In a world that is experiencing a pandemic that is still here, a quasi-vaccinated population, and lurking COVID-19 variants, every leader is now challenged to develop new leadership skills. Applying existing leadership skills will have limited impact. We are all in a leadership learning curve.
Dasher’s President, Tracey Glenn, is on the front lines of this leadership evolution. “At Dasher, we are observing and studying the effects of the pandemic on our teammates, on our clients, and our clients’ constituents. We continue to build on our founding principles and our core values.
“We are asking lots of questions and because our teammates know that Dasher has their best interests in mind, we are collaborating and learning how to operate in new ways that support our operations and the people at Dasher.”
Tracey emphasizes that Dasher’s mission is to help people live happy, healthy lives. This mission starts from within, and employees and their needs come first.
“While this was true from the first day I started, I’ve loved seeing how this has morphed and become better and better as we have been managing through COVID,” Tracey said. “We added more outreach and modified our processes to better meeting employees’ needs and we’ve been able to grow as a cohesive team and continue to meet the needs of an expanding client base.”
Tracey says her family is forever her primary focus and that provided great insight into the concerns of the Dasher team. “My first role at Dasher was to assist in standing up Dasher’s Community Healthcare Worker program which is a program that helps people directly and I learned so much from that experience that I could apply to leading the team through what we hope is the worst of the pandemic.”
COVID-19 affected us in ways that we could never have anticipated. While taking care of our clients and their constituents, we lived in fear about our own health, as well as the health of our loved ones. We experienced even more fear when friends and colleagues become ill.
“The situation required strong and visible leadership even though we did not have all the answers. We communicated directly with each of our teammates frequently and we expressed a genuine concern for how they were doing,” said Tracey.
“Our team needed honesty and transparency. If we had tried to minimize the problem or shift worry directly to the team and did not provide any assistance, we would have eroded trust. Everything we did was aimed at building trust and strengthening our culture.
“Everything we did was aimed at building trust, strengthening our culture, while also doing everything we possibly could to help our team stay healthy and safe,” Tracey said.