5 leadership takeaways from Italy’s coronavirus response
This article was originally published in CEOWORLD here.
The closest parallel to today’s COVID-19 pandemic might be the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, which is a time few living people can remember. Consequently, modern executives are now expected to make unprecedented management decisions without any direct experience or information. Still, that doesn’t mean they can’t evaluate what has worked and what hasn’t for other leaders — such as those from Italy.
Italy made early headlines as the first Western country to be impacted significantly by the coronavirus. This also means it could hold the seeds for managerial best practices. Did leaders inspire confidence? Were they able to navigate expected and unexpected employee reactions to lockdowns and quarantines? Did they foster anxiety or positivity? How do leaders prepare their businesses to emerge from this crisis in good shape?
My company has an office in Milan, and we’ve worked with them to interview business leaders in Northern Italy to identify moments that were critical for them. We also mapped out the optimal response to each scenario.
Leadership Tactics to Rely On
As the CEO of Italian tire company Pirelli said earlier this month, careful preparation could mean your company emerges from this pandemic stronger than ever. However, mobilizing and engaging employees in a changing or uncertain environment will present significant challenges.
So what would Italian leaders describe as being the core insights to learn from in responding to COVID-19? Here are five tried-and-tested tips leaders can keep in mind to ensure their companies — and their people — are supported through the pandemic:
1. Give people control in times of uncertainty. Telling a team that everything’s going to be fine doesn’t cut it or fuel empowerment. Instead, it sounds like a platitude — and that prediction might also be wrong. As The New York Times reported, one Italian Democratic Party leader told his constituents to carry on with life as usual at the end of February. By mid-March, he had been diagnosed with the virus, too.
Everyone understands the negative aspects of the pandemic — the danger here is that people end up feeling like they lack control. This can make people feel hopeless, then helpless: According to a 2020 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helplessness leads to withdrawal and eventual disengagement.
Teams can take bad news. But great leaders find a way to frame challenges in a way people can respond to and give them something they can control. For instance, a leader might announce: “Times are tough, but we’re not giving in. We need to move our business online. How soon can you be ready?” This message is one of realism and grit, and it invites others to be part of solving a problem. It gives them back control despite any uncertainty.
2. Forge human connections. Empathy and emotional intelligence are valuable skills, but they’re especially important during uncertain times. Almost everyone is working remotely. Many people are juggling childcare and, as a result, need to flex their hours within the working day. With these sweeping changes, it’s crucial to approach each employee’s situation with sensitivity.
Humans also crave connection. Ironically, remote work has been heralded as everything from the key to heightened productivity to the inevitable wave of the future, but research from San José State University indicates that job satisfaction drops with more virtual hours.
This means leaders must also create and celebrate shareworthy moments. Otherwise, workers won’t feel bonded and critical informal conversations (such as noticing when colleagues have too much on their plates and offering to share the workload) will be missed.
In Italy, for instance, sheltering residents took it upon themselves to connect via impromptu outbursts of joy and resilience. This can certainly be replicated in a business context: Even 15-minute teleconferencing breaks or virtual watercooler chats allow for these vital informal connections.
3. Banish preconceived biases. “People issues” don’t go away during a crisis. All leaders will still have high and low performers and people who are easy and difficult to work with. What we’ve learned from Italy, however, is that the judgments and biases we’ve built up about people in previous years must be treated with care. The situation is different, and individuals are under complex (and often unexpected) pressure.
We heard many stories from Italy about this: Leaders who took a few extra minutes to hold back their judgments — and really seek to understand what was going on in their new context — saw their compassion pay out in dividends.
Is it hard to disregard past data and jettison biases? Absolutely. However, it’s important to give everyone the benefit of the doubt (at least initially) and view situations through different lenses based on changing workplace dynamics. Instead of operating on “transmit” rather than “receive” impulses, executives should listen and understand before offering feedback.
4. Turn meltdowns into learning moments. Leaders in Italy said that if your team is big enough, you can almost guarantee that one or more people will have a meltdown. Those people might express their feelings if they trust you enough, but others will bottle it up. This is inevitable.
Individuals are gripped in fear because of COVID-19’s potential impact: They might fear losing their job or believe that their career is over. Meltdowns can come swiftly when people feel overly stressed, so it’s important for leaders to understand how to help employees deal with these concerns.
