Leadership in the Era of the “New-New Normal”

The pandemic will have a lasting impact on the way we work. Leaders must evolve in order to keep up.

In March, the way we work transformed, seemingly overnight. Now, a few months in to the pandemic, I know it’ll never be the same again.

That’s not to say there’ll be no end to the pandemic (I wholeheartedly believe there will) but I don’t think there’ll be a return to the life we knew before it. Not exactly.

The pandemic isn’t entirely responsible for this shift. The digital transformation of work has been well underway for a long time. But the pandemic served as an effective accelerant, forcing the theoretical to become reality in, for many companies, a matter of days. 

But now that we’re here, many, myself included, have already speculated that the shift to work-from-home has had too many benefits for many companies to let go of fully, even once we’re all out from under the thumb of COVID-19. From the elimination of commutes, to greater productivity, to the potential for massive savings on the expenses associated with maintaining a physical office, to the ability to hire from a wider (limitless?) geographic area—all of these things are simply too good for many to pass up.

The next generation of leaders, the “work-from-home natives,” will take all this for granted. For today’s leaders--my peers and I--who learned how to lead in a very different environment, we’ll need to make some changes to be effective.

Step 1: Embrace “Extreme Clarity.”

In the “new-new normal” work environment, every leader must be a master communicator. The days of so-called “executive style” emails—terse, vague, “they’ll-get-what-I-mean” messages—are over. No longer can we fill in the gaps in context with a few words over the water cooler or catch each other over lunch to share an idea. Even video calls, if you’re lucky enough to have the bandwidth to support them, are often poor at conveying body language, gesture, and facial expression.

What we all need to do now is use our words, both in writing and verbally. Leaders are at our best when we offer clear, direct, and constructive feedback, and to be successful in this new paradigm, we’ll need to master the art of doing that with our words alone.

Step 2: Establish predictability in an unpredictable world.

The world around us is dynamic, sometimes to a scary degree. As a leader, you can and should establish a way of working and connecting with your colleagues that offers a sense of stability.

When your team’s working together in an office, you have the luxury of a shared space to create a sense of structure and routine. When you’re distributed amongst your homes, that’s not the case. With a distributed organization, meetings, and 1:1 meetings in particular, take on greater significance than ever before. Having an individual touch-base can help make sure everyone feels included and connected. Ensure regularity and structure when it comes to these (and all other) meetings, and emphasize the importance of preparation and accountability. Small talk is fun and often helpful in getting to know your colleagues, but every meeting needs an agenda to maximize the positive outcome of that time spent.

Looking further into the future, circumstances permitting, in-person events are a hugely effective way to keep a team connected across a distance. There’s no substitute for meeting face to face. Consider a quarterly in-person meeting or event to maintain the strength of those ties and/or introduce properly new members of the team.

Step 3: Offer up your whole self.

Leaders today need to be present, transparent, and approachable. They need to be someone their team can trust.

In a world where we’re no longer going to the office, it’s impossible to leave your personal life at the proverbial door. The worries and cares of our personal and professional lives now live in the same place—and that’s okay. As a leader, recognizing and valuing that convergence in your team and offering insight into how that manifests for you makes you relatable and helps engender a sense of loyalty and connection to your organization in the long term. The people you work with need to see your life holistically, and, to an appropriate degree, you need to let them in.

Storytelling can be an incredibly powerful tool in sharing your whole self with your organization. Through storytelling, we learn more about each other and how we can relate to one another perhaps in new and surprising ways.  For example, I tell my team regularly about my fluid life balancing between my role as the leader of TD Ameritrade technology, my boys’ tennis chauffeur, and my puppy’s personal dog walker – often these roles intertwine and I take calls during my walks or on drives. That is the new norm!

Step 4: Trust and verify.

In 2001, when I first entered the managerial part of my career, there was such a high emphasis on the time on the clock when I got to work and when I left. Those that were in the office at 6am and left at 8pm were perceived as strong and committed. The shift to outcome-based leadership has been evolving rapidly over the last five years where the focus is less on the number of hours you work in a day or when you are in the office, and more on what you and your teams deliver and how transparent are you about your progress. We use a system called OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) that allows individuals and teams to focus on the key outcomes to optimize around. This shift to outcome-based leadership has now been fully realized with COVID-19 and remote work. Now, leaders need to focus on trusting their team, defining clear objectives and key results, checking in with them on the progress they are making, and determining how they as a leader can support them in achieving the key outcomes.

Looking Ahead: Oh, how I wish I had a crystal ball.

I don’t know what the future looks like. I wish I did. In terms of the pandemic, at the time of this writing, at least a couple of promising vaccine candidates are making good progress. But count my voice among the many who feel that, at least where work is concerned, things are probably never going to return to the way they were before March 2020. The gains are too great, hard-won though they may be. By adopting the steps outlined above, I actually feel closer to my team from a distance than I did when we were only a few feet apart. And as a leader, that presents a wealth of opportunity. The future may be uncertain in many ways, but the future of leadership looks brighter than ever.