An interview featured in Authority Magazine showcased RxBenefits’ President and Chief Financial Officer Robert Gamble’s ability to demonstrate effective leadership. In the discussion, he shares his lessons learned on how to handle leadership challenges during both normal and unpredictable times. Robert emphasizes the importance of genuine communication, listening, empathy, and unification during turbulent times. The following is a brief excerpt; you can read the full article here.
Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
When things are uncertain or challenging, I believe it’s important to look within. Stepping back and realizing that I can’t fix this for the world, or I might not fully understand what is happening or how it will impact the business. Instead, I have to think, who are we as an organization? What can I do to understand? Where are our gaps?
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic and even with the Black Lives Matter movement, the first tactical thing we said as a leadership team is that we would not try to be experts on the unknown or interpret what the experts were saying. We’re going to use this inner reflection to learn about ourselves and address any gaps found in our organization.
When COVID hit, we recognized there was nothing we could do to fix it, and it wasn’t what we should try to do. We had to have the mentality that whatever we needed to do for our teams and people is what we would do, because their personal situations are as important — if not more important, and completely tied to the success of the organization. This wasn’t a new mentality for us, but we had a new environment to apply it to.
Taking into account the 500+ employees across the United States who are all in this completely new and unknown situation, we acted quickly and got everyone set up to work from home within 48 hours because the unknown risk was not worth taking. We felt that it was best to take the safest route and get people settled and comfortable. We are lucky to be in a position where we can work from home, and our teams responded so well to our early action.
