Leaders with the highest approval ratings in 2020 — what they have done differently from President…

In the previous article: Why do good leaders make you feel safe? The presenter claimed that a leader needs to make their employees feel safe and treat them like their children. Because we naturally love working inside a safe environment, we can also at the same time have higher efficiency and capacity to solve problems.

To dig deeper into this topic, there is a great example in real life. That is how leaders of different countries have responded to the pandemic. By comparing their responses, we can observe whether they make their citizens feel safe or not and the consequences and their net approval ratings so far. Then, to tie this into a discussion about the importance of making employees feel safe in leadership.

And one thing worth noting is the definition of safety. Safety here means feeling protected by the leader and the group and trusting each other. It does not only mean the severity of the pandemic in these countries. Therefore, to judge whether citizens feel safe or not cannot simply depend on the daily confirmed cases, i.e. who is sick and who is not to define safe. Instead, we need to discuss it from a broader perspective — what have their leaders done or how have their leaders reacted towards the coronavirus that has increased or decreased the sense of safety?

For writing this article, I picked three leaders from three different countries. The first one is Mr. Johnson, current Prime Minister of the U.K., who had a very high net approval rating in April 2020, but it has dropped to a negative number. The next one is Mr. Trump, current President of the U.S, who is the leader of the biggest country economically in the world and notorious for his coronavirus response. The last one is Mr. Morrison, current Prime Minister of Australia, who successfully suppressed the second outbreak of coronavirus and has the second-highest net approval rating among all big countries’ leaders on October 22, 2020.

In response to Covid-19, Johnson’s government first proposed “herd immunity” — let enough citizens, about 67%, get infected by Covid-19, so they will become immune to coronavirus(if they can survive), and everyone can go back to normal life without social distancing or wearing a mask. But then, they noticed that herd immunity was not realistic. Herd immunity means letting more than 40 million people in the U.K get infected, which is a huge cost given the National Health System there and which could trigger the public’s dissatisfaction.

Therefore, the government of Britain implemented the first lockdown on 23 March 2020, more than a month after the first confirmed case was found in the U.K. However, the situation was already terrible at that time. Although the government issued many policies and restrictions and funded some research related to Covid-19 subsequently, they still could not efficiently control the outbreak. That is a failure.

However, after that mistake, the government still did not show enough determination to introduce a strict lockdown. They do have many lockdowns, but none of them are effective enough to suppress coronavirus. For now, the confirmed cases are still spiking within the U.K.

Trump, as I mentioned above, is notorious for his attitude towards coronavirus. When the Covid-19 outbreak began, Trump kept claiming coronavirus was just another flu, and we did not need to be panicked and it was not necessary to wear a mask. Even after the U.S. has become one of the most suffering countries in the world, it seems that he still does not realize the severity of the pandemic.

Moreover, under Trump’s government, it can be observed that wearing a mask or not has been made into a political issue, rather than a matter of personal and public health.. With incendiary words, what he has done is to split the country instead of finding a way to take care of the citizens. For self-clarification,

At the very beginning of the outbreak of Covid-19, no one treated this seriously, including Australia’s government. So when the first confirmed case was found in Australia on 25 January 2020 and the first death was found on 1 March 2020, Morrison’s government did not make any policy changes or respond to coronavirus, even several days after the community transmission happened.

But Australia’s government did have responses in mid and mid-late March. It was late, but it was not too late or absence of response at all. Their government started invoking many restrictions and issuing economic stimulus packages. Moreover, Morrison also established the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission, which let experts in public health have a place to communicate and cooperate with government officials and their citizens. The first national lockdown was introduced in late March. And it indeed made Covid-19 cases begin to fall in early April.

Then, in May, lockdown restrictions began easing gradually across Australia to allow their people to get back to normal life. Unfortunately, the easing of lockdowns made the resurgence possible. And the number of confirmed cases spiked again. Then, during the second wave of coronavirus, a strict lockdown was reinstated quickly in some metropolitan areas.

The second extreme lockdown worked. Now, the situation is getting better, again. The number of national daily reported cases have gone down to approximately 10–30.

