Shared Leadership During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Case Study

Abstract

Teams with a deep understanding of how their roles serve the overall vision of the organisation can transition smoothly from an exclusively in-person office into a working from home (WFH) set-up, even when this needs to happen suddenly and in a disruptive external environment. At the same time, WFH, with all the flexibility that it does offer, does not appear to sufficiently allow for the informal levels of communication and ongoing iterative feedback required by team members to sustain shared leadership and actively co-shape strategy.

Shared leadership is achieved and maintained through the type of interaction between team members and the leader. In this case study, the team nurtures shared leadership and the leader demonstrates a readiness for it by effectively coordinating and leveraging networked synergies between various stakeholders as well as guiding and translating knowledge sharing and creation into informed actionable strategy with the team. The leader, on the one hand, is an integrated member of the team nurturing it and sharing leadership with it and, on the other hand, embraces a cockpit function which navigates this ‘sharedness’ with all relevant stakeholders.

Citation

Chatwani, N. (2021), "Shared Leadership During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Case Study", Kumar, P., Agrawal, A. and Budhwar, P. (Ed.) Work from Home: Multi-level Perspectives on the New Normal, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-661-220210006