A crisis manager, and a leader who looks past the emergency

A news article, read here, says the COVID-19 pandemic asked for a new paradigm of leadership. The traditional crisis manager had been fixed on solving the problem in front of them. In the pandemic, the more important part is said to be the crisis leader, who can look past the emergency itself. Those remarks are left in the period of the pandemic, when the piece was written.

The article introduces meta-leadership through the work of Leonard Marcus at Harvard. It is a leader’s self-understanding, an analysis of the situation, and the joining of needed people and resources toward a common goal. The complexity of a crisis is to be understood from a wide angle, and the problem is to be worked through cooperative ties. The article says this approach had shown its use in crises such as the September 11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing, and, in the pandemic period itself, cites Andrew Cuomo, then governor of New York, as practicing it successfully. Those claims are left in that period. Meta-leadership is treated not as a theory that stays on the page, but as a practical way through a crisis, and as a direction leaders should watch in the many kinds of emergency now in view.

James MacGregor Burns is quoted as calling leadership the most obvious reality, and yet one we cannot clearly define, and as stressing how complex and various it is. In that spirit, leadership is described as the ability to lead a person’s behaviour and a group’s activity toward a shared goal, and as something that goes beyond merely complying, mechanically, with an organization’s orders. It is also a process that makes the meaning of work done together clearer, and that helps people understand a problem and commit to it. In a crisis, a leader is asked to do more than solve the difficulty at hand: to find a new possibility that lets an organization go past its old limits, and to put that possibility into practice.

Charisma, participation, ethics, and a vision

In a pandemic, the writing says, the systems of a whole society become unstable, and uncertainty is at a peak. Leadership of this kind is treated as what can give an organization or a community the motive and the energy to hold a shared goal and to come through. Charismatic leadership is marked by unusual behaviour in the leader, a sensitive response to limits in the environment, and the forming of an emotional bond with members. Through that, a leader gains trust and respect, and a positive cycle in which people commit more deeply to what is asked. The same style is also said to need a careful, balanced approach, even as it can draw strong motivation and a tighter bond in the group.

Participative leadership helps a group gather its different knowledge and experience and look for a better solution. In a pandemic, emergency workers, medical staff, politicians, legal specialists, disinfection firms, and IT technicians all have to work together if the problem is to be handled well. That cooperation is treated as more than a division of tasks. It should move toward a point where everyone is drawn to exercise leadership. When stakeholders take up their parts actively, the writing says, a pandemic could be held in check on a wide scale. Participative leadership is trusted here to gather the collective intelligence a crisis needs, and to give people a reason to act as leaders themselves.

Ethical leadership keeps discipline and moral value inside an organization and a society, earns trust from members, and aims at a development that can last. In a crisis, if rules and agreements are not kept, trust can fall and a society can slide into confusion. A local example is taken from the pandemic period: if shops had agreed to close at nine and some did not, social trust would fray, and conflict would grow with the loss of a moral standard. A leader should not only impose a rule, but keep it themselves, and practice the value they name. In a grave decision such as the distribution of a vaccine — when, where, and to whom first — fair and moral criteria are said to be needed, and an ethical leader should work from fairness and openness, listen to the people with a stake, and draw a settlement from moral value.

Transformational leadership is a style in which a leader offers a clear vision, inspires people, and helps them motivate themselves toward the organization’s goal, so that they go past merely following instructions and become willing and inventive. Offering a vision is treated as the heart of leadership, not a side act. Without it, people can lose direction and fall into confusion, and an organization can find long-term growth hard. In a setting of high uncertainty, this style is said to have a larger effect, and in a crisis such as COVID-19 it is named as a quality a leader should also have. Those COVID-19 remarks are left in that period.

What a Korean public official would need to practice it

If meta-leadership is to be more than a theory, the writing asks what training or development Korean public officials would need. In a crisis, confusion and feeling run high; an official should be able to structure, and to put into data, the things that help a person look clearly at a problem — a kind of metacognition — and should be trained in the techniques and tools that support decisions based on data. Officials need to understand the complexity, to anticipate trouble that may arise among stakeholders, and, looking from more than one angle, to design alternatives that can be foreseen.

They should also keep learning more than one style of leadership — ethical, charismatic, and motivating leadership among them. A programme to develop reasoning is named as essential, so that people can look not only at the problem in front of them but at what may come next, and get ready for it. The idea of meta-leadership is treated, in the close, as a direction: not merely managing a crisis, but analysing a complex problem widely and arriving at a solution through a cooperative approach. In a crisis, the decisiveness of charisma, the cooperative approach of participation, and the trust and moral quality of ethical leadership are all treated as things worth learning. Leadership is not reserved for a few. Anyone may have to exercise it, anywhere, and to match the style to the moment. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A Korean reading of public leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic, introducing Leonard Marcus’s meta-leadership at Harvard, and setting beside it charismatic, participative, ethical, and transformational leadership, with a citation of James MacGregor Burns.
2. The article’s examples of meta-leadership in the September 11 attacks, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the then governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, during the pandemic, are left in the period of that writing.

Last updated: 14 November 2026