Leadership Hasn’t Changed (But You Need To)

How to fine-tune your leadership for post-pandemic success

The disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic was not all bad. We learned some things about ourselves, and we had an opportunity to accelerate some positive trends that, without the pressure of the crisis, would have unfolded much more slowly.

Just the simple fact that we could no longer procrastinate on certain decisions was a game-changing realization for many organizations. One global multinational had spent over 18 months investigating how to implement a work-from-home framework. It had assembled a multi-disciplinary project team to develop HR policies, ergonomic guidelines and assurance processes, technology and cyber-security solutions, and monitoring tools. This team was charged with piloting the concept, seeking agreement from the labor unions that represented the employees, and making recommendations to management.

But when the various stay-at-home orders were imposed around the world, these previously intractable problems were magically solved in a matter of days. Sure, it was ugly. But it’s amazing what can be done when there’s a non-negotiable imperative.

Learning this lesson and taking it to heart will significantly improve the adaptability and performance of any organization, regardless of its size.

As well as demonstrating that we can actually move much faster than we think we can, there are other notable trends:

We’ve embraced the not-quite-as-good-as-the-real-thing world of virtual meetings. What would have been unthinkable only a year or two ago is now accepted (albeit, not preferred) practice.

But for a leader, this makes everything just a little more difficult. The inability to personally connect and to read people’s energy and mindset is an impediment to building strong and trusting relationships. Finding other ways to achieve this, and cherishing the opportunities when you are face-to-face, require thoughtful consideration.

If you’re a strong leader who has already established trust and respect with your team, this will be a small shift to make. If you haven’t done this leadership work prior to the technology shift, it will be a lot harder—but not impossible—to build quality relationships with your people.

At the outset of the pandemic, reliable information was sparse, and conspiracy theories abounded. With little hard information to go on, leaders were forced to make decisions that were outside their normal range of comfort. It used to be sufficient to hold an annual planning process to refresh the long-range strategy, seek the endorsement of the board, and build the operating plans for the year ahead. This is no longer the case.

CEOs and top teams will need to be much more focused on the strategic horizon for the shifts that can make or break a company. What used to be a nice-to-have is now a core competency for senior leaders.

The fact that your people won’t congregate in a common workspace often has pros and cons. Leaders who used to gauge their people’s performance based upon their inputs (for example, time spent at the desk), will now have to measure outcomes instead. This is entirely positive. Inputs were never a good proxy for value creation, and broad-based workforce decentralization will accelerate this shift.

But the decentralization of people also pushes us into a more transactional space. Work is assigned, and work is completed. Visibility of how the work is done, and who contributes to the outcomes is lower.

And as the opportunity to implement strong, single-point accountabilities amongst your team increases (an entirely positive shift), it also heralds a move away from the collaboration and innovation that only happens when people interact more regularly.

If we accept the premise that great leadership looks the same today as it ever did, this enables us to focus our attention on the key elements of our environment that have changed, increasing the degree of difficulty of leadership.

Because so much of what we do is now done remotely, we have to be more discerning about what to focus on when we are able to be with our people in the same physical location. How (and what) should we communicate to best utilize those opportunities to motivate, support, and stretch our people?

It’s important to determine how much communication is required, and the channels you use. Don’t hold endless Zoom meetings just to satisfy yourself that you know what everyone is doing with their time (an input)—this is the post-pandemic version of command-and-control leadership.

Instead, bring people together for the things that really matter: for instance, examining performance (theirs and the team’s), helping them with the nuances of complex problem solving, or having group meetings that increase shared understanding, alignment, and commitment.

A leader’s first job is to build capability below them. Identifying who has the potential to grow into either a bigger job at the same level, or a promotion to the next level, is much trickier in the world of remote working. Knowing what to look out for is more important than ever.

First, make no mistake: there is no potential without performance. This has always been the case. If someone isn’t performing in their current role, putting them into a larger, more complex, or more senior role is doomed to fail.

But even those who are performing in their current role may not make the transition to the next level. Some of the indicators we use to assess an individual’s potential are still relatively easy to see, but others are not.

The willingness to take on tougher challenges, be open to ideas proposed by others, and to learn from mistakes are all indicators of potential and are all still relatively easy to observe. However, other key attributes, such as the ability to anticipate and avoid obstacles, and seeking feedback from diverse sources are much more difficult to determine.

Think carefully about what to look for in order to identify the leaders below you who are likely to grow. Pay attention to these indicators, and interrogate them regularly. Building the leadership capability of tomorrow is now even harder than it used to be.

As your people learn to work more autonomously, there’s an opportunity to nurture and grow that capability. Instead of fighting the fact that you no longer have the same level of control that you may have had in the past, learn to let go.

If people feel as though they are empowered to make the decisions that most influence their outcomes, they’re much more likely to be motivated to work at their best, regardless of the environment they’re in.

The bedrock of execution excellence is a leader’s ability to establish clear, single-point accountabilities. But without empowerment, this is just cruelty. Accountability and empowerment are two sides of the same coin, and can’t be separated. So learn to let go, and empower your people.

Make their objectives crystal clear, resource them appropriately, give them a say in setting deadlines, provide air cover to protect them from organizational politics, and be available for them when they need help. All of these things empower your people, and help them to stretch to a higher standard.

But most of all, let them make the decisions required to deliver their objectives. If you step in and direct their decisions, or make decisions for them, you disempower them and dilute the very thing that drives performance—a culture of accountability.

Leadership is difficult at the best of times, but the best leaders are now learning to apply their capabilities in the post-pandemic world. Doing more of the same won’t work. Making a conscious effort to focus on communication, talent management, and building a culture of accountability will.