Unfortunately, too many executives try to make workers feel better or try to fix the problem temporarily. That’s not the answer. The only way to successfully coach people through a meltdown is to allow them to express their feelings and concerns. Only then can everyone gain perspective and discuss realistic ways forward.
5. Be open to a new reality with customer behavior. Customers aren’t showing the same purchasing habits in this changing world, which means we all have to let go of our pre-coronavirus assumptions. It’s a myth that uneducated people get stuck in their ways. The brightest ones are usually the most attached to their beliefs: They’ve seen those beliefs ring true in the past, and they have the intellect to keep justifying their position. But the world is changing fast.
As an article in Harvard Business Review explained, Italy’s initial intervention delays were because of confirmation bias. In other words, people in power treated COVID-19 like something familiar. It wasn’t, and it didn’t transmit as expected. Therefore, countless Italian citizens fell ill because everyone was unprepared for a virus that behaved unlike anything they had seen before.
We saw this pattern emerge with Italian business leaders as well. Customers’ buying patterns changed, and their needs shifted. Italian leaders found their teams responding using old mindsets and assumptions, which meant more deals were lost.
It might seem challenging to adapt, but we do it every day when we synthesize incoming information. During this crisis, leaders must acknowledge the changing world and rapidly pivot when customers postpone or cancel orders. That way, companies can maintain and nurture key relationships.
Over the coming months and years, leaders will be judged on their actions surrounding and responses to COVID-19. Those who learn from the missteps of others will rise to the forefront as proactive, flexible, and compassionate.
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Meetings are a universal ritual in organizational life. While managers on average spend more than half their working hours in meetings, many leaders can’t shake the feeling that meetings are falling short of their potential. Are they advancing the work, or quietly draining energy? At BTS, we study teams not as collections of individuals, but as living systems. This perspective reveals dynamics that traditional methods often overlook. Rather than aggregating individual 360° assessments, we assess the team as a whole to examine how the team functions collectively. Applying that lens to one of the most common team activities (meetings) uncovers patterns worth paying attention to. Drawing on thousands of team assessments in our database, we focused on two meeting behaviors:
- Do teams meet regularly?
- Do team members leave meetings with clear accountabilities and next steps?
Our question: How strongly do these behaviors relate to overall team effectiveness?
What the data revealed
Using data from 1,043 respondents (team members and informed stakeholders) we ran a Bayesian analysis to evaluate the predictive power of each behavior. The results were striking:
- Both behaviors were linked to higher team effectiveness.
- But one mattered far more: leaving meetings with clear accountabilities and next steps was 3.9x more predictive of team effectiveness than simply meeting regularly.
- And teams that often or always wrap up meetings with next steps rated 0.66 points higher on a 5-point scale of team effectiveness than teams who sometimes, rarely, or never close with accountabilities - that's almost a full standard deviation higher (0.96 sd)
Meetings aren’t the problem, muddy outcomes are.
Teams often default to frequency, setting cadences of check-ins or standing meetings. Our data suggest that what differentiates effective teams from the rest is not how many meetings they hold, but what comes out of them. A team that meets less often but ends each session with clear accountabilities will outperform a team that meets frequently but leaves outcomes ambiguous. In other words, meetings aren’t inherently wasted time; they become wasted time when they don’t translate into aligned action.
A simple shift that pays dividends
The good news: improving meetings doesn’t require radical redesign. Small changes reinforce accountability and dramatically increase the value extracted:
- Close with clarity. Reserve the last 5–10 minutes of every meeting to confirm: What decisions have been made? Who owns what? By when? This habit shifts meetings from “discussions” to “decisions.”
- Make commitments visible. Use a shared action log, team board, or project tracker so next steps are transparent, and progress is easy to follow. Visibility builds accountability.
- Assign a “Closer.” Rotating this role signals that closing well is everyone’s responsibility. The Closer ensures the team doesn’t drift into vague agreements, but leaves aligned and ready to act.
When teams adopt these habits, the difference is tangible: less rehashing of the same topics, faster progress on priorities, and a stronger sense of shared ownership. These small shifts compound quickly, making meetings not just more efficient, but more energizing and effective. In a world where teams face relentless demands and limited time, focusing on how meetings end may be one of the fastest ways to improve how teams perform.
