The Two Most Important Leadership Skills You Can Develop
Written by: Kat Niewiadomska, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Is panic setting in as you see headlines at tagged posts about the Great Resignation or are you just sighing with some resignation of your own, at the inevitability of losing weeks of efficiency hiring, replacing and training for positions that have been recently vacated?
I see the shuffle of papers floating to the ground as employees rush to greener pastures, I hear the excited twittering in the virtual halls of Zoom calls where formerly-committed employees are plotting their escape and I sense the hope that this new place they’re exploring will be different. Above all this, I see stoic managers making their best attempt to indicate to those that remain that these employees were never fabulous anyway and things around here are just fine, fine!
Did you know that only 37% of millennials are actually engaged at work? Wait, I meant 41%. No, 75%.
Let me clarify.
A recent Gallup employee survey showed some interesting variables affecting millennial engagement today: being able to remote work, having a clear plan of action communicated to them, feeling prepared (with both equipment and expectations), having managers who provide enough information, and feeling like their well-being matters to the company (and that includes financial, social, physical...). If you have four out of those five, then you get the highest engagement!
What do these variables have in common? Treating employees like humans, not like machine parts! Now more than ever, managers who could get by on simply pushing things along need to build leadership skills, empathy and social awareness if they want to keep their workforce engaged (or keep them at all!) Think plants not machine parts. Consider taking a nurturing individual approach to leading and not driving productivity with a mathematical equation.
As a leader, you have two key roles:
Develop and communicate strategy:
Motivate and nurture your team.
The biggest mistake you can make right now, is slip into the managerial role of driving your team towards the business goal without taking the time to check in with them, develop trust and psychological safety, take time to understand their lives so you’re able to empathize and consider what motivates them.
How you accomplish each one of these is going to depend on who you are, who you lead and what your situation looks like, but not focusing on these aspects of your role means that you will most likely be saying goodbye to your best performers.
Kat Niewiadomska, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kat Niewiadomska is an award-winning author, a speaker and an advocate of creativity as a tool for developing 21rst century skills in the workplace.
She has always been curious about people and creativity. She turned an Engineering Master’s degree at MIT into a research dissertation on how humans learn and while she worked on her PhD in Environmental Science she wrote a book that was a finalist in the International Book Awards.
When she realized that her education didn’t fit with her values, she made the leap from working with underwater robots and writing software to working with people and writing creatively. Watch her TEDx talk on The Power of Distraction to find out how.
Kat has worked with startups, SME’s, NGO’s and multinationals including Deloitte Consulting, Adidas and Careem. As a creativity and leadership coach, Kat helps engineers, doctors and scientists prioritize what matters, unlock their creativity and become the heroes of their own story.
