The global market today is moving fast towards workforce transformation, which is leading to the rise of new job roles and emerging professions. As we witness the rise in demand for specialized roles, we also see certain jobs becoming redundant.
Organizations are moving fast to adapt to this new normal and are accelerating their upskilling and reskilling initiatives, especially in the wake of technological advancements. However, along with increasing their technical skills, organizations also have to focus on developing their managers to help them lead these teams. And to lead these teams, managers need to power up their power skills.
Here’s a look at three of the most in-demand power skills that managers need to imbibe:.
Growth Mindset
Attitudes decide outcomes. This is perhaps one of the key reasons for the focus on developing positive attitudes. In a climate that is characterized by constant change, managers have to develop a positive attitude towards change, and all the consequent developments change brings.
For this, it is essential to develop a ‘growth mindset’- a mindset that is a characteristic of all successful entrepreneurs. A growth mindset believes that intelligence can be developed. Managers with this mindset embrace challenges, are more persistent despite obstacles, see effort as the road to develop mastery, embrace criticism as an opportunity to learning, and have the capability to be inspired by others.
Managers with this mindset are more committed towards themselves and the development of their team. They are inspired to address challenges and help their team members clear roadblocks that impede success. They are more proactive with their feedback and are focused on creating more opportunities for improvement for their team. This mindset needs empathy – to understand challenges and not perceive them as weaknesses. Consequently, they emerge as better leaders owing to their approach that directs ‘every problem has a solution’.
Critical Thinking
Given today’s competitive and challenging business landscape, managers have to focus on developing their critical thinking capabilities. Critical thinking is the capability to look at and then analyze a concept with objectivity. It involves considering all the different perspectives and the facts at hand required to reach positive outcomes. It demands acknowledging all biases and having the ability to look past them. It also mandates pushing the envelope further to come up with out-of-the-box solutions for pressing problems and having the objectivity to understand the impact of their decisions.
Critical thinking essentially employs the use of cognitive skills and strategies to improve the probability of the desired outcome. Because of this, critical thinking is reasoned, purposeful, and goal oriented. Owing to its nature, critical thinking gives managers the capability to deal with contradictions and challenges in a reasoned and productive manner, especially since it is a reflective process and constantly evaluates the thinking process itself. Capabilities of inference, assumption recognition, deduction, interpretation, and argument evaluation form the crux of the composite of attitudes, skills, and knowledge that critical thinking needs.
Critical thinking helps in bringing creative solutions to challenges and helps businesses increase their innovative capacities. Since managers are role models for their team members, how they analyze and solve problems influences their team members. It also helps in making their team members become more resolute about problem-solving and helps them become more solution-driven.
Collaboration
The importance of collaboration in today’s work environment cannot be overemphasized. With global teams, adoption of remote working, and the rise of multi-skilled teams demands workplaces to become more collaborative. It is the managers who can set the tone for collaborative efforts and efficiently take their organization to collaborative utopia.
Collaboration is all about coordinated effort to meet the needs of all those involved, to the greatest extent possible, in order to help them achieve a common goal. And managers are the ones who lead the path to collaboration.
Creating and fostering a collaborative mindset in a team can be challenging. It is because collaboration involves the complexity of dealing with human mindsets. Thus, managers have to develop the capacity to motivate their team members to work towards a shared goal. It is essential for them to convey and provide the right incentives and motivations to the team in a personalized manner.
To build a collaborative team, managers have to invest themselves in building an environment of trust in all working relationships. It involves identifying possible bottlenecks to collaboration, which might also include identifying the professional development needs of the individual. It also involves having robust communication skills to convey the right message between geographically dispersed team members and the collaborative effort.
It is redundant to say that organizations globally are existing in an increasingly complex and constantly shifting ocean of change. Thus, even in the age of digital transformation, even the most high-tech companies are looking for managers with power skills. However, to develop these power skills, managers have to look beyond day-long traditional training programs. Power skills are behavioral skills. And making any behavioral change takes time and constant learning. Looking towards a robust employee engagement platform is key to develop and hone these skills and charter a path to personal and organizational success. Try NumlyEngage™ today!
