Earlier this summer, we began to select articles from leadership and management websites around the internet to support your professional development. The publication of this post makes three roundups in our new series, a series which is firmly establishing itself as we seek to provide you with the best news and thoughts on leadership topics.
We start today’s roundup with a post from the Knowledge and Insights section of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). This insightful post lays out a vision of seven key attributes employees will need in the world of hybrid work.
Seven attributes to survive in the world of hybrid work (Chartered Management Institute)
The CMI, the benchmark institution for raising professional standards in the leadership and management industry, asked a leading psychologist to analyse the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs’ report, and the finding was that automation and globalisation were going to drive a shift in job skills and requirements. The institute then identified the seven key competencies they believe will be in high demand over the next decade:
- Critical thinking: People need to be able to appraise data, critically evaluate ideas and assumptions, and assimilate information to make quick decisions
- Learning agility: Leaders and employees will have to embrace an agile mindset, which means learning while tasks are in progress and applying learning quickly
- Digital dexterity: People who upskill and leverage artificial intelligence and robotics will gain an advantage as these new technologies disrupt industries
- Building relationships: The rise of automation will make social skills much more valuable because machines can’t replicate them as easily
- Embracing diversity: Leaders and employees must seek out diverse perspectives for ideas and problem-solving, treat people fairly irrespective of their background and summon the courage to challenge circumstances when this isn’t happening.
- Resilience: The pandemic has cast wellbeing and mental health into the spotlight, and individuals must build personal resilience to cope with setbacks and change. Organisation leaders must create supportive climates to help build employee wellbeing.
- Change orientation: Digitalisation, automatization, and new technologies will change the nature of market needs, organisational structures, and jobs. Employees must be ready to embrace change and to develop new skills
This is an important article, and we’re not going to argue against these predictions. Resilience, diversity and inclusion, and the use of tech have all come to the forefront during this pandemic. Meanwhile, critical thinking has always been an important part of leadership and will continue to be. We offer several courses to help you prepare for the future the CMI envisages:
- Strategic Approaches to Equality, Diversion and Inclusion: This course will enable leaders to understand equality, diversion and inclusion at a strategic level, and the best way to incorporate key objectives into the organisation
- Strategic Wellbeing and Resilience Programme: This course looks at the relationship between stress, wellbeing and change, and at the challenges of leading. Participants are invited to think about the culture of wellbeing in their organisations and to consider ways to integrate coaching and supportive measures at a policy level
- Digital Skills Masterclass: This course provides the opportunity to learn about working with an array of digital media. The course looks at managing information, communicating, and transacting
- Leading Through Change: The ‘Leading Through Change’ programme is an excellent course for leaders who are implementing change in their organisation. On the course, you’ll learn about planning change, self-management during the project, how to lead your team and the organisation through change, communicating change, and more.
Perfectionism and the cost of always wanting to do things better (Fast Company)
This article in renowned US business publication Fast Company discusses the impact of perfectionism on organisations in which leaders expect only flawless performance. The writer states that these organisations will receive what they wish for, but that the demands for perfection will produce the less desirable results of stress, anxiety, depression, resentment, exhaustion, and, overall, burnout after a while.
The author recommends that leaders develop a healthy culture that encourages a growth mindset, by taking the following measures:
- Applauding effort and not just results
- Reveal their own shortcomings and worries to show their vulnerability
- Encourage prioritisation and the readiness to say ‘no’
- Display humanity and empathy towards your team
Evidently, such an impact isn’t good, and we’d add to the outcomes explained that the quest for perfection will diminish productivity, increase frustration, and dismantle the confidence of teams, who will take longer to complete tasks and feel generally unsure of whether they’ve executed tasks to the desired standard.
If your workplace culture demands perfection from your employee, we’d suggest two courses: our ‘Leading Through Change Programme’, which will enable you to manage change successfully in your organisation (because the impact of the culture on the employees suggests there will be a need to change).
More importantly, we’d recommend our ‘Strategic Wellbeing and Resilience Programme’, which invites the participants to consider the company culture, and how they can integrate coaching and supportive measures at a policy level. Since you’ll be implementing change in your organisation, the course also covers leading through change and how to support your employees during periods of change.