Co-authored by Cilsy Harris, Senior Vice President, CIO Insurance & Service Applications, The Hanover Insurance Group
At one time, most of us probably thought that a year into the pandemic we’d be back in the office and the virtual solution we employed as an emergency measure would be a thing of the past. However, it’s become very clear that virtual is here to stay – either as companies adopt fully-remote business models, or as is likely to be the case more often, they move to hybrid models that blend the best of remote and in-person work. Regardless of which model they choose we think smart companies will preserve the best aspects of the virtual experience to continue to create equality in communication and facilitate greater sharing of ideas.
This virtual environment has been a great equalizer. In many ways, our ability to meet and work virtually has helped us eliminate pretenses and share our authenticity to create more human connection. We’ve become less self-conscious and more down to earth in our business interactions. We’ve learned more about our colleagues’ personal lives, enabling us to recognize and truly treat each other as humans, not simply as the means by which work gets accomplished.
Creating big wins for important business goals
This new environment has created six big wins for achieving important business goals:
1. Driving engagement/connection:
Authentic connection is the secret sauce for senior executives. It’s what drives trust, engagement, and execution. Our research shows authentic leaders build trust and put others at ease by sharing their own emotions and experiences, and by revealing stories and life lessons that resonate with others’ own situations.
A byproduct of the virtual world is that some of the barriers to sharing have been removed. The close-up camera creates eye-to-eye contact and a more personal interaction. Our insight into each other’s daily lives outside the office through the view of the camera has changed the tone and ease of our connection.
Virtual meetings also foster authentic connections across geographically dispersed teams in the organization in more efficient and meaningful ways. Regularly scheduled meetings with teams in Europe, Middle East and Asia/Pacific in the morning and those in the Americas in the afternoon, create cross-pollination of ideas and connections that previously would have required weeks of travel.
2. Enabling collaboration among large groups, across geographies:
Dick Lavey, executive vice president of Agency Markets at The Hanover, relays how forums are being reinvented. “Picture a traditional sales planning meeting, held in a large, cavernous hotel room with 40+ people spread out in a big square, using microphones,” he says.
“It was intimidating for the presenter and difficult for the audience to track the dialogue. Now, this same meeting is transformed into an intimate and engaging experience for both the presenters and the meeting participants.”
Well-facilitated meetings create forums for dialogue that lead to better outcomes. The outcome of this shift is understanding that for certain events and forums, choosing a virtual model can create greater intimacy and engagement. Choosing the right forum for the purpose is our call to action.
The virtual world has delivered the impetus to rethink and reimagine how we design forums to optimize attendance and participation, and to offset some of the challenges presented by geographic location. “Events that once were considered feasible only when they were held in person, like our annual Innovation Expo, saw big gains in attendance across all geographies,” according to Will Lee, EVP and Chief Information and Innovation Officer at The Hanover.
“It also has enabled all attending Hanover employees to experience the event in the same manner, regardless of location. One of the most significant outcomes of this new approach was creating a live example of how we can design environments to make space for innovative thinking that cut across the entire organization and include all roles and levels.”
We are also able to meet with more people, more quickly. At the Hanover, our agent road shows, no longer limited by time and space, can be held on back-to-back days–in Georgia one day, Upstate NY the next, and Washington State the very next day. This meeting line-up would have been impossible in person. “We ‘cover more ground’ by not covering any ground,” says Lavey.
At BTS, we’re hosting highly collaborative senior executive team meetings and leadership development programs that enable leaders to create greater impact. After only a few half days, global executive teams decide strategic direction, tackle sticky issues, form agreement on how to better work together, make important decisions, and create strategic action plans–launching the organization on a new trajectory.
3. Attracting talent:
For Lee, finding great talent has gotten a real boost with hybrid operating models, and at The Hanover, we are seeing this have a meaningful impact. As we’ve eliminated geography as a defining factor for those hard-to-find roles in security, innovation, and even executive leadership, we’ve become an attractive employer to a much larger pool of talented candidates. Candidates are now able to choose roles based on company culture and specific opportunities, without being restricted by the proximity of the job to their homes.
