People automatically look to their leaders in times of
crisis, and the last few months have certainly delivered some of the greatest
challenges those leaders have ever faced. However, once the immediate tests
posed by the pandemic have subsided, leaders will need to be equipped to
succeed in a significantly transformed world of work – one in which remote,
hybrid and flexible working practices will be the cornerstones of the ‘new
normal’.
With
this in mind, here are 11 of the skills that leaders will require in the new
era of work.
1. Compassion _ The
ability to be with others
Compassion is. Compassion can be translated as
'compassion' or
Compassion is also translated as 'compassion' or 'mercy'.
Zen monk and doctor of medical anthropology Joanne
Halifax describes it as "the ability to be with others".
Compassion is a person's innate "deep understanding
and desire to be helpful to oneself and others".
want to be useful". She describes it as a genuine
desire, as well as the ability to be close to oneself and to the other person.
The power to 'be with' oneself and with others.
Compassion is said to be the 'two sides of the same
coin' as mindfulness. Like mindfulness, it has its roots in Buddhism, but has
been scientifically studied without religious overtones, and in recent years
has attracted attention from top universities around the world.
Compassion is perhaps the most important of the skills
needed by work leaders in the new era.
Compassion is also the ability to manage one's own words
and actions, which enables one to deal successfully with crisis situations. Compassion
is also the ability to understand the emotions of others.
The set of social and emotional skills that make up Compassion
are therefore crucial for leaders to make the best decisions and build the best
relationships in the context of constant change, uncertainty and instability in
the post-COVID-19 world.
Compassionate leaders have a solid understanding of their
own and others' emotions and the ability to manage them well.
In short, the most effective leaders have a close
relationship between emotional intelligence, empathy and compassion.
Compassionate leadership does not mean 'being nice' or
'being intrusive'. Rather, it is about qualities such as self-awareness and
self-compassion mentioned earlier, and the ability to put yourself in the shoes
of others.
2.Self-awareness
Linked with Compassion, self-awareness is
defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as
“an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality”. Organizational
psychologist and researcher Tasha
Eurich has gone further, identifying two
broad categories of self-awareness: 1. internal and 2. external.
Internal self-awareness focuses on how clearly we see our
own values, passions and aspirations, and our impact on others. Meanwhile,
external self-awareness is our understanding of how other people see us. Eurich
has underlined the importance of leaders actively working to develop both types
of self-awareness, commenting: “…leaders must actively work on both seeing
themselves clearly and getting feedback to understand how
others see them.”
Key to developing that self-awareness is adopting a
regular habit of mindfulness and self-reflection. By
routinely taking time to reflect on their skills, strengths, weaknesses and behavioral
patterns, as well as how they may be perceived by others, leaders are able to
better tell the difference between their own perception of a situation, and the
situation as it objectively is. Reflecting will also help them to develop
better critical thinking skills, and to more accurately identify what their
people need from them – both will be critical in the new era of work.
3. Adaptability
During this crisis, leaders have had to adapt and tackle
new challenges on a near-daily basis. In the process, however, we’ve learned
that we can affect significant change overnight – for example, by leveraging
entire workforces to suddenly start working remotely. So, we know we can adapt
quickly, and have the necessary skills to do so. And, in the new era of work,
we will need to continue working this way in response to the new changes and
uncertainties that will inevitably arise.
This means that your business and senior leadership team
will need to continue taking an agile and adaptable approach, combining
flexible thinking with good forward planning. That must include putting
multiple plans in place for achieving objectives, so that – whatever circumstances
your organization may face – it always has several potential solutions at its
disposal. Take the steps now to devise contingency plans that will help your
business to navigate the new challenges posed by the ever-evolving
post-pandemic world of work. But be ready to pivot them quickly, and in a
completely different direction, if required.
The most successful and capable leaders in the emerging
new era of work will, in many ways, be those who have the confidence and
conviction to pivot plans and take a fluid approach where needed, in addition
to having the mechanisms in place to make any necessary changes quickly.
4. Communication
At this time when so much remains uncertain – not just
about the course of the pandemic, but also about the real-world impact on our
daily lives – people are looking to leaders for direction and a sense of the
way forward. The way you communicate this will therefore have a huge impact.
Leaders in the new era of work need to be authentic,
clear and regular communicators. They must also be honest and vulnerable, with
an ability to admit that they don’t have all of the answers, but are working
hard to find them – not least because they, too, are still learning and
devising solutions to the challenges that are continually arising.
