Leadership: An intervention for COVID-19 and beyond
Published: 06 Jun 2020
The “COVID-19: Updates from Singapore” weekly webinar series is a forum for leading clinicians, scientists, public health officials and policy makers to share insights from their fields of study. The ninth edition of the webinar was held on Thursday, 4 June.
This week’s invited speaker, Associate Professor Audrey Chia is the Director of the Leadership Development Programme at the NUS Business School. Her expertise includes exploring how leadership and change can be used as theoretical foundations in addressing social and health problems using social entrepreneurship and innovative philanthropy. In this webinar session, Assoc Prof Chia examined the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of leadership, how it has helped in dealing with the pandemic so far, what more can be done and how we can prepare for the future.
TitledLeadership: An Intervention for COVID-19 and Beyond, Assoc Prof Chia addressed the idea of leadership as a health intervention by presenting various frameworks such as the Transformational Leadership Framework and the World Health Organisation (WHO) Health System used by the Business School when it comes to discussing leadership. She continued on to analyse the COVID-19 pandemic using the macroscopic lens of leadership, by referencing examples of leadership responses in recent months. From the start, it was determined that leadership consists of a set of skills and behaviours that can be learnt and developed overtime by different people, regardless of status, position or level.
Crucially, leadership can make a difference especially in a pandemic and is able to influence the course of a pandemic for better or for worse. Interestingly, leadership has been identified as one of the core components in health systems, that can lead to improved health responsiveness, risk protection and improved efficiency if used strategically. A pandemic as grave as COVID-19 poses many moral questions, such as the concentration of effect on certain vulnerable groups. This brings about discussions regarding societal justice, that is who gets what treatment, how do we make the decision of who gets treated first, how do we communicate to others and how do we treat others. Ultimately, we need more debate, sharing, debriefing and training to make sense of and handle these questions.
Assoc Prof Chia concluded with the question on what we can do to prepare for a post-COVID-19 climate. She suggested that we can lead by educating the public in the area of health and scientific literacy, strive to increase and deepen social connections with different groups. Finally, she urged a re-evaluation of issues concerning accessibility of a vaccine when it finally comes and suggested investing resources and efforts towards cultivating leadership in health and medical education.
Tune in to the next “COVID-19: Updates from Singapore” session on 11 June 2020, featuring guest speaker Professor Andrew Rose, Dean and distinguished professor of the NUS Business School, who will be speaking about “The Economy after COVID-19”. Register now at https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/cet/webinar/.