4. Retaining top talent:
A client recently told me that he lost a great employee because this person was assured a role with another company in a work-from-home arrangement. Top employees have demonstrated great commitment to their work, high productivity and skillful leadership while enjoying the greater work/life balance that work-from-home enables. This has become quite important to many people of all ages, especially working parents, employees who care for elderly parents, and those helping family members with physical and mental health issues. Remote work is an increasingly valuable way to attract and retain great talent.
5. Creating efficiencies:
Even reimagining how products are launched has delivered more tangible benefits than we previously thought possible. At The Hanover, our virtual launch events have attracted much higher attendance and generated strong satisfaction ratings. At BTS, we’re able to help more clients in a single day and our clients appreciate spending less time traveling.
6. Improving interactions:
Lastly, the equalizing effect has improved many daily interactions as well.
- We’re all the same on video, take up the same space, and our stature at the table is the same. No one is at the head and no one has a second-row seat.
- Rather than having some in the room and some on video, we’re all in the same room, and we’re able to meet with our global teams, on equal footing, at any time.
- Those with differing communication and work styles, such as introverts and extroverts, find the capabilities of collaboration technology suit their ability to participate either by chat, raising their hand, or amplifying the comments of another person. Everyone can contribute and be heard.
As many companies transition to their future work models—whether they are fully-remote or hybrid—the virtual experience and confidence we have gained over the course of the pandemic will help us be even more efficient and effective.Many employees are anxious to get back to the workplaces that are the backbones of our society. We look forward to seeing faces and having meaningful in-person interactions. And, we have the opportunity to make this transition in a thoughtful way, to leverage all we’ve learned about authenticity, efficiencies, and connection through technology.
Tips for maintaining the equalizing benefits of virtual work
Here are a few tips to pull through some of the equalizing benefits as we make our way back to the office:
1. Be mindful and intentional about continuing to connect with people on a personal level.
Schedule time regularly in your calendar to get together with a small group for lunch, organize a skip-level group for coffee, or host an informal, or one-on-one conversation. Set no real agenda other than to see how people are doing, get their feedback, listen to what they are working on. Be sure to share personal stories and experiences as part of this two-way interaction.
2. Commit to creating an environment in your meetings where everyone can contribute and be heard.
Assign an individual in your team meetings, on a rotating basis, to play the role of monitor, to encourage the quiet or remote individuals to participate more, and to reign in the overly strong voices. Make a point of sitting in a different place each time to shake up the room. Set up a team chat channel for each of your regular meetings and encourage follow up comments and conversation in between meetings, for those less comfortable sharing in the room. Participate regularly yourself to model the behavior.
3. Don’t be afraid to keep the new virtual paradigm where it makes sense.
The lessons about productivity and efficiency, whether you are hosting a virtually based product launch, sales meeting, or training program, should inform how to choose the format. And fewer, shorter, more effective meetings will energize people and afford them more time to get more done.Now is the time to preserve the good that has come out of our virtual working environments, even as we migrate back to the traditional office. We will all be more engaged and connected as a result.
Under pressure to perform, how can leaders help their teams be successful even in unfavorable conditions?
Taking a coaching and mentoring approach is one way to ensure success. In almost every coaching conversation this year, leaders have shared the pressure they feel to deliver big results despite the reality of current economic headwinds and uncertainty in the business world.In one conversation, a leader described his experience:
“Given that people are feeling anxious about the economy, our senior leaders have set impossibly ambitious goals for 2023.”
He asked,
“What am I supposed to do? Tell my team that they can hit those goals—when I don’t believe it myself?”
This leaders’ reality is not unusual. Leaders are under more pressure than ever to hit their numbers and deliver shareholder value, even when it doesn’t seem realistic. So what can you do? In the case of this leader, he was deeply passionate about mentoring and coaching people of all ages – in fact, his favorite thing to do outside of work was coaching youth basketball.
I asked him:
“As a basketball coach, I imagine your team faces situations that feel like impossible odds. What do you do in that situation? Do you shrug your shoulders and tell the team they had better face the fact that they’re about to get their butts kicked?”
At first, he laughed but thought it over and responded:
“I tell the team, ‘Don’t look at the scoreboard; don’t look at the clock. Let’s just focus on doing the next thing right. Let’s go for a small win—make a great pass, go for a steal—and build on that.’”
