Many businesses intend to adopt a hybrid working model post-pandemic. Employees will therefore be working in a world with more choices about where, how and when they work. This means that managers will have to adapt to a new normal, where they have less visibility of their team member’s day to day activities.
This should mean that managers will focus on outputs more than processes. However, if this is the case, communication will be more important than ever in order to avoid overburdening employees with too much work. Business leaders will also need to give very clear direction in terms of which objectives should be prioritised, and so forth.
With an increase in remote working, the responsibility to maintain communication across the team will fall to the manager / leader. In order to succeed, managers will need to focus on fewer, higher-impact relationships with team members. They will need to delegate some additional responsibility to others within the team, in order to ensure that the whole team receives sufficient direction.
In order to help their leaders to succeed in this new environment, businesses will need to equip their leaders with new skills in terms of empathy, managing relationships, communication, delegation (and building trust) and giving better direction.
