Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajving. This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul fella Aledo.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode five eighty six years ago. That's how long it's been since the word COVID stopped being a headline and started being a lived experience. For some people, COVID is now a political talking point. For others, it's an argument at a dinner table. For some, it's something they would rather forget ever happened. For me, and for a lot of leaders, listening to this, COVID was personal. I
was on the front lines. I watched patients struggle to breathe. I watched such hospitals overflow. I watched systems bend, crack, and in some cases break. I watched leaders rise, and I watched leaders disappear when things got hard and COVID killed my mother. That's not a statistic, that's not a graph, that's not a case count. That's a chair at the table that stays empty. So when people say that was years ago, why are we still talking about it? Here's why.
Because leadership didn't stop being tested when the masks came off. The uncomfortable truth is this, the next crisis will not be handled the same way COVID was. It won't be led the same way. It won't be communicated the same way. Different political powers will respond differently, Different beliefs will shape decisions, Different levels of preparedness will exist or won't. That part is unavoidable. What is avoidable is pretending leadership somehow becomes
optional when things get messy. People still expect leadership. Patients still expect care, Employees still expect honesty. Communities still expect someone to be thinking ahead while everyone else is reacting. Leadership does not get to opt out because the environment is polarized. And one of the hardest lessons COVID taught me was this, in a crisis, people do not care what you believe. They care what you do. They care if the plan makes sense, they care if the communication
is clear. They care if you show up consistently. They care if you protect them. When the pressure is on, I watch leaders hide behind talking points. I watched others step forward and say here's what we know, here's what we don't, and here's what we're going to do next, and guess who people followed. Six years later, some leaders are still waiting for permission to lead. They're waiting for consensus, they're waiting for perfect information. They're waiting for politics to
settle down. That's not leadership. That is delayed, disguised as caution. COVID also exposed something else we don't talk about enough. Preparedness is not a document, it's a mindset. You don't become calm in a crisis if you never practice clarity. You don't suddenly communicate well if you avoid hard conversations and normal times. You don't magically earn trust when pressure hits if you spent years burying it. Leadership debt always comes due in a crisis. And here's the part that
makes some people uncomfortable. The next crisis may not look like a virus. It might be cyber. It might be infrastructure. It might be economic, it might be social, it might be something no one has even named yet. But the leadership test will be the same. Will you tell the truth early, even when it's incomplete. Will you protect people before you protect optics? Will you take responsibility without pointing fingers? Will you stay visible when it would be easier to disappear.
COVID showed us who was prepared to lead without a script. It also showed us how quickly people forgive leaders who were honest, even when decisions are imperfect. What people don't forgive is silence, spin or cowardice. Six years later, the question is not what did we learn from COVID? The question has been asked to death. Honestly, the real question is what did you change? Did you build better systems, did you improve communication? Did you clarify decision authority? Did
you train leaders to think under press sure? Did you personally get better at being uncomfortable in the spotlight? Or did you move on in hope lightning doesn't strike twice? So here's the leadership reality check. People will always rely on leadership to keep them safe, even when leadership itself is under attack, when the environment is divided, even when trust and institutions is shaky, even when every decision is criticized in real time. That responsibility does not disappear because
it's inconvenient. So if COVID taught us anything worth carrying forward, it's this Leadership matters most when it costs you something, your comfort, your popularity, your certainty. Six years ago the world changed. Now what now? You decide whether you're the kind of leader people want standing there when the next moment hits. So I'll be honest, this was a hard one for me to record. I had to record it probably two or three times to make it through. Leadership
is not about winning arguments. It's about protecting people. It's not about being right. It's about being ready, and it's not about the crisis that you survived. It's absolutely one thousand percent about how you show up for the next one. This has been the seven minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.
For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.