There is no single formula for becoming the leader of the future. Every organization has its own culture, structure, and transformation journeys. But what happens in between the stages of change is where we realize we are going through the same struggles.
Leaders who are not yet adapting to those needs would still find themselves rethinking their style because they can’t stop their environment and people’s behavior from evolving. Here are some of the common principles and practices for the leader of the future.
Practice empathy and empowerment. “As I understood it, many people were struggling at home because of the situation of the crisis that surrounded us. And I have to admit that I was also struggling at home. I think all of us were, one way or the other. So, it’s a question of being empathetic and trying to put yourself in the shoes of your colleagues,” Xavi Ballesteros, who is a Cambridge English Country Director in Spain and Portugal, said during a Q&A forum held by the Cambridge University Press.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Cater, Managing Director of CEM, shared that she assessed their communication pattern and looked more closely into what empowerment could offer in return. What she did was “making sure that things can happen without me being in the room, because there are so many projects that we’ve been working on over the last few months and needing an approval from me on everything wouldn’t work. So, trying to understand how to engender empowerment across the teams has been a focus as well.”
Communicate with employees constantly. “The main challenge is to make colleagues work throughout the company and to manage different time zones,” Monica Marchis, Research Director of AMSI, told PERFORMANCE Magazine. “We have one-on-one weekly meetings with all team members and regular meetings with the team for an overview of all work done individually. This way, we enable perspective and recognition and ensure support. In order to gain coherence, a corporate governance project has been initiated and a job evaluation project for internal equity has been done.”
Create new strategies for virtual meetings. According to The Economist, before the pandemic, managers were spending almost 23 hours weekly attending meetings. After the pandemic, barriers that keep people apart increased and organizations have to come up with new ways of running a meeting. Organizations can consider the following techniques:
Designate an amount of time for each topic, and once the time is up, the timer will ring and participants can move on to the next subject matter.
Write follow-up action notes that can be seen immediately in the meeting rather than sending the list via email.
Set positive communication rules, such as allowing presenters to finish their statements before commenting and encouraging participants to speak up.
Have an additional break after each presentation in a meeting.
Come up with creative icebreakers.
Develop interactive and visually appealing presentations.
When there is a new meeting platform, perform trial runs with attendees to familiarize them with the functions.
Prioritize productivity over multitasking. One useful technique to assess serial-tasks and avoid multitasking is the Pomodoro Technique. It proposes working in a hyper-productive rhythm for 20 minutes without distractions. For managers still working in a hybrid environment, dedicating 20 uninterrupted minutes to a task seems reasonable rather than an entire one hour. Dividing the time into short bursts allows the brain to fully concentrate. At the end of the day, it seems more productive than a day spent multitasking.
Make individual strengths shine. If the pandemic taught us one thing in the organizational environment, it is that individuals have different needs and respond differently. To win over the actual context, the manager needs to balance shared team commitments and the unique needs and strengths of individuals. In the opposite corner, the one-size-fits-all method will erase the possible shining contributions of individuals. With this, managing a diverse team means the ability to shield performance from drawbacks.
Keep it real. A potential leadership crunch can also be avoided by looking at the technique of trading perfectionism for compassion. Before COVID happened, a good day meant being able to submit all assignments and attend all meetings. The post-pandemic work life paints it differently. For working parents, it got even more difficult as they have to get the children accommodated with homeschooling while attending virtual meetings. This does not imply falling short of one’s own standards, but becoming more reasonable when it comes to the number of tasks they can accomplish.
The holiday season means spending more time with loved ones and practicing family traditions for many people. Since the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak, end-of-year gatherings and celebrations alongside school and work have been conducted virtually due to lockdowns and social restrictions. This year, family holidays and celebrations may return and show resemblances of normalcy as the world is slowly entering a post-pandemic era.
This is evident in the case of family trips. A recentsurvey by the Family Travel Association and NYU School of Professional Studies saw that family trips are making a comeback, with 72% of participants saying that they would take a flight for a domestic trip while 40% would fly for an international trip with family. As more people are likely to opt for in-person gatherings with family, doing it during this era can still be challenging. Not only do families need to remain cautious and follow the health protocols, but they also might bring along some habits of overly depending on digital technologies.
It is undeniable that some find it difficult to balance between their digital and real-life; oftentimes, the former spills over the latter, taking up family time. This means one might end up reducing interaction and socialization with family. Moreover, even though digital technology has been around for many decades, the pandemic has forced its integration into people’s lives, potentially disrupting family relationships.
Reconnecting with family
To maximize quality time with family and rebuild closeness during this holiday season, families can try to disconnect virtually and connect more in reality. Here are some ways to do just that.
