Postpandemic Leadership Skills: What’s Needed Now

For senior international officers (SIOs) and, indeed, anyone on campus responsible for internationalization efforts, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a tremendous test of leadership. In just a matter of weeks, almost all the fundamental operations of the international office had to be radically changed or completely halted. At the same time, staff were reeling from the pandemic’s personal toll on them and their families. For months, leaders were forced to operate in crisis mode as they grappled with one unexpected change after another.

The pandemic hasn’t disappeared entirely, but it has entered a new phase. The field is showing signs of recovery and rebounding, and a new normal is emerging. As leaders enter this new phase, they will find themselves relying on a new mix of leadership skills to help them navigate a changing landscape.

Leadership Trial By Fire

Honing this set of skills for a new reality is not an easy task, given the experience of the last 3 years. “We got exhausted in the pandemic,” says Sonja Knutson, director of the Internationalization Office at Memorial University of Newfoundland. “A lot was put on us compared to other parts of the institution. Every single aspect of life has changed since the pandemic. That’s what I find the hardest, balancing the operational piece with the transformational piece.”

Still, the skills that leaders gained since March 2020 provide a foundation for SIOs to deal with returning to a more routine, if very different, environment.

“One of the gifts that leading during the pandemic gave a lot of us is that we gained more tools in our toolbelt,” says Annie Phillips Munson, executive director of international affairs at Texas Women’s University. “Now when I’m faced with a complicated situation, I know I have a lot more skills to choose from to make decisions and to lead by example for my team.”

Chief among those skills is adaptability. Elango Elangovan, associate vice president of global engagement at the University of Victoria, breaks these down into two related, but different, components: the ability to reimagine things and the ability to pivot quickly.

Before 2020, “we were so used to thinking about international education in certain ways,” he says. “The COVID crisis’ impact on mobility had everyone trying to understand what international education really means and [the role] mobility played in our idea of international education. Those who were held hostage to previous ideas of international education [solely focused] around mobility struggled.”

Once people reimagined what their work entailed in the new reality, says Elangovan, they were able to pivot quickly. When mobility was denied, virtual communication took the place of in-person programming and underscored the fact that international education can happen without travel or face-to-face interaction. Leaders who succeeded during that time understood that the faster they experimented with new modalities, the faster they could evaluate efficacy and impact.

“Once you have this new reconceptualization, you are able to think through the new activities that will flow and get them in order,” he says. “You can look at the new forest very quickly.”

Leaning on Each Other

Adaptability was not a new skill for most SIOs. “We’re always having to pivot, whether it’s things happening at our university or things happening globally,” notes Knutson. However, the whiplash-inducing speed at which things happened and changed underscored the importance of relying on counsel from other leaders to help SIOs deal with emerging issues.

“Going forward, we really have to rely on each other more and more,” she says. “It’s not just because of the pandemic, but because there’s just a lot more happening now.”

Over the last few years, SIOs spent a lot of time supporting the emotional health and professional concerns of their staff who were experiencing the joint stresses of the pandemic and an unfamiliar work environment. “My role really became about trying to make sure they are taking care of themselves, trying to encourage them and set an example, even though that was hard, too,” says Knutson.

The intensity with which SIOs needed to care for staff may have somewhat faded, but the need itself remains. Elangovan says that it is incumbent upon leaders now to take advantage of the changes wrought by the pandemic to empower staff to take on new responsibilities and opportunities for growth.

“Give them something deeply fulfilling, [along with] the tools and support they need to make it their own, and empower them to contribute in ways they didn’t think they could,” he says. “It’s an amazing opportunity … that the routineness never allowed. The role of the leader is to reimagine the requirements of work with the personal meaning that people are looking for in work, and align the two.”

Response to World Events

Given the way events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, strained relations between different countries, and other geopolitical happenings that affect international education, SIOs need to brush up on their skills to deal more actively with the ramifications of international politics, and hone their networking skills.  

“It’s the ability to be tapped into all the networks so you know what’s happening and can respond quickly,” Knutson says. During the pandemic, Knutson regularly connected with her colleagues in Canada, but that soon spread from pandemic-related issues to cultural and geopolitical issues like Black Lives Matter and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“We suddenly find SIOs in a bit of fence mending in geopolitical situations more than before,” says Elangovan. “Some of these tensions are so close to home in the sense that the university will need to take a position with immediate implications on what happens to the students there.” He points to the current situation with Russia as one example, as well as ongoing tensions between China and some Western countries.

Seizing Opportunities and Sustaining Change

Perhaps the biggest challenge for leaders now is not to lose sight of how they led during the pandemic. Adapting those skills to their current situations will not only make them better leaders, but also benefit them personally.

“We’ve resumed much of what we did before the pandemic, but it’s a missed opportunity if we don’t consider what could and should be,” says Munson. For example, she is now putting more emphasis on global learning programs within the United States, which creates more opportunities for more students.

Munson says that the pandemic’s silver lining was that it forced leaders to stop and evaluate what they had been doing.

“I felt for years I was on the hamster wheel, and I had the awareness that I wanted to get off the wheel but couldn’t do it,” she says. “The pandemic caused the great pause for all of us. It was a time to look inward, evaluate, and be intentional. Now I’m so much more aware and intentional about not running so fast on the hamster wheel that I can’t get off.”

Re-evaluating the work schedule helped manage that feeling. “Throughout my professional life, I had supervisors who thought we should work to the clock,” says Munson. With the pandemic, that changed. “I approached my time with the attitude of working to complete the work.”

Munson says that she now filters requests to her staff to determine if they meet the office’s mission. “There are so many elements that are tangential to the work we do or would be nice to do, but we do not need to do right now,” she says. “It all comes down to intentionality.”

As much as SIOs can acquire skills improve their leadership, it’s equally important that they reflect upon themselves and their own qualities. Elangovan notes that discussions of leadership often focus on the nuts and bolts that people need and less on the qualities that reside in the people themselves.

“The vast majority of leadership training and learning are about the what and how of leadership, not the who and why of leadership,” he says. “On one level, that makes perfect sense. But you also have to pay attention to who you are as a leader and why you should be a leader.” For Elangovan, that means leaders need to know not just their skills, but their values and how those values contribute to their institution.  “Clarity on your unique values protects against the rough winds and  seas that you may encounter. You have a sense of grounding and aren’t just saying, I’m going to manage this on some new skill I’ve learned.”

Ultimately, having to adapt to changing circumstances is part of any leadership role. That’s especially true for SIOs.

“SIOs continuously need to evaluate and adapt their leadership approach,” says Munson. The work we do and the world we live in is so dynamic. Yes, it takes more energy to live in a world with continuous evaluation and adaptation but it’s more effective because you can decide what skills are needed depending on the task at hand and the goals you’re trying to achieve.  •