While it may not be a great pass or a steal, when you’re faced with what feels like impossible conditions, look for the small wins. Then, chart a path forward with steps that the team can take over the next couple of weeks to head in the right direction. As you look to inspire others to get through a year of economic uncertainty, it can be tempting to raise the bar in the hope that people will rise to the occasion. Instead, try focusing on the everyday behaviors that lead to small wins. As these wins pile up, they create confidence, momentum, and progress.
By keeping everyone’s focus on small steps in the right direction, they might surprise themselves by ending up on a summit at the end of a rocky 2023.
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La maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non fallisce.
Semplicemente non porta a una decisione.
Ed è lì che si perde valore.
I clienti di oggi sono più informati, più selettivi e hanno meno tempo.
Non hanno bisogno di altre presentazioni di prodotto.
Hanno bisogno di conversazioni che li aiutino a stabilire le priorità, decidere e andare avanti.
Eppure, il 58% delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore reale.
Non perché i venditori manchino di capacità, ma perché le conversazioni non sono progettate per far avanzare le decisioni.
“I clienti non agiscono su ogni esigenza che riconoscono.
Agiscono quando qualcosa diventa una priorità.”
In questo breve executive brief scoprirai:
- Perché la maggior parte delle conversazioni informa… ma non porta all’azione
- Cosa spinge davvero i clienti a stabilire priorità e muoversi
- Come creare urgenza senza compromettere la fiducia
- Il passaggio dal presentare soluzioni al facilitare decisioni
- Cosa distingue le conversazioni che si bloccano da quelle che accelerano il progresso
Se i tuoi team stanno affrontando trattative bloccate, decisioni ritardate o un pipeline lento, questo brief ti aiuterà a capire il perché e cosa fare in modo diverso.
Scarica l’executive brief e scopri come progettare conversazioni che portano davvero a decisioni.
A maioria das reuniões de vendas não fracassa.
Elas simplesmente não levam a uma decisão.
E é aí que o valor se perde.
Os clientes de hoje estão mais informados, mais seletivos e com menos tempo.
Eles não precisam de mais apresentações de produto.
Precisam de conversas que os ajudem a priorizar, decidir e avançar.
Ainda assim, 58% das reuniões de vendas não conseguem gerar valor real.
Não porque os vendedores não tenham capacidade, mas porque as conversas não são desenhadas para impulsionar decisões.
“Os clientes não agem sobre todas as necessidades que reconhecem.
Eles agem quando algo se torna prioridade.”
Neste breve material executivo, você vai descobrir:
- Por que a maioria das conversas informa… mas não gera ação
- O que realmente faz os clientes priorizarem e avançarem
- Como criar urgência sem prejudicar a confiança
- A mudança de apresentar soluções para viabilizar decisões
- O que diferencia conversas que estagnam daquelas que aceleram o progresso
Se suas equipes estão enfrentando negócios estagnados, decisões atrasadas ou um pipeline lento, este material vai ajudar você a entender o porquê — e o que fazer de diferente.
Baixe o material executivo e aprenda como desenhar conversas que realmente impulsionam decisões.
La mayoría de las reuniones de ventas no fracasan.
Simplemente no llevan a una decisión.
Y ahí es donde se pierde el valor.
Los clientes de hoy están más informados, son más selectivos y tienen menos tiempo.
No necesitan más presentaciones de producto.
Necesitan conversaciones que les ayuden a priorizar, decidir y avanzar.
Y, sin embargo, el 58% de las reuniones de ventas no logra generar un valor real.
No porque los vendedores carezcan de capacidad, sino porque las conversaciones no están diseñadas para impulsar decisiones.
“Los clientes no actúan sobre cada necesidad que reconocen.
Actúan cuando algo se convierte en una prioridad.”
En este breve informe ejecutivo descubrirás:
Por qué la mayoría de las conversaciones informan… pero no generan acción
- Qué es lo que realmente hace que los clientes prioricen y avancen
- Cómo crear urgencia sin dañar la confianza
- El cambio de presentar soluciones a facilitar decisiones
- Qué diferencia a las conversaciones que se estancan de las que aceleran el avance
Si tus equipos están experimentando acuerdos estancados, decisiones retrasadas o un pipeline lento, este informe te ayudará a entender por qué y qué hacer diferente.
Descarga el informe ejecutivo y aprende a diseñar conversaciones que realmente impulsen decisiones.