The future of work: 6 ways to demonstrate people-centred leadership

In our series of blogs about Talogy’s international research study on leadership, we’ve explored a range of important topics:

• 6 ways leaders need to address changing employee expectations
• Lessons learned from the pandemic (part 1) – leadership strengths
• Lessons learned from the pandemic (part 2) – leadership development areas
• Five toxic leadership behaviors which harm the employee experience
• Top leadership challenges for the next five years

These research findings provide insights into how expectations of leaders have shifted because of the pandemic, the impact of toxic leadership behaviours on the employee experience, and key challenges that leaders are likely to face in the coming years. To wrap up this series, we’ll explore what effective leadership needs to look like in the future based on these evolving demands and expectations.

People-centred leadership in practice

Overall, the results across the various research themes in our study emphasise the need for leaders to adopt a more people-centred approach moving forward. At the same time of course, leaders must balance this with the necessity of delivering organisational results and, where required, driving business transformation. However, a key insight from our research was that employees and leaders reported it is largely the same leadership behaviours that drive achieving results as well as creating a positive employee experience. Our research highlighted six key behaviours that leaders need to focus on to provide more people-centred leadership. These six behaviours each directly meet a core need employees have at work, which were described in our previous blog about changing employee expectations of leaders .

1. Inspiring, motivating, and engaging people
2. Empowering people to deliver
3. Fostering collaboration, trust, and respect
4. Demonstrating authentic leadership characteristics
5. Coaching and developing people
6. Showing empathy and compassion

Setting leaders up for success in the future

Based on our research, these six attributes lie at the heart of effective leadership, according to both employees and leaders themselves. Each of the six attributes supports a core need which employees have in their work: to have purpose and meaning, autonomy, connectedness, trust, opportunity to develop, and genuine concern for their well-being. For many leaders, this will require them to reflect, adjust, and evolve their approach to be successful in the future. Leaders who can demonstrate them consistently will be well set to provide a more people-centred leadership approach moving forward. In turn, this will enable leaders to navigate the key challenges they are likely to face in the future and achieve sustainable success both for their organisation and their employees. To read our full research report about ‘Leading in the Future World of Work,’ download a copy here .