GOOD IN A CRISIS: Leadership Lessons from a Pandemic Podium

Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam

RIGHTS AVAILABLE: All rights handled by the bks Agency

Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam is a British medical doctor, specialising in public health, epidemiology, and respiratory viruses. He is best known for being England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, where his early years in post were spent in relative anonymity. Thrust fully into the limelight early 2020 by the Covid-19 pandemic, he became an overnight public sensation because of his innate ability to communicate extraordinary things to ordinary people in an understandable way. We were reassured by his calm presence behind the podium, where the fear and confusion, and lack of trust in our political leaders was tempered with his no-nonsense briefings, packed with metaphors about yogurts, trains, and football. But what was it about the way he conducted himself that made the British public embrace him as they did? In his natural self-effacing way, JVT would possibly say that he couldn’t answer that, citing instead, a number of different experiences, mentors, and skills that brought him to this point.

In GOOD IN A CRISIS, he explores the different roles he played during the pandemic including ‘The Conscientious Soldier’ - drawing on his own military training and the legacy of the Vietnamese Prime Minister grandfather where he considers the values of loyalty and humility, to ‘The Rigorous Scientist’ where a career on the frontline of global respiratory viruses taught him resilience and curiosity, and to his present-day role as ‘The Reluctant Politician’ where accountability and honesty shape his time in the public eye.

GOOD IN A CRISIS not only gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how we navigated the pandemic, and how the interface of science and politics changed our lives, but it also invites us to consider the values that we prize so that we too might be able to navigate uncertainty with dignity and compassion.