Leadership Is a Contact Sport — COVID Turned It Into a Broadcast

During COVID, leadership didn’t disappear. But it changed form—and many organizations are still paying the price.

What had always been a contact sport became a broadcast.

Leaders showed up on screens instead of in spaces. Communication became scheduled, filtered, and one-directional. Mentoring shifted from lived experience to calendar invites—if it happened at all.

At the time, this made sense. It was necessary. It was survival.

The problem is that we never intentionally shifted back.

What “contact” leadership actually means

Leadership isn’t learned primarily through emails, decks, or town halls. It’s learned through exposure.

People learn leadership by:

• watching how decisions are made

• observing how leaders handle conflict and uncertainty

• listening to how priorities are framed in real time

• seeing what gets addressed—and what gets avoided

This is the informal, human layer of leadership. It’s rarely documented, but it’s where culture is actually transmitted.

COVID didn’t weaken leaders’ intentions. It removed the conditions under which this learning occurs.

Broadcast leadership filled the gap

As organizations went remote, leadership communication adapted—but in a limited way.

We got:

• more town halls

• more emails

• more Slack messages

• more dashboards

What we lost:

• informal mentoring

• spontaneous sensemaking

• leadership-to-leadership dialogue

• visibility into how leaders think, not just what they decide

Leadership became something people received rather than something they experienced.

The “hiding in the basement” effect

This is the part few leaders like to talk about—but many employees quietly recognize.

During COVID:

• Leaders understandably retreated into crisis management

• Visibility dropped

• Communication became more controlled and less relational

When offices reopened, many leaders returned physically—but not behaviorally.

The habits stuck:

• Leadership remained scheduled

• Mentoring remained optional

• Communication stayed transactional

The organization came back. Leadership presence often didn’t.

Why leadership feels weaker now (even when leaders are working harder)

Post-COVID complaints often sound like:

• “There’s no clarity.”

• “Decisions feel disconnected.”

• “Leadership feels distant.”

• “No one is developing the next layer.”

This isn’t about effort or capability. It’s abouta broken transmission.

Leadership capability is passed down through:

• proximity

• observation

• dialogue

• modeling

When those mechanisms collapse, leadership quality appears to decline—even if leaders are more competent than ever.

Mentoring didn’t just slow down—it structurally broke

One of the quiet casualties of COVID was mentoring.

Not formal programs.The real kind.

The kind that happens when:

• A senior leader pulls someone into a conversation

• A decision is explained out loud

• Mistakes are unpacked in the moment

• Judgment is modeled, not described

You can’t replicate that through broadcasts.

You can’t mentor from a calendar invite alone.

This is not an argument against remote work

Remote and hybrid work didn’t cause the problem. They exposed a leadership assumption:

That leadership presence is optional. That communication is the same as connection. That mentoring can be deferred without consequence.

Those assumptions were wrong.

What organizations missed

Many organizations invested heavily in:

• Technology

• Flexibility

• Productivity systems

Very few invested intentionally in:

• Rebuilding leadership presence

• Restoring mentoring pathways

• Re-establishing leadership-to-leadership communication

We optimized for efficiency—and lost something essential.

The real takeaway

Leadership doesn’t fail loudly. It fades quietly when contact is removed.

Leadership is a contact sport. It requires presence, exposure, and human friction.

COVID turned it into a broadcast. And most organizations never rebuilt the contact layer.

A question worth asking

If leadership is learned by watching, who has been watching your leaders lately?

And what, exactly, are they learning?

Connect with Jeannine via LinkedIn or email her at JLM@JeannineMiller.com. JeannineMiller.com