Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting national lockdown considerably impacted the institutional operations, in particular, those of an Open Distance e-Learning (ODeL) University in South Africa. These crisis times significantly challenged managers at an ODeL teacher education college to find innovative ways of successfully managing their staff in working remotely. This exploratory, interpretivist phenomenological study was employed to explore teacher education managers’ (TEMs’) point of view of the crisis and consciousness as lived experiences managing staff working remotely during the pandemic. This study is underpinned by the theory of crisis leadership and ubuntu management style. One major finding revealed that the pandemic influenced and altered the management styles of TEMs and their response in managing staff during unprecedented times of a global crisis with no formal training in undertaking this mammoth task. Managers pioneered new ways of supporting staff working remotely during times of crisis. Based on this finding, a professional development seminar could be developed for managers to empower them to become versatile and resilient in times of crisis. Further research needs to be undertaken to determine, through a mixed-methods design, how TEMs employed stress management techniques for staff working remotely, which may yield different results.