According to some analysts, we are not simply experiencing a downturn in the business cycle, but a complete shift in the economic order, with a long-term impact on the world of business.
While no one can say how long this will last and what the new normal will look like, there are certainly some fundamental principles that can help leaders prepare themselves and their businesses for the possibilities and uncertainties that tomorrow will bring.
What are the skills that leaders need in order to guide their business through and beyond this shift? How to focus on long term results while dealing with short term crises?
Join us for a virtual panel discussion led by Adam Kingl, business educator and author of Next Generation Leadership, to debate these and other questions and understand what the new normal means for your business and your teams.
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Contributing Editor and Columnist at the Financial Times and Executive editor of Headspring
Michael Skapinker has held many positions within Financial Times, namely: FT Weekend editor, FT Special Reports editor, and managing editor.
Skapinker regularly chairs and speaks at business conferences and events worldwide. He is also an experienced management educator and has run leadership programmes at many of the world’s leading organisations.
Throughout his career, Skapinker has received several awards that including the Work Foundation Members’ Award for his outstanding contribution to the understanding of working life in 2003 and was named WorkWorld Media Awards Columnist of the Year in 2008. At the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, he was named Business Commentator of the Year (2012) and Business Ethics Commentator of the Year (2015).
Learn more about Michael Skapinker
Author, Educator, keynote speaker and Advisor with decades working in innovation, strategy, culture and leadership
Adam is Adjunct Faculty at Ashridge – Hult International Business School and an instructor at Imperial College London, Sauder School of Business – University of British Columbia, Headspring Executive Development, and Duke Corporate Education.
Acknowledged for his thought-leadership in innovation, strategy, culture, and leadership, Adam Kingl is a regular keynote speaker and conference facilitator – he is also the author of “The Next Generation Leadership” and his work can also be found in multiple publications such as The Financial Times, Sunday Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Guardian, and Fast Company, among many others.
Adam holds degrees from London Business School, UCLA, and Yale. He has served on the steering committee for the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). He was an associate at Saatchi & Saatchi, an Executive Director at London Business School, and the Regional Managing Director for Duke Corporate Education Europe.
Learn more about Adam KinglWhat are the competencies that really need to be rethought during this pandemic? We also have to think about organizational resilience, which is not just morale, but how we hold each other together. And I don't think this is only in the purview of HR. I think it's the CEO's responsibility. And I think it's a learning and development responsibility because these are related to skills that can be developed. (...) Part of that is making sure that the organization is always open to reinvention, whether that's incremental or exponential, and organizations are typically poor at this or take them a very long time to question their orthodoxies. But this is precisely the right moment to think about how we can develop our organizational and leadership competencies. And in thinking about whether we are doing, we are as relevant as we can be, instead of as risk-averse as we can be.
How can leaders create the sort of empathy and show interest when communication is only through digital means? The important thing about empathy is listening. But really listening, really listening to what people have said, and then repeating, reflecting back to them what they've said. So that even if you don't agree with them, even if you decide to make a different decision, they feel they've been listened to, as you say, that's very much harder to do at the moment. (...) You've got to be able to trust your employees, you've got to be able to trust your people. And this has always been a mark of good leadership, judging people by what they produce, not by what you see them doing.
What are the leadership skills and facets that the leaders should consider in this time of crisis? The first thing, sadly, we have to remember is a lot of businesses are not going to survive the crisis. A lot of companies are going to go out of business, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. For the survivors, it's going to be a reconstruction. (...) I think leadership is going to require all of those skills mentioned - it's going to require empathy, it's going to require being able to trust people, it's going to be able to require telling people the truth, it's also going to require a very, very shrewd reading of the market.
If there is a silver lining up to COVID-19, it's starting to destroy the semantic discord around the phrase work-life balance or virtual working between the generations. Because for those organizations that were resistant to virtual working, they really have no choice now. Adam Kingl
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