“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
John Maxwell
Teams require influential leaders now more than ever! The circumstance that we said will cause problems for a few weeks in March 2020 raises more questions than an insane horror movie villain. The very last thing you need is a new puzzle to solve when it comes to the leading trends and challenges you’ll face in the new year.
Leadership is both the problem and the solution in any organization or team. Leadership can either be practical and focused on people and the goal, or ineffective and responsible for a catastrophic failure.
If your employees could project a leadership signal into the night sky, they’d use it to express their desire for meaning, growth, and an upgraded team experience.
If you want to be a leader at the forefront of change, now is the time to improvise and adopt a new leadership style. It’s time to break free from the old system and create recent trends, team cultures, and business models.
As we enter 2022, it is evident that organizations are operating in a more complex and competitive environment than ever before. As a result, the skill sets required of a leader in today’s business world are evolving.
Here are the emerging leadership and management trends that learning efforts will need to incorporate in 2022 and subsequent years to educate current and future leaders on success.
1. Switching to hybrid and remote work
Throughout this chaotic time in human history, our ideas about how we should work and where we should work dramatically changed. Many people would argue against the benefits of remote or hybrid work for excellent reasons, but these arguments frequently neglect the necessity for a balanced strategy to implement either properly.
Many employees and employers, in particular, are attracted to the hybrid work model as they prepare to return to the workplace in some capacity.
Early use of cutting-edge technology, social media, and communication platforms will enable your organization to successfully shift to remote working if and when the time comes.
Remote working gives your employees more freedom and a better work-life balance. It also allows you to hire people from various backgrounds and even nations, broadening the talent pool from which you may draw.
2. Strengthening the technology framework
There is no doubt that technology will shape the future, and the vast majority of businesses and several organizations are unprepared for it. There will be tradeoffs to be made, such as investing in your company’s infrastructure rather than expanding. But what good is growth if it isn’t sustainable and you can’t shift when the next problem or crisis occurs?
Investing in the right technology infrastructure is exceptionally important for teams today. A good start would be investing in excellent project management or collaboration tools. Companies are beginning to recognize the importance of competent project management in achieving a happier workforce.
3. Creating a purpose-driven team
Employee engagement is directly influenced by leadership styles.
Research shows that effective leadership may increase employee engagement, resulting in a variety of benefits for the organization, including increased employee satisfaction and retention and increased revenues.
A sense of direction and purpose must emanate from the highest rung of an organization, with senior leaders who instill trust in their staff. Senior leaders set the tone for a better culture and a more profound sense of purpose. Employee engagement and retention are higher in firms with a strong company culture in which employees feel they have a feeling of purpose.
4. Focusing on employee up-skilling
For the performance of a business, it is vital to up-skill and re-skill your personnel to understand their abilities, strengths, and shortcomings. Firms should implement employee up-skilling programs to keep employees updated with current market trends.
Employees will also be more interested in working for a company that cares about their growth. Employee up-skilling is teaching new skills while also improving the workforce’s capabilities and quality of work. It is easier for a company to attain its desired goals and remain successful if its staff are highly skilled.
Leaders can begin by developing a learning and development plan that includes learning new technologies and software, increasing job-specific knowledge and abilities, and teaching good management and leadership approaches, such as empathy, listening, problem-solving, and communication.
Leaders can also invest in coaching and mentoring. We use outside trainers to up-skill key personnel at my organization, and the outcomes have been fantastic, albeit challenging to scale. If you give structure and define expectations, peer-to-peer coaching and mentoring can be pretty helpful.
5. Take care of employee well-being and mental health
According to Aon’s 2019 Emotional Health Survey, emotional health is recognized as one of the top three drivers of overall employee wellbeing by 86 percent of employers, and 85 percent believe the company plays a significant role in promoting employee emotional health.
The relationship between a person’s mental health and their whole wellbeing, from physical to financial, has long been debated. Organizations recognize happiness’s influence on employee health, workplace performance, and productivity.
Mental health issues directly impact employers and enterprises due to increased absenteeism, a negative impact on production and revenues, and increased costs to address the issue. Furthermore, they hurt employee morale.
Unrealistic expectations and pressure to meet deadlines may be a massive source of stress and suffering, putting employees under unhealthy and unfair pressures.
Dealing with an unpleasant supervisor is the most common source of workplace stress. However, improving team communication may be easier to fix, and a genuine dialogue could make a difference. A good leader must not take employee well-being for granted, and they must make the team feel valued and trusted.
6. Leveling hierarchical structures
The structure of an organization impacts everything from how it functions to how well workers interact within. Employees work more efficiently with a well-defined organizational structure, which lays the framework for internal operations, establishes a command line, and promotes workplace openness.
The leader rescues their team – they have to know everything and manage direct reports. Organizations are becoming more ‘flat’, meaning that leaders who can thrive in a collaborative and cross-functional setting will be in high demand.
These ‘flat’ organizations benefit from enhanced employee communication, higher morale, fewer interferences, and the capacity to make choices and changes more quickly. Employees’ degree of responsibility are often substantially higher in flatter organizations, which improves job satisfaction and lowers the need for excessive management. As we approach the new year, we will begin to see a movement in the hierarchy of organizations, particularly those in the creative industries and startups.
Read more on the levels of leadership.
7. Shifting focus on employee engagement
Every business is distinct. As a result, it’s no surprise that how you engage staff will change. Measuring employee engagement can help you figure out how to engage people in the most effective way for your company.
Employee engagement refers to employees’ mental and emotional bond with their workplaces. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace, only 15% of employees are engaged in the workplace.
Companies with highly engaged staff are more productive and more profitable than their counterparts. In the end, engaged employees are more effective and remain longer.
However, you can’t engage employees unless you know what’s motivating (or discouraging) them in the first place. Measuring employee engagement gives you insight into what your employees like about your company and where you can improve.
Wrapping up
There’s little doubt that more significant change is on the way; it’s the new normal. It’s pretty unlikely that what you did yesterday will work tomorrow. Yes, it can change that quickly, as we have seen in recent years.
As a leader, you must be willing to try new things and experiment to be future-ready. Here’s sincerely hoping that this write-up will give our leaders tips on doing better and help them turn things around within their team.
Written By: Nandini Sharma, Assistant Marketing Manager at ProofHub.