Decide on a no-screen time together
Phone etiquette such as not using phones at the dinner table has been around for some time now. This is a fundamental rule that allows you to disconnect as a family. By keeping devices out of sight, everyone can be fully present with other people around them and avoid distractions like endless pop-up notifications. Make necessary adjustments and hold everyone’s end of the bargain up in lessening their use of devices, especially during a trip to fully enjoy time together.
Do activities together as a family
As everyone is disconnected virtually, the next step is to engage them in an activitythat can serve as quality family time. Initiate a discussion with each family member to suggest an activity that everyone can do together. This can include making holiday cookies, going Christmas shopping, praying together, spending one-on-one time with each child, and playing games with fun rewards and penalties. This can also be a good opportunity to pass down family traditions you grew up with and create new ones with your family.
Disconnect from work
Before going on holiday, it is important to finish work before leaving and make sure there are no unfinished tasks. This allows you to have peace of mind, rest properly, and return to work with better performance and productivity. However, some professions might be difficult to disengage from fully, even when on a holiday. In this case, try to dedicate a certain time to checking your email instead of keeping up with emails every time they arrive. It would be best if you also communicate this with people at work and your family to avoid unnecessary conflicts.
With the prevailing engagement in the virtual world for both parents and children, the family needs to intentionally put effort into balancing time spent online and the time spent to connect face-to-face. The holiday season can be the best moment to make up for lost time, have real conversations, and bring relationships closer by properly enjoying and respecting offline time together.
Before the widespread use of technology, people were actively engaged in physical activities at work. For example, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a lamplighter would need to use long poles to manually light each of the town’s lamps at night and extinguish them when morning comes. As technology developed over time, the need for this type of manual labor disappeared and more desk-based jobs appeared which introduced sedentary behaviors such as sitting for a prolonged time, and thus people started to move less. The integration of these behaviors continued to increase during the past several decades and has become a lifestyle.
Much research reported a strong association between a sedentary lifestyle and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, and cancer which are actually the leading cause of death worldwide. As one of the sedentary behaviors, prolonged sitting is also found to be a risk factor for the mortality rate attributable to these diseases as well as other diseases that have an indirect association with prolonged sitting. Despite these detrimental effects on health, a 2020 study found that people are still sitting too much, with variations in sitting time across countries, ranging up to 9.5 hours per day.
Rezende, L., et al. found that the life expectancy of an individual could be increased by up to 3 months on average by reducing sitting time. This benefit seems smaller compared to those gained by eliminating physical inactivity, obesity, and tobacco smoking. However, reducing sitting time might play an important role in promoting an active lifestyle, bridging sedentarism to higher physical activity levels.
Sit less, move more
The shift to working from home in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in working longer for many employees. According to a survey of 2,800 workers by Los Angeles-based staffing firm Robert Half, 45% of remote employees regularly worked more hours during the week than they did before and nearly 70% worked on the weekends. Feeling burdened by prolonged work, people found it difficult to allocate time for physical activity.
WHO released a physical activity guideline that delivered a salient message: “sit less and move more”. Based on this guideline, adults aged 18-64 years should accumulate at least 150-300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity such as brisk walking or biking. They could also shorten the time by half if they practice vigorous-intensity physical activity such as jogging or swimming.
While it is important to follow these guidelines to achieve health benefits, physical activity doesn’t mean constant movement. Even a little bit of effort can come with health benefits. For example, grabbing a glass of water every hour during work can break up your sitting time.
Standing as an alternative
Unlike sitting, mortality rates decline at higher levels of standing. People who stood more than 8 hours per day had a significantly lower all-cause mortality risk than people standing for only 2 hours per day or less. Therefore, the standing may be a healthier alternative to prolonged sitting time.
In terms of energy expenditure, sitting burns only 80 calories per hour while standing could burn 88 calories per hour. The difference seems to be insignificant but standing helps blood sugar levels return to normal faster after a meal compared to sitting. This process is facilitated by the contraction of certain muscles in a standing position which triggers the production of substances that help use and store fats and sugars.
People can also stand while working by using a standing desk to incorporate more movement. However, it is also important to note that standing for a long time also has its side effects such as lower back and leg pain as well as fatigue. It is recommended to not stand for more than 2 hours continuously and to shift to sitting periodically.
As prolonged sitting time is associated with higher risk mortality, moving around during work helps employees reduce the risk and live longer. People with desk-based jobs could also use standing desks as an alternative to sitting. However, it is still recommended to do regular physical activity for a healthier life.
