“What does the future require of our leaders?”

“How can we help them to achieve their goals?”

“Where should we start?”

As a result of COVID 19, business leaders have been forced to recalibrate their operational strategies almost overnight; dislocating their workforces, work cultures and the best part of all prior knowledge of their customer behaviours, to become more agile in a suddenly different and hugely demanding landscape.

While most of us never foresaw that a pandemic would be the catalyst of one the greatest paradigm shifts in organisational structure, leaders must now learn how to balance stability with dynamism to embrace a ‘new normal’. So just how do leaders leverage these challenges to reconfigure their corporate strategies and make sure they come out on top? What mindsets do successful leaders need to adopt in an environment where bureaucratic chains of demand are being challenged by a ‘burning platform’ impetus for change?

Asking ourselves the same questions, we reflected on our 16 years of expertise as a leading agile consultancy and held an event on Agile Leadership for our 250-strong talent pool. We split the  event into two sessions, using the first half to impart some of our knowledge and explore practical solutions to help clients develop their agile leadership strategies in terms of how work gets done, the methods by which leaders communicate and the ways in which offices are organised. In the latter half, we turned the rudder on our associate pool, comprising business and government leaders, academics and subject matter experts, inviting them to share their expertise by asking:

“What does the future require of our leaders?”

“How can we help them to achieve their goals?”

And finally: “Where should we start?”

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Here’s what we found…

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What does the future require of our leaders?

Leaders of hybrid virtual or fully remote working models will need to set a clear shared purpose and vision for their organisation that helps people feel personally and emotionally invested.

Interestingly, research shows that 92% people will go the extra mile if they understand their purpose.

Leaders will need to have the flexibility and willingness to adapt to team-member needs in context of virtual work.

Leaders will need to act as visionaries, architects and coaches

Leaders will need to deepen their understanding of their people. The variations of individual circumstances and working styles are more prominent now most employees are working remotely. Resources will be best utilised when allocated the right work and their personal working conditions understood by leaders.

Strong 2-way communication skills with remote and in-person colleagues on changes in working models. Leaders need to recognise that there is not a single solution that works for all people. Or indeed for any one person all of the time so will need to communicate and understand requirements of individuals/teams

Effective leadership of virtual teams through various platforms in lieu of in-person meetings

Role modelling of new norms and policies of new working environments.

Recognition that reducing the office space does not automatically save money – employers need to provide employees with their equipment, space and support which may equal the savings made from space saving.  The point is that agile is about new ways of driving effectiveness and productivity – not simply cost savings.

Leaders need to have the insight to investigate and ask what works for their people rather than assuming they know the answers which has to run deep into the organisation – not just stop at middle management

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How can we help them to achieve their goals?

Help leaders to diagnose what their organisational experience has really been with the advantage of a fresh view – to get the real picture and not simply the image presented by middle management.

Help to define clear corporate strategies that encapsulate the company’s purpose and ensure that they are communicated to workforce regularly to enable people to feel personally invested in their work.

Help companies to develop a culture that empowers its workforce by providing leadership practices which develop people ie. Mentoring and training

Offer technology solutions and structures that allow rapid decision making.

Challenge archaic thinking by providing fresh ideas from millennials and later rather than from older generations. How can we envision a new way of working when our own experiences have been an incremental evolution of our 30-year-old experience? Older perspectives come from privilege rather than many people’s reality.

Is there a new delivery model for changing the workplace? “P3M3” for disruptive change?

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Where should we start?

As a result of Covid-19 many companies are now working remotely or planning hybrid virtual models, combining remote and onsite working for their employees. Both workplace shifts place greater demands on more effective leadership strategies. While the hybrid model offers potential benefits such as increased access to talent, increased productivity for individuals, lower overheads and improved employee experiences, evidence shows that mixing virtual and on-site working might be harder in the long term. Hybrid models run the risk of creating dual organisational cultures, threatening the overall sense of belonging, common purpose, and shared identity that inspires all of us to perform, resulting in the overall deterioration of organizational performance. Whether or not working models have in-person or remote components, leaders of successful agile organisations should create a common culture, generate social cohesion and build shared trust to ensure they get the most from their workforce.