Naumche Ivanovski on LinkedIn and Twitter .

Let’s face it, we’re in a new world. Pandemic will not only change our current reality, but will definitely bring us to new era of leadership expectations in future.

And this applies to all types of leaders regardless in which industry they are engaged or whether they are entrepreneurs or corporate leaders.

While, there are a lot of immediate takeaways we can learn from the ongoing crises (remote work, cost optimization) we would like to focus our attention to the specific skillset leaders should possess so that they and their Organizations survive and thrive in future:

• Humility

Challenges of today are global, therefore the solutions must be global as well. In such connected world, leaders need to practice empathy and compassion in dealing with every day challenges while maintaining the high professional environment through extreme truthfulness and transparency. Yes, is sounds contradictory at first glance to connect all of the above, and I’ll try to explain it.

Through empathy and compassion leaders connect with their employees on a deepest human level creating psychologically safe environment.

Having created the right connection, and this takes huge conscious and deliberate effort from the leaders, then it’s about creating the right relations within the Organization where leaders again take the lead.

Through extreme truthful and transparent approach within the Organization, where employees are encouraged to participate open minded, free from fear and bias as a result of compassionate approach from leaders, anything is achievable.

Right culture is created where norms of open discussion, willingness to hear, understand, accept, challenge or thoughtfully disagree with other person position become new “normal”. In such environment, there is a default believe that best ideas, not ideas of highest ranked individuals, win.

Embracing humility in leadership is the path forward.

• Agility

Agile transformation is defined as “ability to move and think quickly and easily”. There is great tendency within Organizations that longer periods of positive or even neutral status quo periods create extended feelings of contentment. While, there is absolutely nothing wrong in feeling content and celebrating the small wins in the process, there can be a tendency of turning the contentment into complacency (feeling of contentment even when there are no real reasons for it).

Future leaders, more than even, need to master the skill of creating flexible environment where there is no place of adversity towards change and create Company culture deeply embedded with the idea that change is the only constant.

• Persistence

It’s easy to give up, especially, when things get hard and messy and there is zero certainty what tomorrow brings us.

As there are a lot of techniques backed up with solid psychological researches on how to practice persistence, from leaders stand point, I’ll focus on pain navigation. As per the quote from Ray Dalio in his book Principles “pain + reflection = progress”, one of the basic skills needed for the leaders to stay persistent and successfully navigate through tough periods is creating the right perspective of the ongoing challenges. What this crises teaches us? What can we learn out of it? What new patterns of behavior, new skills we need in order to thrive in the new reality? What next is there to happen? What can we do to be better prepared for it? All these thinking patterns are redirecting leaders focus from unhealthy self-centered pain reactions such as quitting, overthinking, emotional reasoning and so on and instead focus the energy towards reflection that will ultimately lead to progress and persistence.

• Learning

Famous Harry Truman quote “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers” cannot be more true and applicable nowadays. Although, every new crises has its own specifics based on existing reality, history is full with repeating patterns that can offer greater perspective on things when learned.

Learning and reflecting on the historical patterns of economic downfalls and pick periods as well as current developments and future trends, enables leaders to feel ahead of time, while mindfully being present into current reality.

• Perspective

Feeling overwhelmed as a result of big crisis as current one is the default limbic system reaction for all human beings and leaders are not immune of it. Understanding this and avoiding emotional reaction is the first thing that leaders should practice and master over time.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Viktor Frankl.

Having said that, and in the light of current and forthcoming challenges that will have the tendency to become more and more complex, leaders are obliged to actively work on their stress resilience. They need to serve as “this, too, shall pass” missioners in their Organizations.

Although this can sound easy, in turbulent period as current one, maintaining the calm state of mind and pass it to others, while being true to one self and others is not easy task at all.

Creating right perspective requires great self-discipline and persistence in the lifetime learning process of each individual with leadership tendencies and it’s completely worth investing in it.