Some Perspectives
Navigating through the Pandemic
We often hear commentary about adapting to the new-normal, and that is clearly the case for managers today as they look to guide their workplaces through troubled times and onto more stable footings beyond.
A Case for Leader-shifts?
Our journey begins with a spotlight on two major shifts in leadership; think of these as aspects of the leadership canvas that have taken on increased levels of importance or attention during this time.
Relational Status
Relationships, or more particularly relational security, is commonly accepted as an important hygiene requirement and a basis for connection between a leader and their reports.
What we now observe is that relationship factors have been elevated up the leadership ladder of considerations. Relational status has shifted from a hygiene factor to perhaps the single most important catalyst for effective leadership at this time. It’s a shift brought about by a pandemic that has had the dual effect of disrupting or downgrading other sources of leadership influence (eg leader’s status, technical or market know-how, or level of control) and heightening employees’ attention and desires for trust, to be part of the tribe, and to have their needs met.
Upon further examination, what we also witness is the qualitative difference between a relationship based on some level of security to one based on genuine reciprocity. Reciprocity builds on a foundation of security but more squarely goes to the quality or capacity of the relationship and is characterised by high levels of loyalty, commitment, and discretionary effort to the relationship itself and to satisfying the expectations that underpin it. To illustrate this distinction, when reciprocity exists, teams exhibit with high levels of energy, optimism and engagement to act that in may respects displaces anxiety, reservedness, caution and self-doubt.
When we consider the practical ramifications for our client cohort of managers, this distinction it has genuine implications for the speed (of execution) and confidence (of people) in implementing new plans or strategies.
More Distributed Leadership
We suggest one of the few positives brought about by the pandemic is the fast-tracked distribution of leadership through lower levels and throughout the enterprise. It’s a direction in leadership that has been advocated for some time, but one which the empirical record would suggest few have been able to achieve.
Clearly, the imposition of remote working for this interim period has been the main trigger. However, in our view, we are also witnessing a more systemic paradigm shift that will see the rules, traditions and restrictions that have often curtailed this type of development give way to a genuine broad-based permission and expectation to diffuse leadership accountabilities more broadly.
One immediate consequence that more space exists now for individuals to step into, take up, or take hold of leadership roles and to demonstrate that they can lead effectively through this challenging time. Sustaining this is another challenge and invariably means executives will need to re-direct or re-allocate more of the leadership investment away from the individual (be that senior executives or to high potential individual) and toward the management cohort and to baseline capabilities and systems they need to access as a matter of course to be influential and cohesive leaders.
Navigation Cues
Insights such as these mentioned above are only of tangible benefit when acted upon. Here we highlight three practical steps managers (leaders) can take to navigate their pandemic terrain.
4 Traits that Matter Most
First and foremost, it is beneficial for managers to step back and reassess how they turn up or present as a leader. If it holds true that reciprocity is better than security alone, then it is important to factor in the things that will attract employees to respect and be loyal to them as their leader.
In our experience, paying attention to strengthening your transparency, resilience, accountability, and care is a good place to start. The labels language are considered accurate but not rigid descriptors; what’s particularly relevant is that managers embrace the sentiments associated with each (listed below) in how they conduct themselves as leaders:
- Transparency – captures the honesty we need to see to feel secure in our leader’s presence
- Resilience – captures the courage we look for and are motivated by in our leaders
- Accountability – captures the integrity we expect of leaders in their own self-management
- Care – captures the commitment leaders demonstrate to our development and wellbeing.
Collaborative Practice & Expertise
The next or second consideration for managers to explore is how they connect with others in their leadership endeavours.
With remote working, every interaction or exchange is at a premium and engaging in deeper, more-purposeful dialogue becomes even more vital to growing the relationship, so it all points to managers being collaborative at every opportunity.
To avoid doubt, what we suggest here is a consistent and transparent demonstration of working together by becoming a role model for deep conversations that:
- seek to find new or better solutions to challenges; be they personal, team or business -related
- value the perspectives and experiences each person brings to the discussion
- make space to explore differences and respective interests and concerns; and most of all
- can be measured in terms of its value add to the solutions reached and their implementation.
It is also worth reinforcing that repeated use is perhaps the best and most powerful way to grow your influence as it becomes the vehicle to bring and sustain high levels of reciprocity into the working relationships.
Targeted Habit Building
The third and final consideration for managers is to reflect on what they should prioritise or pay attention to with respect to their teams.
Whilst each organisation or site has its own context and challenges, the common leadership agenda is the need to adapt, to do it together, and to do it in a way that builds confidence for further adaptions moving forward. We refer to this as getting the team in the habit of habit-building, and in our view, it’s of paramount importance to any journey to be undertaken by leaders and their teams.
Remote working is an immediate case in point and illustrates the need for intentional habit-building more so than a point-in-time reset. Models of remote working will continue to evolve, and it is critical that leaders recognise that the interim results they have achieved to date are no guarantee of sustained performance. Further, it is important to identify distinct capability sets for working remotely (covering aspects of working style, staying connected, self-development, and leadership routines), and that these capabilities are best built incrementally by leaders who engage with their teams, in their context, and build new routines that are most relevant to them.
The type of habit-building described here is itself a demonstration of distributed leadership as individuals become accountable for integrating new routines into the personal and team activities.