Calm.
Your folks, your employees, your customers, your suppliers, are going to be looking to you as a leader to project a sense of calm through this difficult, uncertain situation.
Confidence.
You have to be calm, but not still-water calm. You have to project confidence that you’re going to be able to see this through successfully, with a minimum amount of hurt to the company, but also to all of the stakeholders who are relying on your leadership to get them through the difficult days and months ahead.
Communication.
You have to relentlessly communicate, communicate, communicate. This is to avoid rumors developing that muddy the waters.
Collaboration.
This is a time for you to call on the resources, the capabilities of all of your employees, all of your team members, and bring them together in taskforces, sub-taskforces, and potentially have a role for everyone in which they feel they can contribute to overcoming the uncertainty, overcoming the crisis.
Community.
All of us live in communities. so it’s extremely important that we set an example, model behaviors that are community friendly and supportive.
Compassion
is extremely important at this time. We may rise to the occasion if we’re fortunate to have a good team around us, but there are many people in our organizations who are depending upon us, who are not necessarily that resilient. Compassion at a time of crisis is a very important manifestation of leadership.
Cash.
The most obvious commercial C of the 7 Cs is Cash. Whatever you can do to conserve cash is going to be critical, because that’s what’s going to determine whether your employees are going to be paid next week.
