Managers need to embrace their employees mentally and emotionally — looking them in the eye and listening with attention and warmth.
The pandemic tsunami has left isolation, lockdown and millions of casualties and victims worldwide in our collective memory. But in the middle of that darkness it has also brought something to light: the dawn of post-COVID leadership.
Confined by the pandemic, millions of employees found themselves not only separated and isolated but also deprived of contact and, above all, of human warmth. The worst came when most of them received the urgent summons back to the office, as though the company’s very life depended on it — or, sadly, as though the where (home) mattered more than the what (the work, and therefore productivity and results) and, above all, more than the who (the people).
The result of that pandemic cocktail, combined with a forced return to routine as though nothing had happened — when in truth everything has changed for good — has been the Great Resignation: an early skirmish in the global war for talent that COVID-19 has set in motion.
Many leaders called their employees back to the ranks without pausing even for a moment to answer one question: are many of these professionals, let alone all of them, mentally ready to return? The mental strain the pandemic has left at every level does not repair itself overnight, as though it were a common cold.
Unfortunately for many managers, the confinement COVID imposed on us meant that a great many people finally had time to think — and not about minor matters, but about what counts: life, the future, and themselves.
What many employees were reflecting on could be summed up in a question: am I really living the life I want to live? Do I want the life I have now, or do I want to be the owner of my own life and my own destiny? It did not take long for many of them to find in the Great Resignation — or the great escape — the best answer, if not the only one.
But the Great Resignation is the consequence. The cause points directly at leadership. It is time to say goodbye to the sadly idolised alpha male and to greet warmly a new kind of leadership, one defined by empathy, closeness, tact and warmth.
Leadership by people, for people, in which the leader — as a person — has no qualms about showing their vulnerability publicly (superheroes belong in comic books) and, in doing so, opens up to every employee, moves closer to them, takes an interest in them and makes room for their worries, their fears, their insecurities and their doubts.
This is the triumph of human leadership: leadership with eyes to look someone in the face, ears to listen and, above all, a heart to feel. That is what the embrace of this new leadership means — a physical, mental and emotional welcome for employees, who need to feel the human warmth they went without in the depths of lockdown.
In short, it is time to bring leadership back to life, and for it to send a definitive message of hope and of the future.
By Dr Juan Manuel Roca Rodríguez, director of the management and business school consultancy LeaderactiON, and lecturer at CMI Business School.
