Today, a basic question remains, how can you prepare your leadership practices for a post-pandemic World? This is what question you and executives across the globe need to answer. The answer to this question lies in an executive’s ability to develop a group approach to leadership and also facilitate organizational change.
As an executive, aspiring leader, or manager – you can reflect on your progress, record your success, and stay on track in order to reach your personal and professional goals – then, build upon your mastery of leadership as you engage yourself and others for success.
When being a leader or manager it would help to consider the difference and how you would lead more effectively. To answer this question, read the article in Harvard Business Review, “Great Leaders Embrace Office Politics,” by Michael C. Wenderoth, published in April, 2016. The main focal point is that each of your incremental improvements leads toward your overall success.
In the first step, determine how you can lead people with a plan to work on improvements. It is the time to tap a group approach to leadership!
A Group Approach to Leadership that Mobilizes
Good leaders are organizational architects – because they know how to organize and mobilize followers, so their energies are focused on the strategic mission – as explained by James G. Clawson, an associate professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business.
Leaders, today more than ever, are using a group approach to social capital. They need to connect with nature and the places they love to visit. If they cannot visit physically, they can watch videos and read about their favorite destinations until they can find the time to return.
It is important executives expand, review, and extrapolate their values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations (VABE) of how they see the world. By finding people to bond with, they can find solace and comfort in themselves and bring smiles to faces.
During pandemic recovery, leaders are developing answers to the most pertinent questions:
- What are the challenges facing our organization right now?
- How can we regulate distress as new things arise and decisions are being made?
- How can we maintain discipline and attention as we migrate back to the office, open our businesses, and attempt to go back to what life was like before the COVID-19 pandemic?
- How can we give the work back to the people as they work in a hybrid mode and address customers’ concerns and demands?
- How can we protect leadership voices from below since people have apprehensions, concerns, and questions that need quick answers?
Executives can also delegate to their team to empower themselves. Then, they can pool the skills and resources of their network to reach their goals and reap success. Do you, as an executive, feel confident to perform at the level you desire? A simple yes or no will suffice.
A recent study showed leaders fail to develop a clear vision for the future of their organization. There was also a lack of people-management found in this research. Ken Blanchard, in his “Work Teams and the Wizard of Oz,” has captured essential benefits for teamwork:
- Build and rely on teams.
- Post-pandemic recovery workbook.
- Delegate and empower.
- Pool skills and resources.
- Tap inner resources.
As you reflect on these benefits of teamwork, your own personal strategy, your organizational strategy, and address the concerns found in the research, try to relate them to a certain program, course, goal, objective, business plan, strategic objective, or something else you are pursuing.
Given the pandemic recovery, many people have embraced electronic communication and are engaged in internet-based relationships. This recovery calls for online executive education. This approach inspired a new wave of thinking in the field of executive leadership. A cadre of thinkers joined the efforts to expand the framework of the approach, and influence in light of its applicability for our unique times.
For example, Mohanbir (Mohan) Sawhney, associate dean for digital innovation and McCormick Foundation professor of technology at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University is a pioneer in online executive education. He has created several small online private courses (SPOC) and online simulations in digital marketing, product strategy, and artificial intelligence.
Sawhney argues, “while the past year has been a time of great challenge … it has also been a time of great innovation.” He states, “The 3 Horizons of Change” will impact both executives and talent management in the near future. Ponder and comment on his three horizons of change.
- Reacting to the pandemic – transforming to exclusively online formats.
- Redesigning the future – gradually returning to in-person and hybrid work to deliver.
- The best learning experiences.
- Reimagining, reinventing, and designing disruptive business models.
Companies need to embrace social capital and online executive education. Making the right decisions can create a business platform which embraces an uncertain world and gives organizations the resilience to bounce back.
Now you have identified your action plans for the development of a group leadership approach, develop a post-pandemic organizational change plan which is a major milestone in your work:
Influencing Organizational Change Plan
As a leader you can consider today how internet communications affects business.
The following important questions can help guide your efforts:
- How much knowledge do you have of internet communication?
- Do you realize there is a certain amount of fear surrounding tenuous relationships, saying or doing something wrong while in meetings?
- It is important you expand, review, and extrapolate your values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations if necessary.
- How can you control some of your habits which may hinder your performance as you communicate online?
- Do you have the necessary courage to present, and feel comfortable doing so? If so, what is your fear-factor and how can you overcome it?
Now, write down the answers to these questions and find ways to encourage more social capital prowess when communicating online.
Social capital can be defined as influencing career success and executive compensation, helping workers find jobs, and providing a richer pool of recruits for firms, facilitating intellectual capital, and a reduction in turnover rates.
Write down how you show courage.
The following questions can also help guide your efforts:
- Do you ever find yourself feeling courageous at work or in your personal life, but fear holds you back? How do you handle that? Do you give up? Do you persevere?
- How does fear feel realistic? How did you feel, for example, during the pandemic in 2019 or 2020 compared to 2022?
- Do you or did you feel stuck in the moment during this crisis? If so, why? If so, why not?
List the next steps you will take to develop the necessary courage to embrace social capital.
Write down how you show courage. Think of how fearless or fearful you are. Do you respect your own fear? Do you attempt to master your awareness of fear? Do you act despite some level of fear being present? Think about and write down how you will address your own personal fear.
Now list how you will address the following:
- Career success.
- Seek out mentors and recruit new people who are positive influencers.
- Build intellectual capital.
- Reduce the threat of turnover rates at work by being present and caring about others.
Next, read the article published by the Harvard Business Review titled “Leaders as Decision Architects,” written by John Beshears and Francesca Gino, published on May, 2015. After reading the article in its entirety, answer the following questions by writing your answer to the change steps:
- Step 1: How can you better understand how decisions are made at your organization?
- Step 2: Take some time to define the problem.
- Step 3: Diagnose the underlying causes and write them down.
- Step 4: Take some time to design the solution and write it down.
- Step 5: Test the solution. Write down what happened, what may happen, possible obstacles, bureaucratic roadblocks, etc.
- Step 6: Redesign the solution until you have it right and you become a Social Architect!
Also, read this article, “Build Your Resilience in the Face of Crisis,” in the Harvard Business Review by Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, and Moses Mohan, published on March, 2020. Write down your answers to the following questions:
- Are you connecting with others through compassion?
- Whom can you help to have a better day?
By finding people to bond with, we can find solace and comfort in ourselves and bring smiles to faces. Write down whom you can connect with, and when you will reach out to them. Finally, take time for mindfulness, meditation, and relaxation.
In Conclusion
After identifying what practices make you an effective leader in a post-pandemic world, determine how you feel about your leadership practices. What do new work practices, such as during pandemic recovery, look like for you? Write them down in one to three sentences.
Write down how you show courage. Think of how fearless or fearful you are. Do you respect your own fear? Do you attempt to master your awareness of fear? Do you act despite some level of fear being present? Think about and write down how you will address your own personal fear. Feel good about yourself and your work and career. And ascertain a high level of self-efficacy.