The new year has barely begun, and the future-focused leaders I coach have been scouting their competition, analyzing the trends, and understanding what unique opportunities the data offers for their own improvement. This process didn’t just start for them as the calendar turned to January 1st—for most of them, it began in 2016. Getting a handle on the pace at which the fabric of the business world will continue to evolve in 2017 was critical to how they finished 2016—strong leaders prepared to hit the ground running. Understanding upcoming growth opportunities and trends gave them a distinct advantage as they fine-tuned the strategic plans that they’ll now use to guide them as they hope to navigate 2017 successfully.
The mainstay of the business world continues to be the disruption of the status quo, and the pace will only accelerate in the upcoming year.
In 2017, we’ll see more Millennials stepping into leadership roles, it will be the first full year that Generation Z has been in the workplace, and technology will make how we work vastly different, changing how we communicate, relate, and work with each other. The challenge for those in leadership roles at every level is how to inspire, energize, and enthuse those on your team to be the best people, citizens, and employees while still driving results that keep your organization innovative and profitable.
Here are some of the trends you might want to implement in 2017 that will enable you to do just that:
Create An Employee Experience Mindset And Culture
This is a disruptive and different approach to inspiring loyalty and providing good job opportunities for highly accomplished candidates and employees. Inspiring loyalty and providing good jobs that engage, enthuse, and inspire the most accomplished employees and candidates starts when you create employee experiences that emphasize purpose over paycheck and development over perks as part of your organization and team culture. This type of employee experience mindset and culture gives the people who work for you the opportunity to be emotionally and developmentally connected to the work they are doing. Everyone wants to do something in life that fulfills a larger purpose, and for the new generation, their job isn’t just a job—it’s about their purpose and their why.
It’s All About Coaching And Development In Real Time
The people who work for you aren’t asking for fancy offices, free food, huge bonuses, or unlimited lattes. Nor do they want the old style command-and-control leaders of the past or feedback on an annual review. They’re looking for leaders who value them for what they contribute, expect them to perform, and will reward performance over tenure. They also expect their leaders to be coaches and to communicate with them on a constant and frequent basis about how best to develop their strengths and guide them toward a plan for achieving their goals.
Waiting for an annual review to share what you’re thinking and to offer guidance isn’t going to cut it. Not coaching them and sharing feedback both about their strengths and constructive actionable criticism can lead to indifference, which results in their disengagement from their jobs and a lack of respect for you as their leader.
Bi-Directional Mentoring Becomes Key For A Widening Generation Gap And Blended Workforce
In 2017, five generations of people will be in the workforce. Generation Z will have finished their first full year working, more Millennials will be moving into leadership roles, and we will continue to see a rise in the number of freelancers working side-by-side with employees. This diversity in the workforce introduces different perspectives on work culture, widens the knowledge gaps, makes the workforce more global, and broadens an ever-increasing gap between older and younger workers. For those in leadership roles, it means laying out a roadmap that encourages esprit de corps and a sense of the collective vision and direction toward a shared set of goals. It means being able to diffuse strong personalities and differing agendas and bridging generational gaps to bring about understanding so that differences bring about more connected relationships and those they lead grow stronger and more productive. But there’s more to it than just that. Great leaders build and embed within their teams a strong mentoring culture. Bi-directional mentoring means mentoring programs that aren’t based on age, title, specialty, or status but rather on skills and interests that can really help create an environment of cross-generational / functional skills, trust, and learning. By encouraging and making this type of mentoring a priority, you encourage those on your team to inspire, teach, and learn from each other and understand the value of getting together to achieve something they cannot do alone.
As you begin thinking about how best to begin the new year, go back and look at what made you successful in the first place, and see what you might want to change. If you aren’t doing these things, consider how you could incorporate some of them into what you’re doing, and if you’re doing them, see how you can expand and adjust them to make them more robust in the upcoming year. The great leaders I know are always making adjustments on the fly, and they don’t let failure or change derail them—they use it to move forward and fast-track their success. It’s time for all of us to move forward.
Let me know what positive trends you see for 2017, and I’ll be happy to share them with everyone.