Careers are no longer ladders to climb (Fast Company)
Also from Fast Company, this article discusses the change in the nature of career progression, explaining that whereas careers were ladders before, now they’re ‘lattices of horizontal and vertical opportunities, shaped by personal and professional aspirations, in addition to company needs’. This means businesses must foster a growth mindset, allow employees to diversify their skillset, and avoid pigeonholing employees as performing a specific role for which they only need particular skills.
Lack of training and development opportunities, resulting in lesser engagement from employees with their work, is a major reason why employers are seeing their best talent head for the door. They should consider their employees’ different talents and how to harness these for the good of their organisations. Potential is going to waste, otherwise.
As a coaching and training and development company ourselves, we wholeheartedly embrace training drives and the promotion of professional development and encourage professionals to build their skillsets. Developing new skills makes you more employable and valuable to your employer, and creates options for them. You solve problems for them. When reviewing requests from employees for training, the organisations must understand how the employee’s new skills will benefit the organisation when they’ve completed the training.
Here we’d recommend our ‘The Role of the Human Resources Director’ course. Human resources teams play an important part in shaping culture and professional development in organisations. On the course, participants will learn how to lead HR departments, form initiatives in line with the organisation’s aims, take responsibility for the organisation’s talent functions and culture, analyse employee feedback and data to create a better working environment and engaged culture, and more.
Seven ways to successfully manage managers (Entrepreneur)
In this article on the Entrepreneur publication website, the contributor discusses seven different ways to successfully manage managers. The contributor highlights that a manager’s superiors should not only be overseeing the manager’s work but also ensuring the manager is supporting their team effectively. They suggest seven ways to manage a manager successfully:
- Help them transform from a manager into a leader: Being a manager and being a leader are two different things. A manager can be good at what they do, but to lead they could require coaching on communication style or presence.
- Give them a budget: Managers will need money to hire team members and cover operating expenses to strive for objectives. Provide them with a budget they can manage and use to pursue whichever decisions they see fit.
- Empower them to look after top performers in terms of pay, recognition, and requirements: Organisations must take care of their top talent. This can range from healthcare to remote working or recognition.
- Respect their position, and enable them to set tasks and deliverables: Align your managers with the organisation’s goals, targets, and values. Then you can help them to prioritise the best places to spend their time and their efforts.
- Ensure the managers know the way you wish them to keep you informed: If you have a preferred method or receiving updates, let them know. You should also check that they’re communicating well with their team.
- Develop trust with them so they can come to you for support: Following the tips above is one way to build trust with them. They must also know that even though they’re the leaders, you understand they don’t have all the answers and that they can turn to you for support.
- Make sure they can distinguish between a people issue and being aligned: Sometimes managers can mistake their own weaknesses for team weaknesses. It’s important they don’t confuse the two.
Management of others entails a delicate balance of allowing subordinates enough autonomy to operate while still supervising and supporting them. The above recommendations create the space for the managers to perform and develop without feeling as if they’re being micromanaged.
Here we’d recommend a coaching course, such as our CMI-accredited Level 5 and Level 7 Coaching and Mentoring programmes, to help you embed coaching into your organisational culture. Coaching is a way to guide and support employees, and boost their performance, by encouraging them to find solutions themselves to challenges. As well as learning how to incorporate coaching into your organisational culture, you’ll gain insight into different coaching models on these courses, how to hold coaching conversations that motivate team members, and ways to develop people in line with performance management objectives.
Book a course with INPD
The articles above are a call to action for organisations to change their cultures, where necessary, to foster growth mindsets and empower employees, and respond to the demands of the future. This is beneficial for the employees and for their organisations, allowing the former to develop professionally and the latter to retain top talent, have more options at their disposal, and solve problems. Changes in culture create upheaval, however, so organisations must support their employees before, during, and after the organisational change.
Besides the courses we’ve recommended above, we invite you to explore all of our training courses by visiting our Courses page. To book a place on the course or find out more about it, click on the course, or email us at enquiries@inpd.co.uk, message us via the form on our Contact page or call us on 0161 826 3139. We’re here to answer your questions and support you in your professional development journey, and we look forward to welcoming you to InPD.
