For the past two years and unfortunately going into year 3, so many aspects of our lives have been unraveled and turned upside down. In many ways we have found ourselves transported into a very unfamiliar world. Ways that we did things successfully just don’t work and we have all been forced to find our footing in what seems like a slippery slope. One place that this has been required is in leadership roles within the business world.
At the onset of COVID it was hoped that within some few months we would return to a normal that was known and comfortable. We believed or at least hoped that this was a short-lived blip and made changes in the way we needed to operate that would get us through these times. However, that simply is not the apparent case. A post-pandemic era is going to require leadership to be redefined and apply innovative approaches to teaching and learning.
Success going forward for those in any position of leadership within an organization will need to seriously consider and address their approach to the still emerging new normal. This is a given that forging a way forward on this path will require. Here are some of the types of changes and sensitivities that this will demand.
- Cameras ON during all meetings – not an option going forward
- Working remotely diminishes any sense of real connection between participants. A growing complaint throughout these challenging times has been that in a zoom style meeting more cameras are increasingly turned off. This often includes managing participants. This takes an already challenging situation and compounds it big time.
Altered leadership approach
- Building rapport and understanding requires being able to see non-verbal cues as well as what is being said. Cameras on allows one to comprehend and understood by other participants.
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It can’t be ALL business ALL the time
- Take away the lunchroom or the coffee bar and the times to interact on a more social level are diminished. And this is the cost associated with remote working. Social interaction in a spontaneous manner is lost.
- In addition, lost is the ability to observe the team in action and to monitor progress with ease. Or, to see that one person is struggling and easily being able to address that with them.
- Building interpersonal rapport is also significantly diminished in a remote working world and this has always been a key factor of success within an organization.
Altered leadership approach
- Expand the meeting agenda to allow for the otherwise missing interpersonal communication. What’s going on with you? How was your vacation or weekend and what did you do? How have you avoided COVID? A waste of time? Not at all to the extent that connection contributes to success and that’s a proven fact.
- Simply STOP wishing for the return of what was. That ship has sailed
- For two years many of the team have been working from home … full time or part-time. Continuing to talk about ‘when we can return to the office and be together’ is somewhat of an affront to the very people who have had no such option. And furthermore, many don’t want that option.
- Studies conducted around this topic indicate that a large majority of people do NOT want to return to the way it was. They feel they have successfully adapted after going through an unnatural and ‘painful’ transition … and they like it.
Altered leadership approach
- Involve your team of employees to devise ideas and actions that will allow the missing ingredients that help to create the magic … the component that furthers the connection that enhances successful achievement is no secret.
- Redefining the meaning and components of GOOD leadership
- In what is now an altered past it was quite straight-forward. The goals were established. They were communicated and understood by all within the company, department or team. The task was then straight-forward with all working to achieve.
- The shake-up that accompanied and accompanies COVID has added complexity to the achievement desired. Today reaching the same level of success that has been known requires that leadership learn and utilize skills that for many were somewhere on the back burner of importance.
Altered leadership approach
- Leadership skills such as openness, empathy, resilience, and the ability to communicate will be of greater importance post-crisis.
- Good leaders will have to rebuild the boundaries between work and home life that
fell away during the pandemic.
- Building compassionate skills and attributes
- Employees need opportunities to engage with others even though working remotely. These might take the form of virtual lunches or other such social interactions.
- They also need to believe the organization has taken steps to protect their ability to be productive and innovative under pressure.
Altered leadership approach
- Leadership skills such as openness, empathy, resilience, and the ability to communicate will be of greater importance post-crisis.
- Good leaders will have to rebuild the boundaries between work and home life that fell away during the pandemic.
The pandemic has impacted businesses in ways that are positive, negative and neutral. It has unraveled systems and processes that were thought to be sacred and has exposed flaws in long-held assumptions. Yet it has provided a unique opportunity to reassess the way business is done and bring about changes for the better. COVID and its’ impact has been terrible in so many ways. Resulting leadership changes. for the good of all.
Mike Dorman
References:
Gregory Whitwell – Resetting the Leadership Agenda post-COVID-19
Rob Volpe – 3 Bad Leadership Habits to Leave Behind This Year – Entrepreneur Magazine
Chicago Booth Review – How Will COVID-19 Change Management and Leadership
Mike – There is too much to digest here. Working alone from home has exposed employees to independence, outside the construct of the assembled organization. In this climate what becomes of the effective body that functions better as a team, as was the pre-pandemic norm? Is there a new sort of sense of collaboration of contributing to a better product? Are the assembled pieces of the team still focused on a sense of the team, or company and loyalty that once was used as a measure of the effectiveness of leaders? I’m not sure that the preservation of the individuality that was borne of working apart, is seen as a healthy element of the team that is brought back together. I’m sure that anyone reading these words will say they were written by a person of the old way.
Bob. Thanks for your input. And … the ‘old way’ worked and worked well for the longest time. Of course the everchanging technological advances have and continue to require adaptation. However, the 2 year old pandemic forced changes as to how organizations were basically structured in relation to their teams and their operations. So as much as one may feel that the way it was provided advantages to the operation and the related successes, COVID came along and change was forced upon businesses. These changes have required breaking apart what we viewed as the norm and the way to function and reassembling the efforts around the new realities and new normal. I imagine there are few who run businesses or departments or teams who don’t see advantages in having all involved under the same roof. However, that option has not been realistic or even healthy during the COVID years. Thus it has required that ways are divised to combine the advantages that both organizations (smaller space needed) and employees have found (working from home) as well as the benefits of being together. And that is what so many have been and are doing presently. It takes a good amount of creative thinking and planning for sure. However, I for one, believe that even those who like the compartively simple ways of the ‘old’ approach will come around to seeing the resulting benefits. It’s especially simple because we know it and change is often a challenge. Regardless, how much choice do we have as we enter year 3.
Mike I suppose that my thoughts were focused on production areas and not administrative work groups. In groups such a personnel administration it is relatively easy to have employees work from home. Accounting and finance functions should I think work very nicely from home with good communications resources. I don’t feel as comfortable with planning functions working in remote areas where collaboration becomes a bit more difficult. If we think about manufacturing processes it may be very difficult, though I imagine electronic assembly could be done very effectively if there was a good process uniting system to move completed parts from one location to the next process stage. For administrative processes it strikes me that it is very easy to move work from one work station. The big problem is with an old goat such as me, I don’t think about organizations outside the real of an office. Interestingly enough, a very close friend of mine is a senior officer in a bank that is a small sub of a very large bank, and they have found it very easy to move officers out of the bank. Our son’s firm has had most of the professionals working from home since very early on in the pandemic. And it may stay that way for some of the professionals. Fascinating question, but it must be considered in terms of specific function in specific industries and one cannot apply blanket concepts across all functions in all organizations.