Upcoming Presentation: Collaborative Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Embrace Collaborative Leadership to Retain Talent)

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By Archana Shetty, PMP
Founder and CEO, WELEAD

Won’t you agree that the pandemic has exposed some of the weakest links in organizations?

Over the past year and a half, the pandemic has caused many people to rethink their priorities. Workers are making decisions to leave based on how their employers treated them. For many others, it’s the stress of increasing workload and burnout. Research from Qualtrics shows that stress and burnout are the main reasons people are thinking of leaving their jobs in the coming months and year — a time economists are calling “The Great Resignation.”

At the same time, customers are demanding more. They want better, faster products and services.

This poses an interesting challenge for leaders. On the one hand, rapidly adapting or pivoting to the changing needs of the customers is essential, and on the other hand keeping employees motivated during uncertain times is crucial. One of the leaders described this as a “tug of war” and another manager said he was sandwiched between different stakeholders who seemed to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. As a result, they felt anxious, lonely and unsupported. 

So how do you juggle multiple demands while maintaining your own sanity?

To be able to succeed and thrive in this new, ever-changing world, you need news tools and new skills. You cannot rely on the same systems and methods that got you here. You need to reimagine your ways of working, reskill your people, and redesign your work environment to facilitate the next level of collaboration and achieve your larger goal. I call this collaborative leadership.

Equipping leaders to adapt to uncertainty, helping teams to not only bounce back but grow from setbacks, and creating a workplace where teams can collaborate and thrive is becoming increasingly important and urgent. 

Most companies I have spoken with are saying that they are promoting well-being and a collaborative culture, but the reality is that very few of those actually have concrete strategies for how they're going to get there. Conducting a yoga session or offering a gym membership to your stressed out employee does not address the root cause. I also see leaders offering additional vacation time, or a week off to give employees a break. These are all helpful measures, but they’re usually not enough to turn things around on a long-term basis. 

The good news is that well-being and collaboration can be cultivated at workplaces if leaders get intentional about making the required changes in themselves, in their teams and in the culture. Here I would like to echo the words of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, “I believe that a strong culture is critical to companies that hope to scale. But truly strong company cultures emerge only when every employee feels they personally own the culture.” (Hoffman, Masters of Scale Podcast, 2020)
I believe we can improve well-being and create a collaborative culture by optimizing both human and machine intelligence so we can achieve both efficient and effective outcomes together and make a lasting impact in our world.

If you’re interested in exploring the concepts behind collaborative leadership in greater detail, join me in Session 418: Collaborative Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence on 7 October at 1:30 a.m. EDT US/Eastern at the PMI Virtual Experience Series 2021.