Leadership can be as complex or easy as we make it, but the truth is leadership is a lot of hard work! Quite opposite to what most people think, leaders are learners. They learn something new every day that helps them lead well, work wisely and manage people. They are one of us and yet different from many.
They are usually busy solving problems, making everyone understand their roles, bringing the team together in meetings or at the lunch table. Sometimes you see them shouting at the top of their voices. But now, when the work-from-home or hybrid work model is prevalent, how much of that can traditional leaders exercise? The answer is, of course, none! Therefore, it is fair to ask, what does the term leader mean, really? And, what do the leaders of the new normal need to learn? After all, s/he is just like other employees trying to balance work and personal life.
After much research and our own experience, we have discovered the top three must-have skills to emerge as a new-age leader. Although we must tell you before-hand, you may be surprised by the simplicity of these skills. These skills are intrinsic to us, but we need to probe them more deeply to extend our leadership capabilities. It may also sound like moral preaching in a few instances, but we will try our best to avoid that. But indeed, the dawn of righteous leadership seems inevitable, and that will change the way employees function.
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Empathy- Empathy is a long-ignored leadership performance indicator. Simply because our traditional performance parameters were more number-driven, although numbers are still important, the newly discovered value of almost everything around us, human life, emotions, and well-being, top our priority lists. Empathy is mindfulness or awareness of the emotional response of other people. It is also the ability to see things from other’s perspective. It comes naturally to humans, but we tend to partially lose touch with this trait as we become more ambitious and ruthlessly competitive. There is a need to revive this trait because, in many cases, this soft leadership skill is all that encourages employees to give their best.