Searching for happiness and how to live a meaningful life is a question that philosophers, theorists, and psychologists, are trying to answer for decades. One of them is Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who saw how World War II affected people’s lives. He realized that many adults around him found it hard to live contentedly after they lost their material wealth, homes, jobs, and security due to the war. This led him to begin his research on what makes a life worth living.
He found that, although money can help, it can’t make people indefinitely happy; he then tried to find the answer by researching human motivations, contentment, and fulfillment. His research arrived at the conclusion that people are at their optimal happy and productive selves when they experience a state of flow. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is when a person is so immersed in their activity that they ignore outside stimuli like time and their basic needs; the only thing that matters at the moment is what they are doing.
Though Csikszentmihalyi started his research with artists, painters, and musicians to understand their creative process and motivation to do something that will unlikely bring fame or fortune, he stated that everyone can experience the flow state. He further described that experience as the state of doing things just for the sake of doing it. People don’t need external motivation to do something; they are doing it because of the positive feeling that the activity can give.
So, how exactly does flow affect someone’s happiness? Csikszentmihalyi stated that activities that involve some play and work are the best opportunity to reach a flow state, and through that, reach happiness as well. He explains that happiness is a state of mind, one that is affected by consciousness regardless of what happens outside of themselves. One of the ways to change one’s consciousness is through getting into the flow state.
Csikszentmihalyi continued his research on finding the link between flow and happiness by doing research on teenagers. He found that teenagers with high flow spent more time doing activities like hobbies and sport. Participants of the research also reported greater success in school, social relationships, and long-term happiness. The result of the research showed that the strongest predictors of long-term happiness are as follows: one’s presence in the flow state, ability to be sociable, how active one is, and the positive feeling one has towards themselves.
Flow is something that cannot be forced or does not happen whenever one feels like it. However, some people with a high level of conscientiousness and openness to experience are more likely to experience the flow state. Here are some ways you can optimize your chance to enter the state of flow.
Minimize distractions
Flow is a state of mind with internal motivation, so it’s very important to minimize and reduce external distractions. Research has shown that to enter the flow state, it’s necessary to have an undivided focus for around 10-15 minutes and eliminate all the external distractions. So, make sure that you put away your phone or disable all your notifications as this might be one of the biggest external distractions. This also includes clearing unnecessary items from your surroundings and having a quiet environment to help you be hyper-focused and immersed in your activity.
Internal distractions can also be a hindrance. If you have too much on your mind or you are anxious about something, it will be harder for you to enter the flow state even without external distractions. To avoid this, clear your mind by writing down your thoughts and feelings every day in a journal or doing some meditation. It will help you to understand your thoughts and feel better so you can control possible internal distractions.
Have a specific goal
To reach a state of flow, you need to have a clear and specific goal on what you want to achieve. Without a goal in mind, you will most likely do things simultaneously or switch between tasks that shift your focus and get you distracted easily. This will prevent you from reaching the state of flow. Having a goal will keep your mind from wandering and minimize your internal distraction to reach the state of flow.
Though having a clear goal is one of the important aspects to reach the flow state, you also need to remember to enjoy the process and moment while doing the activity. It is important to remember that the activity you want to get into should be something that you like and enjoy doing. Being in a flow state can give you a positive experience by enjoying the present moment when you are completely immersed in your work.
Balance skills and challenges
Csikszentmihalyi explains the state of flow as the right balance between a person’s perceived skills and the challenges that they face. If a person faces a challenge that is higher than their skills, they will become anxious and stressed. If a person’s skill level is higher than the challenge, they may get bored and become distracted. A flow state can only be achieved when the challenge is enough to make you interested while providing a challenge to your current skills without being too hard.
Aside from that, Csikszentmihalyi also described the opposite of the flow state called apathy. It is a state when you do an activity that presents no challenge and requires no skills to do it like watching TV, browsing through social media, and other mindless entertainment. When someone is continuously involved in this activity, it can become harder for them to reach the flow state.
To experience flow in everyday life will not only give you positive emotions but can also be intrinsically rewarding and helpful for an individual’s journey towards self-actualization. The more you experience flow, the more you want to replicate these feelings. This can help you to not only have positive experiences through it but also make you happier.
Flow is an innately positive experience. If you are having trouble reaching the state of flow, try to minimize distractions, and have a specific goal in mind, and keep challenging yourself. Being in a state of flow will help you have a more meaningful life.
Derived from Danish culture, hygge (pronounced as hoo-gah) has become one of the many influential concepts society has today in creating spaces and building community. Looking back to its origins when Denmark and Norway were bounded as a kingdom, hygge actually comes from the Norwegian language that could be translated into “well-being”. In the early 1800s, the Danes adopted it as a concept to refer to “happiness” and it has been embodied in the heart of Danish culture ever since.