“When a massively destructive event like this happens,
and people are worried, anxious and scared, they look upwards to the leader of
the business for answers – answers we, as leaders, don’t always have. But at
times like these, there’s no place to hide, you’ve got to be out there front
and Centre. The key is to maintain regular communication, and give direction in
a way that is clear, honest, authentic and humble, to give people both guidance
and reassurance, even when that reassurance might be difficult to give.”
As a leader, you will also need to adjust your
communication for the new era of the ‘hybrid team', in which some of your
workers at any one time may be based in your main office, and others are based
at home or remotely. You will need to maintain clear and fair lines of
communication with both groups of employees, so that every team member feels
equally included in your organization’s mission in the post-pandemic working
landscape.
5. Creative
problem-solving
It has long been argued that it is crisis and limitation,
rather than stability and freedom, that most help to spur on creativity and
innovation. Charlotte Gifford, writing
for European CEO,
has noted that “we often assume that we are at our most creative when we have
an abundance of time and resources at our fingertips, but research suggests
that constraints help us unlock our brightest ideas.”
To illustrate her point, Gifford drew attention to a 2018
review of 145 academic studies,
which found that while resource abundance encourages us to only propose the
easiest available solutions to problems, resource scarcity tends to produce the
most novel solutions to problems.
This is certainly a point of great relevance to the
coronavirus crisis, which has been likened to wartime in terms of the effects
it has had on innovation. Elevated demand for ventilators, protective equipment
and hand sanitizer has led to organizations across the sectors devising all
manner of often unexpected solutions. We’ve seen Formula 1 engineers, for
instance, making breathing aids, and brewers producing hand sanitizer.
Such ingenuity arose amid the pandemic because of the
urgent need for it, and as we transition into the post-COVID-19 era of work,
the ability to tackle challenges creatively, think outside of the box, and
drive new innovations will continue to be greatly needed. This will be
especially so as the pace of digitalization increases and customer demands and
expectations change more quickly than they have ever done before.
One of the key lessons of the last few months is that
leaders cannot depend on always being able to do things the way they have
always done them; even if they do not proactively innovate themselves, changing
circumstances and needs are likely to eventually force their hand. Now, then,
is a time to lay a new path – perhaps one that you didn’t think your business
would take just a few weeks ago.
6. Critical
thinking
Closely related to the above point about creativity
and problem-solving, critical thinking will be imperative in the new era of
work, for the simple reason that the new and unfamiliar circumstances we face
in the wake of the coronavirus crisis are likely to present new challenges.
But what is critical thinking? Contrary
to common belief, the term ‘critical thinking’ does not mean quite the same as
intelligence, although intelligence is a component of critical thinking. After
all, we’ve probably all met people who were good at summoning up obscure
information or resolving complex mathematical equations, but who often made
poor decisions.
Guest
writing for Entrepreneur, Shawn Doyle – President at
New Light Learning and Development Inc. – defined critical thinking as
“thinking about how you think”. He went on to cite several steps that we can
all take to develop our critical thinking skills, including taking virtual or
online classes, being unafraid to question assumptions, and teaching team
members how to think more critically and objectively.
In this new and unpredictable era, we all need to show
greater willingness to routinely question our own thought patterns. By using our
critical thinking skills to explore every conceivable leadership problem from
every possible angle, we can place ourselves in a better position to devise the
right solutions.
7. Inclusiveness
One key change that the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly
brought to the world of work is a surge in remote working. And as we’ve moved
through the crisis, we have seen the introduction of hybrid teams, whereby some
workers are office-based, and others home-based. It has never been more
important for leaders to lead their teams in an inclusive way, ensuring every
member of the team feels they are of value.
As Dan
Robertson, Diversity & Inclusion Director at the
Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (ENEI), has previously written,
inclusive leaders tend to be those who provide a compelling vision that
inspires diversity of thinking. They also show high levels of empathy,
acceptance of everyone without bias, and an ability to listen to the opinions
of diverse groups.
Robertson also noted that insufficiently inclusive
leadership serves to hamper innovation. Even pre-COVID-19, it was important for
leaders to take an inclusive approach in order to help avoid the ‘groupthink’ that
could be so damaging to organizational decision-making, as well as to minimize
the likelihood of unconscious bias in talent selection, retention and
recruitment.
8. A
commitment to lifelong learning
The COVID-19 crisis has certainly shone a spotlight on
the importance of commitment to lifelong learning, regardless of seniority.
In the new era of work, the best leaders will be
committed to their own lifelong learning and role-modelling those learning behaviors
within their organizations. Key to this will be encouraging your employees to
develop a growth
mindset, whereby they are always on the lookout
for new opportunities to add to their skills.
