John Eades* plots some of the leadership trends he expects to dominate in 2020 and urges organisations to embrace them.
Becoming a great leader requires taking proactive steps to improve your leadership capabilities — but there’s more to it than that.
Engaged leaders need to stay on top of the current trends influencing their organisation, employees and themselves.
To ensure that you’re ready, focus on these six leadership trends in 2020.
Increase in flexible time: The experiment of a four-day work-week has begun.
Microsoft Japan’s four-day work-week improved performance by 40 per cent, and Shake Shack’s four-day manager work-week was a solution for labour costs.
While there is no doubt about the financial advantages of shorter work-weeks, employees are also looking for more flexibility in their lives.
With 5G on the horizon and phones as powerful as computers used to be, there is no reason this trend won’t skyrocket in popularity.
A recent study showed that 90 per cent of employees said flexible arrangements would increase morale.
Leaders not only need to be open to looking for ways to give their teams more flexibility, but they should be investing in technology that helps support them be productive.
Learning to lead remote workers: The first trend is feeding the second trend.
As flexible scheduling increases, so does the number of people who work remote.
A recent Remote.co study reported 66 per cent of companies allowed remote work, and 16 per cent were fully remote.
With the reduced cost for employers and reduced commute times for employees, this trend will continue to skyrocket.
As beneficial as it can be, leading remote team members has unique challenges versus leading a team working in the same space every day.
Here are a few of my favourite strategies from a recent episode of the Follow My Lead Podcast.
Remember remote team members are human; build and maintain trust-based relationships; set clear standards; constantly communicate culture, and get them together face-to-face on regular occasions.
More and more accountability: Accountability and radical transparency are buzzwords right now because we need more of it in our organisations.
As quickly as the news travels (thanks Twitter), executive leaders can’t afford to hoard critical information from their employees.
On the flip side, an increase in flexibility and remote work is ratcheting up the need for personal accountability in employees and managers.
You will see more and more training and development opportunities for managers to improve their skills around accountability and having direct dialogues.
Increase in female leaders: A global study of women in management by Catalyst in 2019 showed that the number of women in senior roles globally is increasing.
A total of 29 per cent of senior management roles are held by women, the highest number on record.
A report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics found a direct correlation between female leadership and profitability.
According to the report: “A profitable firm at which 30 per cent of leaders are women could expect to add more than one percentage point to its net margin compared with an otherwise similar firm with no female leaders.”
Women are effective and productive in positions of leadership.
The challenge to human resource departments and organisations is helping develop their leadership skills so they can promote women leaders from within.
In our business at LearnLoft we have seen a significant increase in educational opportunities for women, which we expect to continue.
Employees developing new skills: As quickly as AI and Bots are progressing, many jobs will continue to evaporate.
As I wrote recently: “We live in a world that’s constantly evolving, and as people grow or roles morph, people need to acquire new skills.”
Instead of chalking up massive layoffs of employees, leaders will need to help develop new skills in these people.
As US football star, Peyton Manning famously said: “The most valuable player is the one who makes the most players valuable.”
While leaders can’t make people develop new skills, they must influence and challenge them to take the necessary steps.
Large organisations will eventually look like current universities, and they will train workers out of high school instead of them going to university.
In the meantime, we need leaders to have their coaching and development hat on at all times.
Human resources to grow in importance: Human Resources professionals will continue their climb to being more strategic and important in organisations.
Instead of simply being called in for hiring and firing decisions, they will play a major role in business decisions and making organisations more authentic and human.
Are you poised to lead your team in the right direction in 2020?
As you learn more about current trends and apply them appropriately to your leadership or organisation, you can have confidence in the course of you’re on.
What leadership trends are you seeing that I might have missed?
*John Eades is the Chief Executive of LearnLoft and author of F.M.L. Standing Out and Being a Leader. He can be followed on instagram @johngeades.
This article first appeared on John’s LearnLoft blog.