What does hygge look like in the present day? Currently, hygge is showing a strong, promising continuity in the 21st century among the Danes and has expanded its reach around the world through popular literature, such as “The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living” by Meik Wiking. There is no strict implementation as the concept itself is embedded in both tangible and intangible aspects of Danish culture.
On the tangible part, hygge is often associated with the coziness of a place. Its concept of simplicity and its nature as an appreciation for the simple joys in life has become a popular trend in interior and exterior design. It promotes a kind of aesthetic that gives spaces a rustic and homey feeling. Additionally, a 2018 research showed hygge as a principle that can be applied to build a sustainable, smart home due to its low-energy approach.
Meanwhile, the intangible value of hygge lies within social relationships. The Danes are known for their close-knitted relationships with friends and families which encourages equality and strong social circles. In this manner, hygge is not only manifested as a certain decor for social events but also as the sense of belonging resulting from being connected with loved ones.
Developing hygge through social connections
According to The World Happiness Report 2020, Nordic countries are among the happiest countries in the world, including Denmark. One of the reasons for this is their great respect for friendships and relationships with their loved ones. Specifically, the Danes tend to form small social circles with whom they bond and spend their hygge time. The significant level of social and institutional trust contributes to the increase in happiness and reduction of social inequality.
In the context of daily life, hygge is manifested through thoughtfulness in social interactions. This implies that no one competes to get into the center of attention so that everybody receives a fair chance to participate and feel welcomed. Equality and togetherness are the fundamental elements of hygge, and thus, the very heart of Danish culture.
Hygge is embedded in the way people make each other feel comfortable and relaxed. A lot of activities can be done to share the warmth of hygge with your loved ones, even as simple as hanging out after work or having a movie night on the weekend. The idea is to have quality time and make meaningful memories through small things.
Your home can be a good start to build a hygge kind of living. Someone once said that the “home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends.” Organizing your home in a way that makes others feel comfortable and welcomed is the next aspect of hygge.
Creating a hygge home
The main focus of a hygge home is how to create a hygge-like atmosphere, or a hyggelig as the Danes like to call it. Take a look around your own home and check the space and materials; can you find any sign of hygge? Below are some key aspects worth considering.
Hyggekrog
Roughly translated as a nook, hyggekrog is an important part of a Danish home. This is basically a reading spot where you can cozy up with a warm blanket, read your favorite book, or relax with a cup of warm beverage. Several seating options are available, with the simplest one being an armchair. If you want to go all-in, you can opt for a sofa bed, corner sofa, or add a nice ottoman to your armchair arrangement.
There is no fixed location to build a hyggekrog; some might have it in the living room, kitchen, or study room. It would be a plus point if the hyggekrog is placed by the window so you may get a natural ambiance to add to the coziness. You can also spruce the space up with some thick knitted blankets and cushions. Placing a big wooden bookshelf nearby would be a great idea as well to complete the hyggekrog setup.
Lighting
Lighting is another core aspect of hygge as it centers around aesthetic and sustainable values in being visually pleasing and environmentally friendly. Due to the western origin of hygge, having a fireplace is a crucial component as it not only helps set the mood but is also a necessity for people to survive the cold winter. It is also manifested through the use of natural light, candles, and low-energy electric lighting.
A fireplace might not be applicable for those living in other parts of the world that don’t have four seasons. An alternative element you can utilize is a candle which is a must-have item to create the perfect hyggelig ambiance. In Denmark, organic candles tend to be preferred over scented ones to preserve the natural simplicity of hygge, but of course, this is subject to personal preference.
Furniture and decoration
The highlight of hygge decor is the use of natural things such as items made of wood, leaves, and roots. Wooden chairs, plants by the windowsill, and an acorn wreath on the wall are just some examples of how you can make use of such rustic items. They make a perfect pair with candles or a fireplace to amplify the jolly and warm atmosphere, especially for a hyggelig evening with family and friends.
Vintage items such as ceramics are also often seen in a hygge home. Aside from their aesthetic aspects, vintage items usually hold a sentimental, nostalgic value that elicits happiness by remembering the good old times. You can reuse some old items from your childhood and breathe new life into them as decor, or find something interesting in a nearby vintage shop. On that note, be mindful of your purchase so that it will not end up as clutter.
To conclude, the concept of hygge emphasizes generating happiness through the connection between people and the environment. Appreciating the simple joys of life is the main value that inspires the way the Danes configure their surroundings. Christmas may be a perfect season to apply hygge in your home as you gather with loved ones to celebrate and have a good time. Even if you do not celebrate it, practicing hygge will bring warmth into your house during seasons of warmth and cold, sun and rain, and all year round.
