The Not-So-New Demands of Leadership in a Post-Covid World

About five years ago, researchers at the University of Southern California crisscrossed the globe to ask business leaders what attributes aspiring executives must have to be successful in today’s digital, globalized economy. They identified five essential characteristics: adaptability, cultural competence, intellectual curiosity, empathy, and 360-degree thinking.

“These so-called ‘soft’ attributes constitute a distinctive way of seeing the world,” wrote the authors, a perspective that admonishes an exclusive reliance upon the technical or quantitative credentials of newly minted managers and instead relies upon a comprehensive, human-oriented set of skills. This was 2015.

As the working world breaks free from its pandemic shackles, articles abound that discuss the “new” demands of leadership. In one recent New Yorker piece, for example, Cal Newport argues that the pandemic not only demonstrated the importance of having separate spaces for our personal and professional lives, but that management must also recognize the importance of this distinction.

Though many organizations are planning to stay remote moving forward, Newport contends that company leadership should foot the bill for employees who wish to rent collaborative workspace, thus drawing a literal boundary between the home and office. “Organizations that allow remote work should not only encourage these employees to find professional spaces near (but distinct from) their homes—they should also directly subsidize these cognitive escapes,” he writes.

It's an interesting proposition, but I’m not sure companies will heed the advice. Organizations looking to unload real estate expenditures are unlikely to pick up the WeWork tab if their employees decide they want a private office outside of the house. Conversely, if employees decide instead to build a home office, should the company cover the cost of each renovation as well? They may choose to offer a nominal stipend for those working remotely, but if the company is still paying some significant price per square foot for each employee, what’s the incentive for ditching the office where teams are together and able to meet onsite?

Regardless of your stance on whether companies should cover the cost of remote working spaces, these are the kinds of prognostications and predictions that abound for managers looking to make sense of our future professional landscape. And to their credit, many of these managers want desperately to get it right, to be sure their approach is well-suited to the post-pandemic world. Thus, they scour the bevy of articles that purport to nourish their minds.

Cal’s article is interesting food for thought, the only problem is that many other articles I’ve read about the post-Covid landscape contain only empty calories and it can be difficult to delineate between the two. 

One tell-tale sign, however, is that these empty calorie articles typically call for a new way of thinking; an adapted mindset that underwent significant transformation over the previous year as though Covid has somehow forever altered the demands of leadership.

Effective leadership does not change with hardship and disruption, if anything the mindset and core set of skills required to be an effective leader are reinforced during turbulent times, not introduced. To be a successful and effective leader post-Covid requires the same mindset and core set of skills that were identified by USC scholars in 2015, the same mindset and skills that were valuable for T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) in 1918, and the same mindset and skills that were valuable to Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD.

Adaptability, cultural competence, intellectual curiosity, empathy, and 360-degree thinking – these are perennial skills, exhibited in abundance by great leaders throughout history, but foolishly thought to be new requirements in business management looming across our post-Covid horizon.

So, if you’re searching for leadership advice and reading lots of different articles, remember to rely upon that which has always mattered.

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Co-authored by David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer, Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans will be published by the Hachette Book Group under the PublicAffairs imprint on September 21, 2021. Now available for pre-order!