And a new leader was born

2020 has contributed significantly to many challenges, both in our personal and professional lives, and an important one it’s our leadership style. 

The pandemic has brought too much pressure and challenge for management because maintaining efficiency at a distance in volatile, ambiguous, and unforeseen conditions is something that not many leaders were prepared to do. 

There are a few issues that leaders and their teams have addressed since the global pandemic started, that changed the approach of how to lead.

🔷The global turmoil has triggered continuous change, and we’ve seen the environment shifts every single day.  

We are adjusting rapidly to such changes both at an individual and corporate level, due to the impact on our job, home, social life, and our well-being.

Leaders’ responsibility is to navigate these shifts to ensure that their team is motivated, empowered, agile, and up to date with new technologies. Retraining and up-skilling staff can help a lot to respond to the changing climate.

🔷Having the team engaged was one of the first challenges addressed and is still coming up in discussions. 

Without having face-to-face contact in the workplace environment, it was difficult for leaders to find the right balance between being emphatic, providing support, and push for effectiveness. Empathy and kindness have never been more important to be used in high proportion as now. And with all the environment, the challenge of keeping the efficiency and still deliver results. 

Encouraging employees to open up to teammates, bounce insights, and asking team members to work in small groups become now a new phase on how we do the job. Leaders have to ensure that no one is left entirely alone.

🔷The art of listening, particularly at the team level, has never been addressed as it is today.

As we function remotely and do not have the daily experiences that enable us to feel the pulse of our company and market, we now need to facilitate and adjust collaboration in a different but still efficient way.

We all miss the casual conversation when we head to a meeting or for a coffee. They were so important as team members could feel more comfortable to open up concerns or even seek advice without officially asking for details in a formal way.

🔷Knowing how an employee copes with the workload is extremely tough in the current climate.

The tasks shared inside the team relate to which participants are best suited to each role that is much more challenging to achieve in these times. It is now more essential than ever to develop leadership skills to adjust to this challenge. 

All these unexpected challenges forced us to be mutually supportive, step up in our duties, and be more versatile and resilient. We’ve been creating more adaptive teams, facilitating more interactions, and caring for each other. 

A new kind of leader was born!