The business world has changed. Nothing new to anyone of us, as we are in this together.
Nevertheless, a lot of organizations are still trying to figure out how to proceed. To not be left behind and eaten up by competitors.
We know, it is not easy to continue to do business as we did before COVID happened.
Revenues are down, supply and demand are totally out of whack.
What now?
The interesting thing is that new ways of sales and providing services alone won’t necessarily save organizational survival.
The root of business success lies deeper – in the internal workforce structures and in the leadership’s ability to adapt to changing work environments.
To maintain retention of each company’s succeeding assets – staff, workforce, employees – it is crucial to do an inventory by looking at what you have and what you can give.
You see, we all know by now that markets are more competitive and faster-paced than they had been 20 years ago. In the blink of an eye, you might have already lost, as technology may pass you the second you don’t pay attention to your options and obligations to stay competitive as a leader of a business or a company.
But here is the one thing that neither pace nor technology can replace in any business or organization:
Emotional intelligence, understanding, empathy, trust, and appreciation.
The skills that no artificial intelligence will ever be able to replicate.
People who are focusing on this modernized way of leading a workforce will be able to save business and revenues in the new economy that juggles digitalization and, simultaneously, the search for more humanity.
How are we approaching this change in requirements for organizational resilience?
Let’s have a look.
Why Traditional Leadership Won’t Succeed
Humans learn from mimicking and by imitation – just like animals do.
Put into perspective this means that we have to model what we expect from others to be of supportive impact and influence for them. We have to care and we have to be there for them.
Applied to leadership we will see that traditional management behaviours, built on mimicking archaic business strategies, will fail in changing work environments that confront people with insecurities, isolation, depression, and lack of motivation.
Control and monetary incentives are not revenue drivers anymore. They haven’t been for a long time, actually.
Especially now in a recession through a pandemic, autocratic top-down hierarchies lost their grip through (micro) management with numbers and are struggling with facilitating what is needed to retain and attract talent in modern environments. Very often, they don’t know the people they work with, they are outcome-focused and have suddenly lost control over what people are doing when working remotely. And they will find out: not enough. This is due to a lack of transparency, motivation, empathy, and stability through leadership.
Theoretically, traditional management often sees artificial intelligence by providing reliability, measures, data, and automation as the one solution to solve outcome problems in the future.
But, practically, will there be enough talent left to operate new technologies properly, given the global skills shortage, given the fluctuation due to traditional – partially archaic – leadership mindsets in the midst of new work environments expanding a digital economy, and given that competitors that have adapted to the current needs of the human approach appear to be way more attractive employers?
Why Human Skills Will Be The Driving Force In The New Economy
We can summarize the above into the probability that traditionally led organizations will be failing in producing and getting “back” to the work ethic they had been operating with before COVID hit.
The world has changed so radically into what we can confidently call the kindness economy with focus on human connection and support, more than on the numbers game through new situations for all of us.
We have to be considerate of the people we work (and live) with, and leaders should give their folks the confidence to be a positive influence and contribution to others and the business.
This humane approach will naturally lead to the optimization of outcomes as there is a priority on the people. Companies will experience trust and motivation in the long run through genuine engagement and the pursuit of a team’s mission, led by an emotionally intelligent leader.
Great leadership that is able to motivate others and get the best out of them is the one skill that robots cannot replace.
No technology will ever be able to fill the need for human-to-human support and comfort through effective leadership in the new world of work environments.
And hey, neither for customers.
>> What is your take on the chances and challenges of artificial intelligence vs. emotional intelligence in traditional vs modern leadership? I would love to hear about it.
