Leadership Lessons From Departing CDC Director Rochelle Walensky

Dr. Rochelle Walansky, who yesterday announced her resignation as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will leave behind some timely lessons about leadership and managing a crisis.

To her credit, Walensky agreed to lead an agency that faced various pressing challenges and during an unprecedented national public health emergency.

Though criticized for some of her decisions and statements, this was to be expected for a high profile individual who works in the harsh glare of the public spotlight. Not that they should be immune from it, criticism—and second-guessing—are two things tbusiness leaders who have been scrutinized for their management of a crisis might identify with.

Challenges

“With little experience working in government and leading large institutions, Dr. Walensky was an unexpected choice to guide an agency with a staff of about 11,000 people,” the New York Times observed.

“Dr. Walensky took the helm of the beleaguered agency in January 2021. She had a near-impossible task ahead of her: restoring the reputation of the once-storied C.D.C. when public trust in the agency, and science more broadly, was fast ebbing.

“The C.D.C. had been pilloried since the start of the pandemic for missteps in testing, changing advice on masking, and antiquated surveillance and data systems. Trump administration officials hectored the agency’s leaders, rewrote its guidance and meddled with its research reports, undermining the morale of scientists even as the crisis ballooned,” according to the newspaper.

Leadership Lessons

Admit Mistakes

Walensky admitted last August that mistakes were made in how the CDC responded to the pandemic.

“To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes. From testing to data to communications,” she told CDC employees in a video, according to ABC News.

“It’s remarkable for a huge government organization such as the CDC to admit to failures on this level or on this scale, and I think that Walensky’s public statement and the CDC’s current stance is commendable, “Andrea B. Clement, a media relations and communication expert, told me via email when the planned shake-up was announced.

“I think that this shake-up is necessary to fully restore credibility and the public’s trust and to ensure a more effective and efficient response to future health crises.

“In my opinion and experience, the key takeaway and lesson here for leaders is the importance of accountability and transparency in communication and crisis response, as well as consistency,” she observed.

Listen

“Throughout her tenure as director,” the CDC said last August, “and over the last few months in particular, Dr. Walensky has evaluated CDC operations; she listened—to voices from within CDC, to our partners and other interested parties, and to external reviewers.”

Make Necessary Changes

It’’s one thing to admit mistakes were made, but it is another to take the steps that are necessary to address the errors.

Last August, the CDC said that Walensky announced a series of changes to prioritize public health action to help equitably protect and promote the health of the American people.

“The optimizations are designed to not only change how CDC operates but also its culture, orienting it toward timely action—ensuring CDC’s science reaches the public in an understandable, accessible, and implementable manner as quickly as possible,” the agency said.

Be Empathetic

“Dr. Walensky did the best she could to explain Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccines to the public. No one was more empathetic on national television than she was,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNN on Friday

“You could see the pain that we were all suffering during this pandemic on her face. We were lucky to have Dr. Walensky. I’m sorry to see that she will be leaving,” he said.

Balance Priorities

“A challenging aspect that the CDC director faced was managing and dealing with such a high-priority item like COVID-19 while still managing other work that was also important, Baruch Labunski, CEO of Rank Secure, said via email.

“It’s a matter of deciding how to balance the urgent with the important. She was constantly seeking that balance and addressing it with a delegation of teams for different responsibilities,” he concluded.

‘The Value of Quiet Competence’

Walensky’s tenure at the CDC “underscores the value of quiet competence in the face of challenging times,” Moshe Cohen, who teaches leadership, negotiation, organizational behavior, and mediation at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said via email.

“Coming into a troubled organization, she showed that leaders must first take decisive actions to restore calm, reassure employees and other stakeholders, and prevent additional damage.

“She then pivoted to the long term, refocusing on the organization’s core mission, investigating the root causes for its deficiencies, and putting in place the structure and people to right the ship. Her example demonstrates that in crisis, leaders must balance short-term and long-term concerns, shifting from damage control to organizational transformation as matters stabilize,” Cohen commented.

Creating A Vacuum

Her departure—announced the same day that the World Health Organization said it was ending the global public health emergency for the coronavirus— leaves a vacuum at the helm of a once-storied agency that faces enormous challenges as it struggles to regain public trust,” according to the Washington Post.

Whoever is named to succeed Walensky will have to tackle a different set of challenges and issues than she faced when she took on the job; how they respond to the challenges could provide corporate executives with more insights and lessons about managing a crisis.