The DDI 2023 Global Leadership Forecast reveals that confidence in leadership quality has taken a nosedive. Only 40% of leaders said their companies had high-quality leadership – “the biggest decline in a decade.”
The 17% drop from just two years ago and the biggest decline in a decade put current leadership quality ratings nearly on par with those in the wake of the 2007-2008 economic crisis.
Read MoreThe behaviour of leaders clearly shows that we have a leadership crisis. We have a mass of so-called “leaders” asking the question, “How do I know if my employees are working or not?”
The fact is that when these employees were in the line of sight, sitting at a desk for 8 hours in the office, leaders still did not know if they were working!
This behaviour means that leaders believe that performance is measured by the hours spent at a computer.
Read MoreThe latest disruptor is AI and ChatGPT. People are again running scared that their jobs will become redundant due to new technology.
And the fact is that they may. But rather than running scared, face it head-on and respond accordingly.
Read MoreThis must be one of the best descriptions of what it is like for a leader making the shift to leading a remote team.
“It’s like learning to drive on the wrong side of the road. You must get to the same destination as before, but you now have different signals, cues, and controls — and that does take some time getting used to!”
This is Raghu Krishnamoorthy writing for Harvard Business Review in October 2022.
Read MoreI am not sure whether I love it or hate it when I read an article from one of the big guns and I say to myself, “I have been saying that for ages!” On one hand, it validates what I have been saying and on the other, it feels like no one listens unless your name is Garter, HBR, BCG, McKinsey, Gallup, Deloitte or the like.
In this instance it is Gartner and the report is called “Think Hybrid Work Doesn’t Work? The Data Disagrees.”
Read MoreEven before the pandemic, less than one in five HR leaders believed that performance management was effective at achieving its objective according to Gartner. This must be a concern. If the process was broken before the pandemic, failure to act now will destroy it. Leaders must have the resolve to change how they handle the performance management of a remote workforce. If they don’t, trust will disintegrate, employee engagement will fall, and employees will walk out of the door.
Read MoreThis Essential rests on the human needs of learning and accomplishment.
Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge and skills in the workplace, which provides opportunities for individual intellectual, social, professional, and emotional growth.
Accomplishment confers a sense of competence that reduces stress, anxiety, and self-doubt. When organizations create more opportunities for learning, accomplishment, and growth, workers become more optimistic about their abilities and more enthusiastic about contributing to the organization.
Read MoreEmployees want to know that they matter. They want to know that they are valued, heard, and respected. They want to know that what they do makes a difference in the lives of others.
Knowing that you matter can lower stress while feeling that you do not can raise the risk of depression.[2] [3]
This Essential rests on the human need for dignity and meaning.
Read MoreEvery employee must be provided with both flexibility and autonomy to choose where they work, when they work and how they work. Employees will be more motivated, engaged, and productive. Organisations must treat their employees as people first and foremost. They have many needs, roles, and responsibilities outside of work and must be able to choreograph work around those and not the other way around.
Read MoreOrganisations that create opportunities for social connection and community can help improve health and well-being. The Essential rests on two human needs: social support and belonging. Social support networks can mitigate feelings of loneliness and isolation. Fostering a sense of belonging has the potential to improve the health and well-being of employees and communities and the prosperity of the organisation itself.
Read MoreThe Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being is intended to spark organizational dialogue and change in the workplace. It can also catalyze areas for further research, strategic investment, and broader policy advancements.
It is intended as a framework to support workplaces and enable them to create a plan with all employees to enact the components within the framework and reimagine workplaces as engines of well-being. It shows how to begin the journey.
Read MoreLast week, you may have noticed that there was very little activity from me on LinkedIn. There were no daily videos, and the weekly Leading Change newsletter was nowhere to be seen. As Björk sang, “It’s Oh So Quiet.”
The following is the explanation, and the reason this week’s newsletter is a little smaller than usual.
Two years and 9 months in and COVID finally got me!
Read MoreAccording to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report, employees have never been more stressed.
The scary thing is that rather than trying to alleviate the causes of stress in the workplace such as excessive workload, lack of control, lack of support, poor leadership, lack of training and development, and work/life balance, employers are adding to the stress by not being clear about the future of work in their organisation.
Read MoreOne of the greatest songs to come out of the 1960s was “See Me, Feel Me” (aka. See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You) by The Who.
It came on the radio recently and it said something to me it had not before, “This is what employees are demanding today and most employers are not listening.”
See me
Feel me
Touch me
Heal me
“It takes curiosity to learn. It takes courage to unlearn. Learning requires the humility to admit what you don't know today. Unlearning requires the integrity to admit that you were wrong yesterday. Learning is how you evolve. Unlearning is how you keep up as the world evolves.” ~ Adam Grant
If you do not have the courage, expect to be left behind.
If you do not have the courage, expect to become irrelevant.
Read MoreIt is time to unlearn and relearn.
“If you’re thinking in terms of ‘returning’—returning to the old way, returning to the way the office used to be, returning to what worked for you—then it’s time to rethink that direction. We need to move forward to a new path, and that requires engaging your employees to establish new ways of working together.”
Read MoreAccording to Harvard-based child psychologist Paul Harris, a child asks around 40,000 questions between the ages of two and five. But they are not doing it just to drive you crazy. They want an explanation.
Right now, we must model this behaviour not because we need to relive our early years but because we have a right to demand an explanation regarding the mandate to return to the office.
I have spoken to many employees who have been told they must attend the office so many days each week. or they must attend the office on specific days of the week. Every one of them, without exception, cannot explain the reasoning behind the decision.
Read MoreThe demand for employees to return to the office because it will impact the culture is just an attempt to return to how it was before the pandemic. The fact is there is no going back.
I would suggest that if you believe that you need everyone to return to the office for organisational culture reasons, you did not have a good culture in the first place. Culture is not bound by physical enclosures. A great culture permeates an organisation and its workforce without limitation.
Read MoreIn this eBook I reveal the indicators that most leaders are not ready to lead the distributed team.
I dispel the myths around a distributed working model and show you how to rethink - reimagine - reinvent.
I share my Distributed Leadership Model which contains the competencies needed by all leaders to effectively lead the distributed team.
Read MoreThe recent Microsoft Work Trends Index: Pulse Report is a testament to the growing divide between employers and employees. I wrote about The Great Divide In The Workplace back in October 2021
Microsoft surveyed 20,000 people in 11 countries, and analysed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, along with LinkedIn labour trends and Glint People Science findings.
The report had three key findings and for each the need for better leadership is the answer.
Read More