A Pivotal Moment for Organizational Leadership

The business environment was changing before COVID, but now these changes are on steroids. We are in the throes of a pivotal moment, facing the greatest transformation in how we work since the early days of word processing and the desktop computer.

Every organization is effectively a new organization. Every employee is effectively a new employee. Why? Because it's a new environment. We have not been here before. So, you have to define how you are going to (re-start) working together, no matter the size or structure of your organization.

At the start of the pandemic, leading remote staff was going to be a temporary skill. Now it is a permanent skill that has to encompass work from home, work from anywhere, and hybrid arrangements.

The pre-pandemic model of the organization-employee relationship was that organizations bought people’s time (usually 8 to 5) and mandated that this daily time slot, five times a week, be devoted solely to them. And employees were told where they would physically be placed to spend this time sold to their employer.

The new model for the employee-organization relationship (note that now the employee comes first) is that the organization is buying skill sets. Together, the employee and the organization must decide where each person works best and how they can best deliver upon their responsibilities to the organization and its customers. Best outcomes will be produced when the employee has work/life harmony and integration.

We cannot go back to the pre-pandemic methods of leadership and decision-making. The rapid technological advancements of recent years make it impossible for individuals and organizations to predict what technical skills will be needed for the future. However, it is obvious that the so-called "soft skills," which I call Powerful Skills, will become mandatory for organizational and personal success.

What is also obvious is that too many companies and organizations are facing a future in which their current business models are obsolete. As are their leadership practices and behaviors.

It is time for massive change. Leaders need to unlearn outdated managing skills and relearn to be human. And learn to become people-centric leaders. Some leaders are waking up to recognize this fact. Others are stuck in their hopes for a return to the pre-pandemic ways of operating. The latter will lose as future success means putting people before results. Not a focus on people instead of results. Just a shift in priorities. The new model must be people plus results.

It's a New Status Quo

For decades, the global economy has been operating with a set of industrial age values where it was acceptable – even celebrated – to exploit workers, local communities, and even the planet on which we live. Long-term repercussions have been ignored, or shuttered aside, under the guise of "increasing shareholder value."

Thanks to the pandemic, we have reached a reckoning. Like the dawn of a stunning sunrise, people are awakening to the fact that it is time for a change. It is time to reinvent the materialistic basis of our economies and how people are treated at work by management, bosses, peers, and colleagues. Much like the days of segregation and apartheid, a psychologically unsafe workplace is no longer tolerable or acceptable. It is time to align economic growth with global progress and prosperity, ecological balance, and the destruction of social barriers.

This is not a utopian dream. The world was nearing a breaking point prior to the COVID pandemic. Now this change is underway and moving if as on steroids. Bold leaders will inspire and lead their teams and organizations to the right side of history and ahead of their competition. Others will lag behind until this new reality smacks them bluntly across their organization hierarchies and silos.

The first sign of this mammoth change is the willingness of people to quit their jobs, often without other employment lined up. But we cannot simply blame this on employee dissatisfaction or the sudden urge to continue working from home. Blame also needs to be laid at the feet of organizations and industries which made poor decisions in the early stages of the pandemic, or are doing so now as the pandemic wanes.

The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting trends have delayed post-pandemic rebounds for numerous organizations as they lose talent and employee engagement across the board. After all, you cannot grow your business when one of your top priorities is replacing lost employees.

A New Model of Leadership

Managing people is a 1980s construct It is why people leave bosses, not organizations. It is no longer acceptable or relevant in today's world.

The leadership skills needed for the post-pandemic period are not technical; they are behavioral. These Powerful Skills, such as emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion, resilience, adaptability, and tenacity, are now urgent. They are no longer optional. They are no longer "nice to have" skills in the leadership tool bag. They are now mandatory. At all levels of organizations.

This approach is grounded in Epistemic Humility, which I describe as being humble with your assumptions about understanding people, situations, events, and behaviors. It also starts with a commitment to stop judging others. Judging involves creating names, labels, and limited views that we apply to people, places, and things. When we do this, we form an attachment to these ideas. Judging is managerial action. Understanding is leadership.

Humony -- a created word combining Human, Humanity, and Harmony to emphasise the leading of PEOPLE and the need for leadres to create workplaces of wellbeing and harmony.         

I call this new approach Humony Leadership – a created word combining Human, Humanity, and Harmony to emphasize the leading of people and the need for leaders to create workplaces of wellbeing and harmony.

There is a growing need for harmony in people's lives. Forget about work/life balance. People need work/life harmony. And they need harmony in their workplaces, as well as in their personal lives.

Harmony in the workplace used to result from conformity as everyone was listening to the same music. The routines of the workplace environment created the "music of harmony" within the workplace. That is now gone. With work-from-home situations, people are listening to their own music (thoughts) and harmony via conformity has disappeared. As has managerial control.

Leaders now need to bring everyone together into the virtual building under a harmonized roof constructed from trust, transparency, open communication, and the Powerful Skills mentioned above.

People want to feel good when working (note: work is no longer a place one goes to, but the tasks one does). To feel good, they need four things:

• To be respected
• To be accepted
• To be included
• Responsibilities and assignments that lead to personal and professional growth

What one skill brings all four of these needs together? Harmonizing.

Harmonizing leaders will be like orchestra conductors, knowing where to focus to bring each musical piece to life, where to double down on a particular section or skill, and when to adjust based on acoustics.

Harmonizing means being connected with your people, colleagues, and peers (and everything going on in their lives) and with the all aspects of the business (and everything impacting short-term and long-term sustainability of the business). It takes the creation of a Harmony Mindset, for everyone from frontline supervisors and manages to the C-suite.

The Future Is Now

Humony Leadership also requires a mindset and verbiage change from seeing employees as staff, assets, or resources to seeing them as human beings (with lives and responsibilities outside work).

This approach results in greater revenues and reduced costs (such as absenteeism, workplace conflict, course corrections, and workplace-related medical expenses). This translates into either more operating and investment capital, or profits, depending on how leaders decide to utilize these increased cash assets.

Leaders need to unlearn what they have learned to be successful post-pandemic.        

If you do not implement this leadership approach, your very survival is at stake. This applies equally at the individual manager and leader level, as well as at the organization-wide level.

This approach is needed at every level of all organizations. It is no good having Humony Leaders at the top and dictatorial managers in the first-line and second-line leadership ranks. In many ways, leaders need to "unlearn what they have learned and practiced" to be successful post-pandemic. Hence, this approach now becomes a corporate culture and workplace climate issue, requiring new thinking, behaviors, and best-practice actions to be cascaded throughout the organization.

However, even without this corporate culture inculcation, leaders who utilize this approach within their own departments or teams will reap the rewards for their business units, including lower employee turnover than the rest of the organization. They will also personally benefit by being seen as successful leaders by others within their organizations, including senior management.

And, perhaps best of all, this approach will help leaders become better people, parents, partners, and human beings!?