Leaders' Strategies for Managing Difficult Emotions During Peak Waves of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study on Senior Managers of Textile Industry in Pakistan

The study focuses on difficult emotions experienced by the functional heads of two leading textile companies in Pakistan during the peak waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. It explicates the coping strategies developed at individual and group levels and provides a unique indigenous narrative of how leaders manage their emotional journey during the pandemic. The research design was qualitative, and in-depth semi-structured interviews were the primary method for data collection. The findings highlighted that the participants experienced fear, anxiety, loneliness, and frustration due to the COVID-19 pandemic and it also unveiled the measures adopted at organizational and national levels to manage and contain the viral spread. Furthermore, managers who accepted their own and their teammates' emotions were able to develop effective coping strategies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The study contributes towards understanding human emotions in the workplace and how organizational leadership inculcates different coping strategies to process these emotions.