So, be a role model, and commit to your own, continuous
lifelong learning. As I says, “I strongly believe that you are never too
senior or old to learn something new. In fact, the best leaders I know are
those who are always learning new things, always reading or exploring a lot and
above all, always make their own development a personal priority. These people
usually lead high-performing businesses. And that’s no coincidence. As I see
it, if the leader of a business is committed to their own learning, generally
their entire workforce can be too. And that can only lead to good things.”
9. Considered risk taking
The ability to take well-reasoned, calculated risks has
always been an important component of leadership. Leaders
should not confuse it with genuinely reckless risk taking that combines high
risk with low potential reward.
In the new era of work, however, this skill has probably
become even more pivotal. After all, this is a time of considerable uncertainty
and ongoing evolution in the corporate landscape. Leaders need to be ready to
take opportunities as they arise, which will always involve an element of risk
taking and venturing into the unknown.
To make risk taking an effective part of your own
leadership strategy, you should ensure you first have a clear goal and vision,
and gather all the information you will require to estimate the risk of a given
action.
It is also crucial to consider the costs of the
particular action relative to your resources, as well as to evaluate the
potential positive and negative outcomes of taking that risk.
10. Resilience
Closely interlinked with the importance of risk taking is
that of adopting a positive and proactive attitude to whatever circumstances
you may find yourself in as a leader.
It is impossible for even the most effective leader to
only ever experience success in their life and career. The reality is that as a
leader, you will encounter setbacks from time to time, and in order to overcome
these disappointments and failures, you will need to build personal resilience.
The IMD describe
resilient leaders as having “…the ability to sustain their energy level under
pressure, to cope with disruptive changes and adapt. They bounce back from
setbacks. They also overcome major difficulties without engaging in
dysfunctional behavior or harming others.”
The turbulence that many organizations have faced in the
coronavirus crisis has simply underlined the longstanding importance of leaders
being able to function well under pressure. A resilient leader sees the
opportunity in every failure, faces obstacles head on, and has a great ability
to draw strength from within themselves for the most challenging moments in
their life and work.
11. Authenticity
It is also crucial that amid everything else that makes
us what we are as leaders, we are also, ultimately, human – and successful
business is all about human connection. So, your leadership approach shouldn’t
be cold and impersonal – it should feel human and authentic.
Why, however, is acknowledging all of this so important
in the new era of work? The reasons are simple: despite the highly
interconnected nature of today’s technological world, we seem to be in danger
of losing, instead of gaining, that sense of human connection. We are a
naturally social species, and the post-pandemic era of work will force us to
work together to determine effective routes forward. Despite this, there is
evidence that a fifth
of the UK population could be experiencing loneliness,
and that 40
per cent of employees feel isolated at work.
And of course, this loneliness and isolation epidemic is
seemingly unlikely to be lessened by the recent tendency for many more of us to
work from home. Restoring authenticity and a sense of human connection to their
employees’ experience of work must therefore be one of the key priorities for
leaders in the coming months and years. As
Capgemini has put it, “authentic leadership’s key
purpose is to develop a sense of belonging, shared values and success. All of
these are aspects that may easily disappear in the modern, virtual workplace.”
It is as part of this mission that leaders should also be
unafraid to show vulnerability, which is another quality that might not seem
obviously beneficial to leadership. However, opening up to your workers about
your feelings, concerns and goals could actually help you to set an important
example of honesty and trust.
By being vulnerable enough to admit that you don’t have
all of the answers to a given problem, you can also open up a space for other
members of the team to provide feedback and ideas. As I have touched on
elsewhere in this blog, feedback and ideas are crucial in this new era in which
we are constantly meeting new challenges and needing to devise solutions from a
position of self-awareness. And of course, being vulnerable as a leader also
helps to make you more relatable and approachable to your team members, while signaling
to them that it’s OK to be authentically themselves.
Great leadership skills will always be great leadership
skills
As drastic an impact as the COVID-19 crisis has had on
the corporate landscape, it’s also true that all of the aforementioned
qualities were crucial and valued in leadership long beforehand. Nonetheless,
they have arguably become even more important in the new era of work, in which
so much has already changed and so much more remains uncertain. So, keep in
mind that it’s not just the above skills that will help to make you a better
leader in the coming months and years, but also the ability to adopt different
styles of leadership as and when needed, as I have previously written about.
Take the time now to build on your skills in all of these
key areas – not least given the many ways in which they interlink – and you
will be in a strong position to lead your business effectively into the new era
of work and beyond.
*Contact us for a workshop to learn these 11 skills:
master in one-hour Stay Gold workshop 50% of the participation fee will be
donated to human rights issues as an SDGsWorkshop. Half of our training and
consulting fees are donated to research organizations for research on human
rights issues.
Best wishes,
Keiko Mizuno
SPACES,INC, Innovative Designer
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