Discussing three of ten trends from the DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2023.

1. How do these trends impact the working practices in my workplace?

2. How do they impact the required managerial and leadership skills in my work or workplace?

Trend #8 of the DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2023 recognizes five crucial skills that effective managers must perform well to be successful over the next 3 years: “Identifying/Developing Future Talent”, “Strategic Thinking”, “Managing Successful Change”, “Decision-Making Prioritization”, and “Influencing Others”. These skills are seen as tools to make company strategy transparent and homogenous throughout leadership tiers and develop existing talent to help meet ever-changing challenges. (Development Dimensions International, Inc. (DDI) s.a.)

1. My workplace seems to embrace trend #8. My manager/team leader himself is new talent in development: he is a social worker, who has been in a team leader position for less than a year, managing doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, educators, schedulers, and more, and he is very effectively supported by more experienced leaders. The managers help each other navigate changes as the company modernizes and expands, while prioritizing patient care and employee satisfaction. My team leader brings enthusiasm, optimism, and genuine kindness to the workplace that is infectious to us employees. He influences others by modeling an attitude that is approachable, humble, realistic, focused, and always helpful. I notice that he builds new talent  by seeking to understands my strengths and actively contemplating whether I would also be a good fit for other positions within the company.  Goal #8 states that leaders are twice as likely to be fueled to go above and beyond, due to profound job satisfaction (DDI s.a.). My manager often states how excited he feels about our team’s collaboration style, and how much it energizes him, even in his personal life (William 2024).
2. The required skills to be a team leader at my workplace are: creative problem-solving; spontaneous flexibility to change approaches as needed; endurance under mental stressors, such as hundreds of text messages, emails, and memos, as well as several meetings every week; endurance to work extra time and on-call shifts; remaining kind and understanding in a setting of new technology, rapid changes, and time constraints; expecting the unexpected; forgiving innocent mistakes made by oneself and others; and finding the right words to have difficult conversations with stubborn or vulnerable personalities.

Trend #9 of the 2023 DDI Leadership Forecast states that leaders want to learn from other human beings, preferably those, who are experts at what they do.

More than half of the surveyed leaders reported that they prefer learning through professional instruction or coaching. Only a quarter of the study participants cited digital learning, peer coaching, or mentoring by their immediate manager as effective learning styles. (DDI s.a.)

Welcome to the world of today’s college students – the future workforce. The US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Studies (NCES) (s.a.) reports that in 2020-2021, between 28 and 44 percent of undergraduate students and 40 to 52 percent of graduate students studied exclusively by distance learning. Distance learning is defined by the NCES as using “(…) one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the student and the instructor synchronously or asynchronously”. (US Department of Education s.a.) In contrast, according to Kumar (2015) , effective teachers are knowledgeable professionals, who can improvise within the curriculum and flexibly amend their teaching methods as needed, in order to stay closely connected with their students (Kumar 2015, p.16).

1. Our company is doing it right. They employ dedicated clinical educators, who keep abreast of newest developments. Employees are responding positively to the educators’ enthusiasm, practical experience, and personable guidance. We provide hospice services to patients at the end of life, and it is important to support our clients with effective, calmly presented, and well-coordinated services. Hospice is a challenging and undervalued healthcare specialty, and hospice workers need ongoing high-quality education and support to maintain boundaries and prevent burnout. Our agency is successfully operating in small, agile, localized teams that receive supervision and feedback from the team leader and from designated documentation-quality surveyors and clinical educators. Group chats are quickly formed around certain patients or work settings, allowing people with different functions or levels of experience, from novice to super-user, to exchange helpful information. My team leader uses an open door policy and cheerfully tolerates frequent interruptions to his own workflows to support acute employee needs. If he does not know the answer to a question, he refers the requester to the appropriate department and includes himself in the communication thread, in order to learn what to do next time, should the same issue arise again.
2. In a newly remote or hybrid working environment, teaching and learning activities are competing for attention amidst an already overwhelming amount of policies, workflows, written and verbal communications, and zoom, hybrid, or in-person meetings. Being able to multitask is a must. According to Kumar (2015), the realistic depiction of managers is “(…) fallible humans who are continuously interrupted” (Kumar 2015, p.12). Expecting this imperfect state and having competent guidance by clinical experts and senior leaders when newly entering a leadership role would likely help prevent manager burnout.

Trend #10 of the DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2023 states that typically after 3 years of hire, 25 percent of high-functioning employees start to look for more challenging or better-paying positions elsewhere. Companies are struggling to offer incentives that would prevent constant loss of top talent that was trained at corporate expense. Remedies that tripled the success rate of retaining top employees included three distinct items: offering employees career development and advancement opportunities, clearly outlining realistic performance landmarks, and effective coaching by managers. (DDI s.a.)

1. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of our company is a young, lively woman in her late 30’s. She reminds me of Sanna Marin: pretty, with a healthy self image and an unpretentious smile, personable, approachable, and celebrates successes as they arise. Recently, all employees received an email from senior management, inviting everyone to a zoom meeting to brainstorm how to retain talent at our agency. Leadership is asking us what should be offered so that we want to stay and new hires can be attracted. I feel that my opinion matters and have been pondering in my free time what ideas I could contribute. Several employees I have spoken with explained that they have held various positions within the company. When they got bored or burned out with one thing, there was an attractive opportunity to try another – no need to start over in a new company, taking a chance that the chemistry does not fit, no painful onboarding process with 90-day probation periods, no rearrangement of health insurance, tax withholding, pension plans, no learning of new names and faces, no anxiety. Most of my peers have been with the company for 5-10 years or longer. I was hired recently, and right from the start into two different positions, splitting my week into three days in one setting and two days in another. My manager was thrilled to be able to offer me such an interesting schedule. He checks in with me every week, listens to my synopsis of events, and asks how he can support me. He acknowledges with empathy when certain constellations are not optimal for me but does not try to whitewash reality. We periodically go through a checklist of items I need to be familiar with at the end of the training period. He emails me helpful workflow guides to help simplify and clarify my tasks. Even though I am earning less in this job and have to work day shifts instead of my beloved evening shift hours, I feel that I want to stay with this company, where real human beings talk to me with common sense and kindness.
2. In order to attract and retain excellent employees, managers and leaders would do well to be as creative, flexible, transparent, kind, relaxed, optimistic, forward-thinking, realistic, inclusive, communicative, acknowledging, and forgiving as my company’s leadership. Other examples of attractive features are: a somewhat competitive wage structure, a modern, functional human resources app, somewhat lenient work hours, supportive work perks, such as the option of paid transportation for client visits in the inner city and good quality work tools, such as loaner laptops and cell phones. Lastly, a hybrid mix of home office and the option of coming to a comfortable, well-designed corporate office space, is a very attractive value statement toward the employee. A company offering all this needs to publicize to the right kind of prospective employees, how great a workplace they are. In a world where true human interactions are a scarcity, and coldly taking advantage of one another is the norm, this can be a challenge.

Special Case: The Remote Work Environment

In addition to the concerning trends discussed above, Larson, Vroman, and Makarius (2020) pointed out how sudden-onset remote work, due to the pandemic, has recently disrupted many job environments. Their list of challenges and remedies can be summarized as follows:

Challenges:

1. Employees feel a lack of helpful supervision
2. Employees experience a lack of access, or difficult access to helpful information
3. Coworkers out of physical context with one another creates miscommunications and tensions
4. Employees suffer from social isolation – less connected to the company, more likely to leave the job
5. Distractions at home, such as children not in daycare or school, due to the pandemic, cause decreased employee focus and productivity

Remedies:

1. Managers to establish structured daily check-ins with employees
2. Managers to provide several different avenues of communication – especially video conferencing alleviates loneliness/isolation
3. Managers to establish rules of engagement, f.ex: text for urgent matters, email for less urgent, manager available for calls daily after 2 pm, etc
4. Managers to provide opportunities for remote social interaction, for example a virtual pizza party, where management has food delivered to remote working team members before a meeting
5. Managers to offer encouragement and emotional support – focus on employee stress, do not share manager stress, verbalize encouragement, example: ‘we’ve got this’, ‘our team rocks’, etc

Larson et al. (2020) emphasize that employees tend to copy their managers’ emotional responses to changes, stress, or crisis. A manager who communicates strength, resilience, and confidence will likely inspire employees toward competence and job satisfaction. (Larson, Vroman & Makarius 2020.)

According to Pendell (2022), the summer of 2021 went down in history as the “Great Resignation”, as nearly half of US employees were searching for new or different jobs after the COVID pandemic had jumbled up the job world. Crucial jobs were left unstaffed, and employers had to find ways to attract workers. Gallup polls found that workers now prioritized well-being when looking for jobs, and managers who inspired and engaged their workers had best hiring and retention outcomes. Pendell echoes Larson et al. (see above) when he reports that wellness at the job was directly linked to managers checking in on their people frequently and recognizing and utilizing their employees’ strengths. Pendell states that a 4-day work week may enhance employee wellness most but comes at a cost of disengagement from the workplace. According to Pendell (2022), the overall quality of one’s work experience remains the most important factor against burnout. As the workforce is returning from remote work, leaders should seize the opportunity to breathe new life and value into old office spaces and thoughtfully create desirable work settings for their employees. (Pendell 2022.)

