gms | German Medical Science

Background and status of (inter)national research: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to various transformations in work environments and has as such also affected leadership. Navigating the challenges of the pandemic has made leadership all the more important while leadership itself had to adapt to the “new normal” of working under pandemic conditions. We conduct a multi-modular mixed-method study in which we analyze how companies in Germany and their employees handle the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the modules comprises qualitative interviews with experts in leadership positions of various levels within companies.

Research question and objective: How have challenges for leaders transformed through the course of pandemic so far?

Method or hypothesis: We conducted 21 qualitative interviews with 16 individuals in leadership positions in 5 companies in Germany during three different phases of the pandemic: at the beginning of the second wave (10/2020), after the first pandemic winter (04/2021), and after the roll-out of a nationwide vaccination campaign (11/2021). We applied qualitative content analysis to identify main topics and subtopics in the data and analyzed the data in a team to ensure quality.

Results: In the first phase, leaders faced challenges with regards to organizing, implementing and adjusting infection control measures in the various workplaces. Furthermore, they had to explain new measures, motivate skeptical employees and reassure fearful employees. They voiced concern that measures would impact communication and collective knowledge within the companies and saw these concerns partly coming to reality in phase 2 and 3. In phase 2 leaders observed that the tone of communication and their consequences had sharpened due to a shift from personal to written communication that left less room for informal nuances. Throughout all phases, leaders saw it as a challenge to ensure that teams would not drift apart due to heterogeneous experiences of the pandemic. Furthermore, in all phases, motivating employees to stick to infection control measures was seen as a challenge. Virtual leadership as a transformation in leadership itself, was experienced differently, as some leaders felt it did not fit their own work identity while others saw it more as shifting tools.

Discussion: Some aspects were specific to phases of our interviews, such as organizing pandemic measures in the beginning of the pandemic or effects on the quality of communication and information. Other aspects could be found through all phases such as the challenge to keep employees motivated to stick to measures.

Practical implications: Some of the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic to leaderships might outlast the pandemic, e.g. leaders will likely have to navigate the long-term effects of the pandemic in their teams.

Appeal for practice (science and/or care) in one sentence: To better understand the experiences of leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic, we will triangulate the results with data from our surveys with employees.

Funding: Sonstige Förderung