How to Infuse Leadership Development In Our New Normal
It has been seven months since organizations shifted to a new work environment. Maintaining productivity became a central focus along with keeping employees engaged. Early on, teams actively kept connected with virtual gatherings, activities, and programs. It’s all been necessary to support a remote workforce and keep businesses running smoothly. However, it also meant that leadership development took a back seat to crisis management.
Leadership Development on Pause
Hitting the pause button on leadership training and development is not an unusual response for organizations when managing crisis situations. The pressure of dealing with a crisis shifts the focus to more short-term needs. Now that the dust has settled and we have several months navigating this new normal, it’s now time to focus on your leaders and setting them up for success.
To be successful, you’ve got to deal with today, but you also have an obligation to lead into tomorrow. Great leaders know that leadership means balancing today and tomorrow. They maintain focus on purpose-driven leadership and keep the vision in clear sight for those around them.
It may be some time before things get back to normal, and even then a new normal will emerge, so how do we continue to deal with the impact of COVID-19 and put a focus on leadership development?
A Harvard Business Review assessment of corporate performance during the past three recessions showed that those most likely to grow during crises and recession were the organizations that successfully balanced the “right now” with the “what’s next.” While managing cost to survive, they continued to invest in the future.
The Opportunity in the Crisis
Nobody likes to live in crisis mode, but it does present an opportunity for managers and leaders to see team members in action and assess their leadership potential. It also provides opportunities for coaching and development.
Your leadership narrative should define what employees need now, and what they’ll need to be successful in the future. By doubling, or even tripling, down on communication with team members, it’s an opportunity to cement the company’s values and mission and create strong bonds.
For many, COVID-19 has redefined leadership. It’s become an opportunity to show others what true leadership looks like. Leaders who show up for their teams in the ways described below build long term engagement and productive teams:
Self-awareness
Humility
Compassion
Resiliency
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to honestly assess your strengths and weaknesses. Learning to see yourself the way others do helps make you more aware of your actions, biases, and emotions. Some say it’s the single most important trait in strong leaders.
Humility
A common trait among self-aware leaders is humility. While your employees are looking to you for answers, you truly don’t have all of them right now. Nobody does. How things shake out in the months and years ahead are uncharted. Intellectual humility allows you to admit to those around you, that you don’t know everything. A big factor of humility is the confidence to ask for help from others when you need it.
Compassion
Now more than ever, compassion needs to be a main leadership behavior in the workplace. Great leaders are checking in on their employees, asking them what they need, and giving much needed lee way for all employees to be met where they are. Many employees are juggling children who are stuck at home forced to remote learn, working in a confined and not fully set up make shift office, all while trying to maintain the same level of productivity at work they are used to. Many employees are also juggling the challenges of being home alone without live interaction with others. Leaders must meet employees where they are and foster a sense of psychological safety for their employees. Make it ok for employees to take breaks and be creative about how they structure their days based on whatever their individual needs are.
Resiliency
Resilient leaders have the ability to sustain their energy level under pressure, to cope with disruptive changes and adapt. They bounce back from setbacks. Resilience is a crucial characteristic of high- performing leaders. Leaders must cultivate it in themselves to advance and thrive.
While being transparent with team members, your leadership narrative should always create an optimistic, realistic, and compelling vision of the future. We’ve all learned so much about ourselves, our teams, and our business during COVID-19. It’s time to take those lessons and innovate for post-COVID.
Leadership Development During COVID-19
To continue to develop your next generation of leaders within your organization, you first must commit to making it a continuing priority. Then, you’ll need to adapt your process and embrace different learning modalities.
During COVID-19, most businesses have cut back on travel and face-to-face meetings, opting instead for video conferencing or remote presentations. The same strategies can work for leadership development using a decentralized or remote leadership learning model.
By leveraging technology, you can keep people engaged by modeling leadership situations and learning opportunities, creating collaborative moments, and social components, and offering group and/or individual coaching.
You may be considering outsourcing or augmenting your leadership training programs. This allows you to continue to focus on your business needs and charting the course for the future while still developing your company leadership.
Hit the Play Button on Leadership Development
It’s time to stop putting leadership development on pause. Hit the play button and fast forward to develop the next generation of leadership in your company. It will help your team communicate more effectively, work smarter, and become stronger leaders.
Strong leadership is needed now more than ever to navigate what’s next.