However, Wigert (2023) found that how employees are treated at work is four times more important than the cosmetics of the workplace. In 2023, Gallup surveyed managers what changes their organizations went through that year and found that 64% of companies had tasked their employees with additional job responsibilities, 51% of managers said their teams were restructured, and 42% of organizations had experienced budget cuts. Per Wigert, Gallup polls report that globally, worker engagement is on the rise, but employee stress levels are also plateauing at a record high since the pandemic. In the US and Canada, over 50% of employees report feeling stressed, impacting productivity and job retention. Successful engagement with one’s workplace’s mission and purpose directly affects willingness to deliver excellence and therefore work quality. Per Wigert’s report, only 23% of US employees trust their leadership. Trustworthy leaders were described as communicating clearly, pioneering change, and viewing the future with contagious confidence. (Wigert 2023.)

According to Wigert (2023), managers were most affected by burnout, being squeezed between senior management’s expectations, new strategies and workflows, a meager budget, and dwindling teams of disenchanted, needy workers. Overburdened and with poor work-life balance, managers strongly felt that their employers do not care about their wellness. Wong (2023) seconds this opinion, reporting that becoming a manager, once a desirable status boost, is now lowest on the career wish list of young workers. Wong cites sign-on bonuses, paid time off, and more autonomy as perks for attracting managers. He also suggests that digital technology tools may simplify managerial tasks, such as conducting performance evaluations. Furthermore, creative job titles such as ‘player coaches’ have higher functioning employees on hourly wages managing small teams of peers, avoiding the pitfalls of manager status while building engagement and leadership skills. Wong believes that equipping managers with more data and some tech tools to manage more employees with less effort is a valid solution. (Wong 2023.) However, in my opinion, the article does not take a critical look at how this approach might feel to workers, who are once again reduced to being categorized and stereotyped.

Wigert (2023) further states that leaders and managers need to prepare for long-term hybrid work situations, even if this means struggling with team cohesion and maintaining a collective corporate vision, due to employees’ individualized, flexible schedules. Remote work has shown to improve employee well-being and job satisfaction, engagement and retention, and companies would be wise to find hybrid business models and management strategies that preserve these beneficial outcomes.

I would like to reiterate that my workplace’ leadership does very well maintaining a hybrid, cohesive, engaging, and caring work environment. Managers and leaders are transparent and available for/engaged with their employees, modeling a sense of wellbeing at the workplace, steeped in happy productivity and mutual respect.

Last, but not least: Ask AI

Chat GPT on Ethical Leadership:

Considering my leadership in nursing chat groups I created 5 years ago and have maintained since as an administrator, I believe I do conduct myself like an ethical leader, just like described above. I have earned the trust and respect of most all of the group members and continually strive to satisfy individual needs and remedy knowledge gaps that may prevent someone from getting the most out of the chats. I feel that I am kind, interested, and attentive, and I gladly assist at all odd hours of the day while awake. Furthermore, over time I have appointed one or two co-administrators, whom I trust to lead the chats when I am busy. I feel good about not clinging to sole leadership, but learning to share the responsibility and provide even better services that way.  

References:

Chat GPT 3.5. Write a short essay about Ethical Leadership. https://chat.openai.com/c/32c61642-88b6-484b-91ea-8de17de63369. Accessed 13.2.2024.

Development Dimensions International, Inc. (DDI) s.a. Global Leadership Forecast 2023. https://www.ddiworld.com/global-leadership-forecast-2023#. Accessed 8.2.2024.

Kumar, Pardeep 2015. An Analytical study on Mintzberg’s Framework: Managerial Roles. International Journal of Research in Management & Business Studies (IJRMBS 2015), Vol. 2 Issue 3. https://studylib.net/doc/8085279/an-analytical-study-on-mintzberg-s-framework–managerial-roles. Accessed 13.2.2024.

Larson, Barbara Z., Vroman, Susan R., &  Makarius, Erin E. 2020. A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers. Harvard business Review. March 18, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/03/a-guide-to-managing-your-newly-remote-workers. Accessed 11.2.2024.

US Department of Education s.a. National Center for Education Studies. Fast Facts. Distance Learning.  https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=80. Accessed 17.2.2024.

Pendell, Ryan 2022. 7 Gallup Workplace Insights: What We Learned in 2021. Gallup Workplace. January 1, 2022. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/358346/gallup-workplace-insights-learned-2021.aspx. Accessed 12.2.2024

Wigert, Ben 2023. 6 Workplace Trends Leaders Should Watch in 2024. Gallup Workplace. December 18, 2023. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/547283/workplace-trends-leaders-watch-2024.aspx. Accessed 11.2.2024.

William, Guy 2024. Personal interview. 16.2.2024. San Francisco, California, USA.

Wong, Ryan 2023. Young Workers Don’t Want to Become Managers — and This Study Uncovers the Reason Why. Entrepreneur. October 13, 2023. https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/young-workers-dont-want-to-become-managers-and-this/462273. Accessed 12.2.2024.