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Consultants Collective Conversations: Now, Lead! The COVID-19 Global Public Health Crisis Is Your Chance

This webinar, featuring by our CEO Jen McClure and Senior Advisor David Schlesinger continues a special series titled “Creating Resiliency During the COVID-19 Crisis.” 

This series will feature articles, podcasts and additional resources from our Consultants Collective member consultants, advisors and coaches, whose experience and expertise includes risk and change management, Asia, China, offshoring, leading distributed global teams, managing crises and internal communications, deploying and managing online collaboration tools that enable people to work together virtually, developing new models, as well as expertise in innovation and design-thinking, work-life integration — and more — all of which uniquely positions Consultants Collective to serve its clients during this time. We hope this series is a valuable resource to you and your organization as you tackle the challenges presented by this global public health crisis. If we can provide additional help and support through our executive consulting, advisory and coaching services, please contact us.

Living and leading in the time of the virus will force us all to contend with things that just weeks ago seemed unthinkable.

Our own health problems coming to the fore.

The aging parent, isolated. The spouse, losing a job. The friend, getting ill. Perhaps even the colleague, passing away.

Things may happen to us personally that will certainly happen in our circle of friends and acquaintances. They will certainly happen to the people who look to us for leadership, our staff, colleagues and co-workers.

New ways of living. New ways of working. New ways of grieving. New ways of celebrating. And, new ways of leading.

In our webinar on March 27, I discussed some of the lessons I’ve learned in managing dispersed, global teams of up to 2,500 people through good times and bad, through triumph and through crises.

Unfortunately, a technical failure means we don’t have an audio recording to post, but attached please find my notes which I hope you’ll find useful.

In the polling we did of participants, here are the results:

How are you feeling personally?

  1. Optimistic      30%
  2. Calm               25%
  3. Confused        30%
  4. Worried          15%
  5. Hopeless         0%

What’s your normal rhythm for “all hands” talks?

  1. Annually         15%
  2. Quarterly        20%
  3. Monthly          20%
  4. Weekly            45%
  5. Never              0%

Who is YOUR leader in a crisis?

  1. My boss                      20%
  2. My spouse/partner      20%
  3. A mentor                     20%
  4. My shrink                   0%
  5. My spiritual leader (pastor, rabbi, priest, guru)          20%
  6. I’m a lone wolf            20%

This webinar obviously just scratched the surface of issues you may be facing. Any of us at Consultants Collective would be happy to try to help in this time of great testing, worry, challenge, and opportunity.

David Schlesinger

David Schlesinger is a Consultants Collective member consultant and a member of JEM's board of advisors. David advises on running complex, dispersed global organizations with an emphasis on China and media. He was formerly Chairman of Thomson Reuters China, responsible for building relationships, providing thought leadership and creating strategy for operations across interests in financial markets, legal and regulatory databases, scientific information and journalism. He was appointed to that role after four years as global Editor-in-Chief of Reuters News, running all aspects of the 3,000-journalist strong international news service. Previously, he was Global Managing Editor, in charge of worldwide operations and news editing. David joined Reuters Hong Kong bureau in 1987. From 1989 to 1995, he ran news operations in Taiwan, China and the Greater China region in a series of posts. He then transferred to New York to serve in turn as Financial Editor, Managing Editor for the Americas, and Executive Vice President and Editor of the Americas.

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