Although the pandemic has disrupted business processes at scale, leaders around the world stepped up to steer their workforces towards resilience.

A McKinsey survey found that 80 per cent of employees are happy with the response effectiveness of their leadership, indicating that they have “acted proactively to protect employee health and safety.”

With the ongoing disruption, leaders and managers must make smart, timely decisions to keep the business on track and well-poised for the recovery stage. This requires both an agile mindset as well as a  keen understanding of dynamic market movements.

In this particular context, companies simply cannot afford to take their leadership for granted.  EngageRocket Pulse of the SG Workforce research reveals that “manager support” (particularly through clear and regular feedback) is one of the top three drivers with a very high impact on employee loyalty.

Why reskill leaders and why now?

While telecommuting may be more challenging for some employees than for others, preference for it is universal. Our research reveals that across industries and generations, over two-thirds of respondents would prefer to work from home 50-75 per cent of the time. Sixteen per cent of them are even proponents for fully work from home, making it essential for organisations to have a long term vision on working arrangements to answer employees’ new expectations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a volley of new skill requirements. One of the new management competencies to look for is a pragmatic understanding of cutting-edge technology. It is important to understand how this technology might enable crisis-proof processes, happier employees, and steady growth.

Also Read: Leadership is not a benefit to yourself but an obligation to others

As companies begin to rely on digital channels for the most basic of functions, from registering attendance to onboarding an employee, it is important to reskill leaders with an eye on digital-first strategies.

Another essential soft skill for leaders in the new normal will be advanced communication. Remote employees aren’t just working from home – they are staying at home for the majority of the time, relying on colleagues and employer channels for regular communication on what’s happening around the world.

Simple things such as soft skills training can help employees communicate better with their teams and strengthen essential bonds. Thirty-six per cent of employees report communication among team members as a real challenge during the Circuit Breaker, highlighting the lack of resources/tools, the lack of processes to facilitate communication (e.g more channels to raise anonymous feedback), and the lack of clarity about policies and expectations. Companies need a clear framework to reskill leaders in these three critical areas to stay ahead in the new normal.

6 action-points to help navigate this unprecedented period

Companies often make the mistake of halting capability building during a crisis, opting for a more conservative approach. But this actually defers the risk of not investing in business growth – which is why leadership reskilling and upskilling is so important in the current environment. To get this right, we’d recommend the following framework:

Quantifiably define the new normal

A first step to adapting to any complex situation is acceptance. Leaders and managers might be change-resistant but this holds back their pace of learning. Furthermore, ambiguity around the situation at hand causes fear and apprehension among leadership which inevitably trickles down to the entire workforce.

You can combat this by using quantifiable measures to define your transition to the new normal. Employee engagement, revenue generation, customer loyalty, and new product development timelines – how have these core business metrics changed? Quantifying them and monitoring trends over time will give you a stronger grasp of what’s happening and what needs to be done for the road ahead.

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Assess performance accurately and fairly

Enable feedback gathering for employee development. Supported with a solid communication plan and follow-up conversations, running a 360 review feedback exercise can be highly effective in identifying competency gaps and skills.

In challenging times, this effect is even more prominent as participation and the integrity of feedback are heightened. Three-hundred-sixty feedback reviews are cost-effective automated processes to develop high-performing employees, providing real-time data to identify key areas to direct training resources.

Identify likely recovery routes and new management competencies

A conservative approach typically suggests a myopic view of business growth. It is limited to the here and now which is concentrated on crisis management, instead of recovery and future pathways. In order to enable effective leadership reskilling, companies must consider the mid-term and the long-term by chalking out both best and worst-case scenarios.

An analysis of the metrics revealed in step one will indicate which of these outcome pathways is most likely to occur. Next, analyse the insights revealed in step two to assess existing leadership and compare it with the most likely route(s) to arrive at leadership skill gaps.

Remember, these gaps are yet to exist in the organisation – proactive reskilling seeks to realign existing talent with future, projected requirements, with the goal of averting a similar crisis down the line.

Map out leadership groups to execute the recovery roadmap

Assemble groups of leaders and mid-management personnel with similar skill requirements. This step will help reduce reskilling inefficiencies, ensuring that there is no duplication of training effort across the organisation. These groups will cut across horizontals (your critical management layers) as well as key business functions or verticals.

Also Read: Leadership in times of crisis – how to lead efficiently when the pot is boiling

It also serves to tackle reskilling fragmentation in large companies. For instance, if two business units situated in opposite parts of the globe have a similar projected business trajectory for the next year after the Circuit Breaker, it makes sense to form leadership groups that include both units. The rise of online learning in a remote working environment makes this easier to adopt and implement.

Align reskilling initiatives with competency gaps among leadership groups

By step five, organisations have already isolated specific skill gaps and new management competencies to be acquired. Now, you can design a reskilling initiative to address these – note that reskilling tries to imbibe a completely fresh set of skills, as opposed to upskilling which only works on an existing foundation.

That is why the actual training in hard and soft skills should go hand-in-hand with cultural change management to break down any barriers to learning among leadership.  You might want to partner with a coaching service provider or platform to guide learners through this critical process.

This step is cyclical and iterative, which means that you need to reshape learning journeys as new skills gaps emerge.

Start to reskill leaders with an MVP; test, iterate and repeat

It’s crunch time. Rather than trying to build the perfect reskilling plan, it is a good idea to start off with a minimum viable product (MVP). This ensures that you hit the ground running, with minimal delays giving your team leaders the best possible chance of coping with the crisis.

After initial learning cycles, conduct employee surveys to assess how leadership capabilities – and consequently their on-ground impact – have changed. Based on survey results, companies can tweak, iterate, and redeploy training sessions, factoring in three elements:

• Employee sentiment on leaders 
• Leader feedback on the learning journey 
• The latest market developments 

Leaders need new skills to cope with a crisis as unprecedented as COVID-19, and this has both hard and soft aspects. A holistic reskilling framework that factors in the three core requirements of digitalisation, agility, and communication, executed through compassionate decision-making is the need of the hour. Finally, make sure to collect data on reskilling impacts by speaking to the ones who gain (or lose) the most from the realignment of leadership – your employees.

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