yorker piece (again referencing the CDC's Field Epidemiology Manual), if the recommendation is that the public should be wearing face masks at all times, the lead spokesperson during all press conferences should model that behavior by wearing a mask too.  Again, look what has happened on the national stage.  Vice President Pence refused to wear a face mask during a tour at the Mayo Clinic.  Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House directed officials to wear face masks at all times inside the building, except when sitting at their own desks.  Incidentally, the White House also reported that "President Trump and Vice President Pence aren't expected to start doing so."  Again, leaders lead the way.

Finally, I will close with a quote that Scottish epidemiologist John Cowden wrote in a 2010 article published in the journal Emerging Infectious Disease, "Being approximately right most of the time is better than being precisely right occasionally."  What is true for epidemiology is also true for crisis leadership.  Leaders will make mistakes.  They are human.  The important point is that the great leaders, like Shackleton, learn from their mistakes and do better the next time.