Beyond blame: leadership, collaboration and compassion in the time of COVID-19
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PERSPECTIVE ESSAY
Beyond blame: leadership, collaboration and compassion in the time of COVID‑19 John Forester1 · George McKibbon2,3 Received: 25 May 2020 / Accepted: 16 July 2020 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract As the COVID-19 pandemic confronts us with our interdependence and vulnerability, we can respond in distinctly different ways. Our fears may prompt blame and its rationalization, but our fears may also motivate inquiry and learning. Compassion and collaboration hang in the balance—shaped in part, we shall argue, by political leadership, scientific expertise, and emergent social solidarity. Blaming others may side-step responsibility, but it will not encourage or target actions in response to suffering. But admitting ignorance and the need to learn, supporting widespread testing, and following best available public health advice might cultivate broader public action and confidence—as evidenced both in exemplary public leadership and in shared actions of mutual aid like social distancing. We argue that public leadership can model and encourage—or discourage!—compassionate and collaborative action, and we examine a striking natural experiment: the parallel COVID19 briefings of the public by President Trump’s White House Task Force and New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo. Although many of our arguments may have widespread applicability, this essay’s principal perspective is primarily based upon our experiences in North America, and it is therefore American-centric to a large extent. Keywords COVID-19 · Blame · Compassion · Misinformation · Leadership · Collaboration
1 Introduction As the COVID-19 pandemic confronts us with our interdependence and vulnerability, we can respond in distinctly different ways. Our fears may prompt blame and its rationalization, but our fears may also motivate inquiry and learning. Compassion and collaboration hang in the balance—shaped in part, we shall argue, by political leadership, scientific expertise, and emergent social solidarity. Blaming others may side-step responsibility, but it will not encourage or target actions in response to suffering. But admitting ignorance and the need to learn, supporting widespread testing, and
* John Forester [email protected] George McKibbon [email protected] 1
City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA
2
School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
3
W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology, Sessional Faculty, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
following best available public health advice might cultivate broader public action and confidence—as evidenced both in exemplary public leadership and in shared actions of mutual aid like social distancing. Our argument has the following structure. Section 1 examines issues of interdependence, the vulnerability that creates, and the precarious compassion and collaboration that may, but does not necessarily, follow. Section 2 examines the obstacles to compassion and coll
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