7 Top Leadership Trends in 2021 for Successful Leaders

With 2020 being one of the most disruptive and uncertain years, there has been an enormous change in the business environment. The current change will continue and we will see further new patterns and trends being created in 2021. Thus, leaders need to be receptive to these new leadership trends and changes around them. 

Following are the 7 Top Leadership Trends for 2021

Build Double-Sided Empathy 

There is no doubt 2020 has been a tough year for most businesses. As we enter 2021, businesses will be in the mindset to move on and get aggressive in their approach. Everyone will try to balance the losses of 2020. In such a scenario, it’s understandable that as a leader you would feel the need to push your team and create bigger targets/KRA’s. However, you need to understand that even your teammates have gone through rough times personally and instead of unnecessary aggression you need to build empathy towards them. 

On the same side, you need to build empathy within your team for the organization. Instead of pushing them, try to make them understand the bigger picture. Explain that the organization has gone through a difficult period and let them naturally agree to the cause and get motivated. This will get better results and performance from them without you putting efforts into pushing them aggressively. Empathy will be a key leadership trend and skill for 2021.

Read More: Why Empathy is Important in Leadership

Need to Drive Innovation and Change

There has been a vast change in user behaviour across products and sectors. There has been a change in the consumption pattern and purchase cycle of various products. To stay relevant and to keep your business steady, you need to be aware of the environment and open to change. 

You would have innovated and changed a lot of things last year and it will continue this year and you would need to innovate and change further. Based on your industry or product, you may need to drive some innovation or change. If you are in banking, maybe you need to replicate your complete operations in digital products. For healthcare or skincare products, maybe you can add a new product line that is positioned on safety and hygiene. If you are in real estate, maybe you need to innovate the mode of the site visit and interaction with customers. 

Stay aware of the environment and be open to change. Change will be a key leadership challenge in 2021.

Read More: Emerging Business Trends Post COVID-19

Learn and Adopt Digital Business & Data Science

Data and digital products have played a huge role in transforming the business landscape in the last few years. I always expected that digital businesses and data science will be the key driver in future and the related terminologies will become part of every senior management discussion. There was always a need for all leaders to have a complete understanding of these digital systems and data science.  

Because of COVID, we have fast-forwarded 5 years of the adoption of the digital lifestyle. The digital behaviour and adoption that have happened because of COVID now would have taken 5 years in a normal course of time. Like 2020, the advancement of digital business and data science will be a key leadership trend for 2021. 

As a leader, if you have been waiting to develop digital data science skills, then you need to start now. Digital is no longer a supplementary area, it has become the primary driver for most businesses. Being digital is a top leadership trend in 2021 that all leaders should adopt to.

Push Skill Development and Continuous Learning in the team

For any company or team to stay at peak levels, it’s essential to get the most from each team member. It’s a long process to optimise individual performance and align with each other. Still, after a point, every team’s performance stagnates, and it needs something new. This happens as the team member reaches the maximum knowledge they could have gained from the organization. In such a scenario, it’s important to expand the knowledge of team members. Thus, expand the knowledge of the organization.  

For this, you need to build a system of continuous learning and skill development within the organization. You need to motivate employees to add more skills to their profile. 

This should happen in 2 parts – one where the senior members in the team mentors and trains the junior members in the team and second, by bringing third party institutes to conduct training within the organization.

The more each employee will grow in terms of knowledge and skill set, the higher output company will get out of them. 

Getting back to Office

In March, when the lockdown was announced, overnight every organization had to shut their offices and ask employees to work from their home. It was not an easy switch. Team leaders and members took sometime to get used to this alternative way of working and get to a consistent work process. 

Now, everyone has gotten used to it and this has become the new normal. So, after a few months, you will again plan to get back to the office. Don’t expect things will be normal from day zero. You would need to go through the same process of change where you would need the team to change their way of working. Maybe to smoothen the process, you can deploy a hybrid model, i.e. a few days at home and a few days at work, before completely starting working from the office.

Regular Team Reviews

In most of the organizations, we have an annual review process, where every employee gets some increment based on the performance in the last 12 months. This system is followed as it is impossible to implement multiple increments in a year. 

However, the problem with this system is that every employee has to wait for 12 months to know how his/her manager and organization rate their performance. How can he/she improve or what he/she can change? And in those 12 months the employee is blind to such feedback, thus not having time to improve and shine, thus affecting the overall productivity of the team.

Start a new process of having a monthly review with each of your team members. Just meet for 15 minutes and let them know what you think of their performance and how they can improve if needed. It will help you get more out of the employees and it will build a transparent relationship with them. 

It’s important that regular team reviews and feedback session become one of the key leadership trends for 2021. 

Extra Support to a few if needed

The COVID time has been challenging for all of us. Everyone had to go through some personal struggle of their own. And in this, there could be a few people whose lives would have been affected at a far greater level in terms of personal or financial loss. 

In such scenarios, it is important to take care of employees if needed or if possible, help them financially as you will get a loyal employee for a long time and it will be a great value addition for the organization.

A loyal employee is of far greater value than a loyal customer. Make sure you build a team of loyal employees. 

Also remember, 

You cannot be a customer-friendly company without being employee-friendly as they are the face of your organization.

If you want to add any new leadership trends for 2021, please mention it below in comments. 

Next Article: Top Business Trends in 2022

Follow Us on LinkedIn to Stay Updated with new Content!

About Idea Toasters

Idea Toasters is a platform where we share ideas and practices to boost innovation and creativity. Our goal is to build the science of innovation and creativity.