Here is an excerpt from an article written by Brian Elliott and Sophie Wadefor MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, sign up for email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
Illustration Credit: Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
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While it may feel like command-and-control leadership is back in style, the truth is that emotionally intelligent leaders achieve more.
The interpersonal skills that are integral to human-centered leadership are often called “soft” skills, but they’re what underpins the hard work of managing. Empathy, emotional regulation, taking time to read people: These are the skills associated with high emotional intelligence that enable leaders to build cohesive teams and successfully grow their businesses during uncertain times.
Today, though, effective modern leadership seems to be under siege, thanks to the high public profiles of “tough” leaders. As The Wall Street Journal’s Chip Cutter recently put it, “Corporate America’s long-running war for talent sounds more like a war on the talent these days.” This is occurring despite the fast-evolving needs of digitally maturing organizations and workforces that are often being retrained for new tasks.
Misconceptions about what makes a leader strong distract executives from recognizing where their core organizational strengths come from. To explain why your organization’s future success depends on cultivating human-centered leaders, we’ll look at why the tough-leader persona is not effective or sustainable for achieving long-term results. Our belief is that human-centric and strong — not tough — leadership is inevitably what will win the day.
From “You’re Valued” to “You’re Replaceable”
First, a little scene-setting. Pre-pandemic, research had built compelling cases for human-centric leadership. A focus on purpose was found to drive employee motivation and outcomes, with evidence of its role in strengthening innovation and employee wellness. This data was reinforced during the crisis as many businesses survived despite dire circumstances.
Today, we’re seeing central corporate command try to reassert control to reinstitute old norms. As the pandemic receded, many CEOs felt that the social contract had become too employee-centric. These sentiments were combined with new concerns about AI-driven disruptions and the potential to “do (much) more with less.” Many CEOs decided to recentralize, returning everyone to familiar office settings.
The swing of the pendulum has been significant over just two years, particularly in tech. Employees recognized as valued contributors during the pandemic are being targeted as dispensable automatons. Wall Street leaders, lauded for their own culture of tough talk and late nights at the office, are again influencing executives. Some CEOs are returning to GE-style “rank and yank” layoffs despite their proven detrimental effects. Leaders are reinstating the fixed, centralized hierarchies of their own pasts.
Tough-talking leaders often fail to appreciate that reliability — the foundation of trust — is what builds results.
This goes against the grain of what’s been working for so many businesses. Pandemic-accelerated digitalization has pushed many operations to decentralize. Integrating more technologies and responding quickly to customers’ evolving demands has elevated the need for cultures founded on trust, where employees have the necessary relationships and support to adjust and innovate while navigating ongoing change.
Tough CEOs don’t recognize the value of human-centered leaders who tap into their emotional intelligence as much as their intellectual intelligence to deepen relationships in all the ways that improve workers’ performance. These leaders often point to the success of Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s autocratic leadership style while ignoring the more human-centered styles of Apple’s Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella — CEOs of companies with valuations that eclipse those of Musk’s. Musk might be tough and endlessly in the news, but Cook and Nadella are strong leaders who exemplify the best of human-centric leadership.
Five Lessons for Tough Talkers From Strong Leaders
Tough talkers need to learn some hard truths about accountability and empathy. Here are five key truths about human-centered leadership that can help them adapt effectively to modern work environments.
[Here’s the first.]
1. Strong leaders know that being empathetic doesn’t mean being nice. Tough leaders mistakenly think empathizing means giving in, but it doesn’t. Human-centered leaders empathize to better communicate and collaborate. Empathizing means connecting with what others are thinking and feeling, and it’s the skill that cultivates safe spaces for creativity, builds strong team alliances, and gets to clarity on issues. Research has found that managers who are rated as empathetic by members of their team are rated as high performers by their own managers. Leaders’ empathy helps team members sustain high performance when they’re under pressure, and it makes it possible for teams to align and advance more easily.
Challenging the tough-leader persona is essential for managing talent through volatility and ambiguity. Leaders need to nurture a sense of belonging to support strong performance. Training that emphasizes human understanding improves leaders’ collaboration skills, responsiveness, adaptability, and resilience.
Human-centered leaders are successful due to their ability to understand their customers and coworkers. Leaders need to practice more empathy in a tech-dominated world to balance the digitalization of work and life across the teams and machines. If you’re not investing in becoming a human-centered leader, you’ve got a hard road ahead of you.
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Brian Elliott is an executive adviser and speaker. He’s the CEO of Work Forward and author of the Work Forward newsletter. Sophie Wade is a workforce innovator and adviser. She’s the author of the Work In Progress Report newsletter.