Johnson’s net approval rating was close to zero from the beginning of this year to mid-March, which means his citizens did not particularly like or dislike him. At that moment, it was at the early stage of the first outbreak of the coronavirus.

And after the government implemented the first lockdown, the approval rating started rising, although the confirmed cases were spiking, too. The reason why the U.K. citizens felt confident about their government and approved of them may be because they felt they were protected by their leaders in that period.

But as time went on, the cases kept rising, and there were several lockdowns and easing of lockdowns. None of these lockdowns could show their citizens that their leader had the determination to curb the coronavirus. So Johnson’s net approval rating began dropping sharply in early-May.

On 22 October, the net approval rating of Johnson was -22. And the trend is still downward.

For Trump, the trend of his net approval rating is flatter than other leaders — fluctuating around -10.

It is fair to say that he does not put much effort into curbing coronavirus if any at all. Due to this reason, the whole situation in America is a mess from March 2020. And the reported cases have had an upward trend since the outbreak began.

He is not like other big countries’ leaders — who usually have big rises in net approval ratings. In March, at the time when the world started taking actions, releasing policies and restrictions, and trying to unite people, Mr. Trump did not do that kind of thing.

So the reason why his net approval is flatter than other leaders and does not have a rise is understandable and makes sense.

The coronavirus response of Morrison makes him become one of the most successful leaders during this pandemic. His net approval rating was the second-lowest among those big countries’ leaders at the beginning of this year.

But after Morrison’s government completed the first lockdown and other following policies went into effect the number of cases decreased and his net approval rating started rising sharply, from -25 to more than 30.

Even when the second wave of Covid-19 approached and threatened his status and position, Morrison quickly introduced another extreme lockdown to suppress the outbreak. And one thing worth mentioning here is that although the confirmed cases of Australia were increasing fiercely during the second wave, the net approval rating of Mr. Morrison was not impacted at all. It is because their citizens could feel they were protected by their leader. They trusted their leader and trusted each other.

What makes a good leader? According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people must have been “more or less” satisfied with their basic needs first, then have the motivation to pursue the highest need, which is self-actualization. The four basic needs we want to meet before the realization of our potential, self-fulfillment, or seeking personal growth are Physiological needs, Safety needs, Love and belongingness needs, and Esteem needs, respectively.

In Maslow’s words, the lower needs are not 100% necessary to be satisfied before individuals have the motivation to attend to higher needs. A few examples can be found, like for some people, the need to create fulfillment may supersede the most basic needs. However, in most cases, those basic needs should have been more or less satisfied first.

So, what can we learn from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Maslow’s hierarchy of needs implies that if leaders want to build up a better group and make their employees devote their efforts to the team and become the most that they can be, in other words, trigger their employees’ motivation to pursue self-actualization, providing the basic needs for their employees should be a key strategy that precedes other tactics.

Then, if we state that leaders’ goal is what we mentioned above — build up a better group and make their employees devote their effort to the team and become the most that they can be, leaders should at least help their members meet those most fundamental needs. It is only a threshold.

From what we have seen and discussed, we can clearly understand the importance of making employees feel safe by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is the key.

And we can also find out some real-life examples — the different consequences of different strategies and attitudes towards the pandemic from three different world leaders. For Johnson, his government has not shown the determination to curb coronavirus from spreading and has not yet met their people’s basic needs. Consequently, the net approval rating of Johnson dropped sharply. And for Trump, he has not treated this epidemic seriously. Therefore, the net approval rating is still much lower than 0. Prime Minister of Australia, Morrison, is one of the most successful leaders during this pandemic. He introduced an extreme lockdown to show their citizens his determination and made the citizens feel safe. Then, his net approval rating spiked from the second-lowest, -25, to more than 30.

To sum up, from the perspective of followers — it is important that to some degree the leader makes them feel “safe” to receive approval to be considered a “good leader”. And only a “good leader” can help teams become better, promote group operations, and boost organizations’ performance. In other words, do what leaders should do.