The Leadership Co-Lab
a new kind of leadership for a new world of work. Welcome to The Leadership Co-Lab.
We need to redefine leadership to navigate the new world of remote and hybrid work.
In 2022, Microsoft released research showing that 54% of managers feel leaders are out of touch with employees. Much seems to be down to a growing divide around hybrid work, with 80% of employees saying they are just as or more productive than pre-pandemic, and yet more than 50% of leaders fearing that productivity has declined. The evidence that does exist show employees working harder, with emails, meetings, after-hours and weekend work all on the rise. So, what’s behind the disconnect? We think this new world of work needs a new kind of leadership, and that’s why we’re exploring these three big questions in our latest academic collaboration:
How do we develop a new ‘prototype’ for leadership in a hybrid environment?
How can leaders support collaboration and creativity amongst teams in hybrid and remote contexts?
How can leaders influence their own, and their employees’, wellbeing and boost motivation in a virtual world?
The Co-Lab: Our 3 leadership labs
Rethinking Leadership
Our ideas of leadership are still rooted in old ways of working and traditional thinking. We need to reimagine what evolving leadership looks like in a hybrid world, as we draw on different skills and characteristics to manage distributed and remote teams. It means hiring and promoting in ways that align to an updated conception of inclusive leadership, finding ways to develop valuable non-traditional leadership attributes, and understanding how changing ideas of leadership affect employee experience.
2. Collaborating Remotely
Our work habits have fundamentally shifted, and flexible work is here to stay. Yet we know that collaborative and creative work can suffer when it’s not done in-person. Leaders are required and expected to discover how to support teams to remain creative and motivated irrespective of where they work. We want to help leaders discover how to lead in a digital era and redefine online collaboration such that it becomes more inclusive and more impactful.
3. Sustainable Performance
We know that switching off from work boosts productivity and protects people from burnout. Yet, the intangible nature of knowledge work along with modern technology and the redefinition of where and when we work pose great challenges for leaders and employees around the world who feel pressured to choose between wellbeing and productivity, or worse prioritize productivity over wellbeing. Overcoming this challenge will require leaders and employees to co-create a culture of wellbeing, starting with understanding what wellbeing is, how to measure it, and finally how to create a sustainable culture of wellbeing alongside productivity. Organisations that fail to prioritise wellbeing will struggle to attract and retain talent.
We see these three areas as critical to build working environments that work for all employees. Leadership is at a particularly interesting inflection point and one that we can redefine together.
Register your interest here to set up an initial, obligation-free, exploratory phone call with our team.