The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we live, interact with each other, and work. Here’s how leadership has evolved in 2021, and what it will look like as we move forward.
It’s no secret that 2020 changed everything about how we operate as a society. One of the first things that changed was the way we work. A Pew Research study shows that, while many workers had jobs that were capable of being done remotely pre-pandemic, they rarely worked remotely. During the pandemic, a whopping 71% of these workers transitioned to working from home either most or all of the time.
With all of these shifts impacting the workforce, it’s only natural to expect leadership traits to adapt and evolve as well. We all must evolve to meet the demands of our ever-changing workplaces. So, what does leadership look like now, in 2021, in a post-pandemic workplace? Keep reading to learn five traits of leadership that every founder should develop in order to be successful in the new workplace paradigm for 2021 and beyond.
1. Trust
Chances are you got to this website using Google, perhaps using an Apple device. And you just may have Bill Campbell to thank for that. According to Eric Schmidt, Alan Eagle, and Jonathan Rosenberg, who wrote Trillion Dollar Coach, “...without a doubt, Bill Campbell was one of the people most integral to Google’s success. Without him, the company would not be where it was today.”
Campbell also coached Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. One of Campbell’s biggest beliefs is that trust is essential to leadership. Rosenberg, a former Google executive, summed up that Campbell “knew that to get great leadership, you needed to build trust.”
Campbell’s beliefs about the importance of trust in leadership are backed by a study measuring behavioral integrity conducted by Cornell University. Were leaders practicing what they preached? Hotels where employees strongly believed that their leadership was trustworthy enjoyed increased profitability. Even a mere 1/8 point improvement on a five-point scale increased profitability by 2.5% — or an entire $250,000 per year! Writes the author, Tony Simons, “No other single aspect of manager behavior that we measured had as large an impact on profits.”
2. Empathy
Creating an inclusive, psychologically safe workplace environment is vital. Nearly 2/3s of learning, development, and HR professionals surveyed in the 2021 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report have reported making diversity, inclusion, and equity a priority in the workplace.
Having empathy for the people you are charged with leading goes a long way to helping foster this environment. Person-centered leadership recognizes that your employees are real people, not cogs in a machine. Helping workers feel that they are valued as people — and that their contributions are valued — is vital to creating a place where people want to be contributing, collaborative, and productive members of a team.
Dr. Brené Brown, author of Dare to Lead, says that leaders must choose courage over comfort — that choosing empathy is the courageous thing, because it takes courage to acknowledge that team members have feelings. “We have to attend to fears and feelings, otherwise we can’t attend to unproductive behavior.”
3. Flexibility
The pandemic has changed office culture — and for some people, where the office is. Some companies, like Twitter, are allowing most employees to continue working from home indefinitely. Others, like Apple, are adopting a hybrid model.
Leaders would do well to remember that flexibility doesn’t harm productivity. Pre-pandemic, 96% of employees were asking for flexibility but only 47% had access to it. Remote work is a top priority for younger workers, which is crucial to keep in mind as older generations age out of the workforce. The World Economic Forum found that, for most companies, productivity either remained stable or increased during the COVID-19 remote work boom. Great leaders should remain flexible and adaptable with the times and needs of not just the business, but also their employees.
4. Invest in team development
In 2019, LinkedIn’s Workforce Learning Report noted that 94% of employees said they’d stay at a company longer if it invested in them by providing learning opportunities. Per the 2021 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, the top skills employees worldwide are interested in fostering right now are resiliency and digital fluency.
Leadership training is also important for all employees, in order to start developing the next generation of future leaders. Training staff members costs money, and when employee turnover is high, it’s costly to keep rehiring and replacing staff. So, it’s worthwhile to invest in employees who are going to stay for a while.
A survey of over 2,000 employees found that organizations that offer opportunities for professional development increase employee engagement by 15%. These businesses also see 34% high retention rates compared to businesses that don’t offer professional development opportunities. As a leader, it’s important to remember that investing in your team and providing opportunities for development is your responsibility.
5. Be technologically literate
If anything showed us the need for — and the capabilities and limitations of — technology, it was 2020. Everything, from concerts to groceries to exercise classes became accessible online. Anyone who wasn’t already online with their business was in a scramble to set up shop online lest they lose money and possibly their livelihood.
Companies had to figure out how to adapt, and quickly to new platforms like Zoom. Leaders must be able to lean on their technological literacy to recognize new product and services opportunities for their customers and ways to make things more efficient for their teams.
Now, more than ever, leaders must foster trust and empathy, embrace workplace flexibility, invest in their team’s professional development, and understand the opportunities and limits of technology. Embrace these five traits, and your company will have an excellent foundation for growth in 2021 and beyond.
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