The litmus test for leadership for 2021 and beyond
I received an email this week from McKinsey, and the first paragraph stated, “But while the global pandemic made last year a bleak descent into existential risk, loss, and grief, this year begins with at least the promise of an ascent to recovery and a more positive reality. Demonstrating sincere care for teams and employees will still be the leader’s test, as will having the soft skills required to lead well.” This litmus test for leadership was not just for 2020; it was not temporary. It’s a skill set we vitally need to develop as leaders.
Demonstrating sincere care for teams and individuals. Exactly how do we do this, especially if it’s not a natural part of your past management or leadership style?
In 2020, we heard a lot about the importance of developing this “caring” skill set from various experts, because 2020 was terrible for many people and many businesses. Many leaders developed the needed soft skills or put processes, people, and systems in place to engage and help employees. According to McKinsey, these skill sets will also be our path forward.
In December of 2020, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman published an article in HBR that highlighted what employees need from their leadership in times of crisis. “Based on our data they want leaders who are able to pivot and learn new skills; who emphasize employee development even when times are tough; who display honesty and integrity; and who are sensitive and understanding of the stress, anxiety, and frustration that people are feeling. Our analysis shows that these are traits that are more often being displayed by women. But as the crisis continues, and intensifies in many places, all leaders, regardless of gender, should strive to meet those needs.” I urge you to review this article. It provides detailed criteria and data related to the skills leaders should have in challenging times. You can take the criteria or defined behaviors and use them to create your personalized leadership improvement plan.
In coaching clients and supporting them in planning and implementing organizational change initiatives, usually around strategy or operations, I help them explore ways to demonstrate that they have what employees say are important: “inspires and motivates,” “communicates powerfully,” “collaboration/teamwork,” and “relationship building,” while also keeping workflow going and not abdicating accountability.
Where can you start, or how can you take your leadership to the next level? Obviously, one blog cannot share all you need to know related to demonstrating these soft skills; but what are a couple things you can do, starting today?
Engage employees more often. How many times this week can you solicit employee input in meaningful ways? And how will you go about doing it?
1. To give you a picture of where you are with engagement, I recommend you do an assessment or survey. It does not have to be complex, nor does it have to be organization-wide. One functional manager informed her direct reports that she’d be sending them a survey, and she told them why she was doing it. The purpose of the survey was to find out what was important to them and to ask them to evaluate her engagement, leadership, accountability, individual and team performance expectations, etc.
The advantages? 1.) The survey shows employees you are interested in their feedback. She was doing one-on-ones already, as well as team meetings to solicit process improvements and problem solving. 2.) However, the confidential survey took the improvement ideas to the next level. As engaging as she was as a leader, the survey yielded additional, valuable results.
One caveat: if your organization uses surveys and generally ignores or fails to implement employee input or if employees rarely hear back about what is happening with their input, you will have to do more communication with employees beforehand, and you may not get as much participation as you’d like.
2. After the survey, communicate survey results and tell employees what actions are planned (along with timeline) to address concerns uncovered by the survey. The leader mentioned above shared with her team about how she would be using the feedback and putting it into action.
3. Do one-on-ones for relationship building. Let’s face it, if you do not have strong relationships with employees or a strong track record in engaging, soliciting, and applying employee input, if you start doing it now—especially if trying to engage in small talk when you never have before—you may get a deer in the headlights look from employees. They may be thinking privately: “who are you and what did you do with my boss/manager?”
Initially, you may want to frame your one-on-ones within the business context or related to a particular initiative that is going on. During the pandemic, asking on-site and WFH employees about how things are going, how the technology is supporting them, what could be better, how the workflow seemed to be going, what else they need, etc. can open the door to other conversations over time.
4. Solicit employee input in team meetings. Dedicate a certain amount of time for problem solving in each meeting, identifying current obstacles in the processes or systems and discussing how to solve them or implement work-arounds.
5. Overall, if you solicit input, you must communicate what you are doing with the input, how the input fits into a plan for addressing the issues identified. If you do not do this, getting effective input from employees in the future will be much more difficult.
6. When communicating with employees, let them know you’re human. In 2020, HBR published articles about the need for “vulnerability” in leaders. My next blog will go into more detail about this aspect and include a great recent demonstration of one leader’s example of showing she is human WHILE still holding others accountable to expected performance.
For more help with improving leadership and performance in times of disruption, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/transformingorganizations/.
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