Do you want your managers to effectively scale your business in 2022 in a strategic, collaborative way? Or are you a manager who wants to get ready for this year’s challenges and opportunities?
If so, you will probably spend the first few weeks of new year deciding which critically important leadership skills you or your managers need to master in the ‘new normal’ era.
If that’s the case, the following list of strategic, leadership and interpersonal skills may be helpful.
The list is based on key topics of my executive coaching and leadership development work with over 150 managers in 2021. Here it is.
- Deep listening. Paying attention to verbal and non-verbal messages with focus and presence.
- Staying close to people. This is strongly linked to recreating human-to-human interactions in remote work settings, making time not only for weekly one-to-one meetings, but also networking, casual conversations and informal meetings.
- Motivating people non-financially – based on their personal values and the unique life context of each person.
- Giving feedback that is more strengthening than corrective, frequent, focused on personal development rather than periodical assessment of past performance.
- Being open-minded and having a passion for diversity. Expecting the unexpected, appreciating and encouraging people to build their strengths on their uniqueness, not uniformity.
- Using visionary and affiliative leadership styles much more than commanding and pacesetting. Orientating people around a common vision and empowering them to achieve goals out of enthusiasm, not compliance.
- Communicating clearly and regularly with the team and across the whole organization. Think of regular strategy updates, keeping people in the loop despite isolation, and preventing silo mindsets.
- Being able to show your human side to the people you lead – your vulnerability, emotions, values, personal stories or weaknesses as much as strengths.
- Talking about difficult emotions. Being able to identify, name and share your own emotions. Also, learning how to ask, accept, acknowledge and talk about the emotions of other people.
- Drawing healthy boundaries between work and other life domains so that working from home does not eat up the rest of your life.
