This blog post is the fifth part of our six-part Evolving Workplace series. To hear more thought leadership, check out series episodes on the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
Last week, we looked at the five biggest challenges facing organizations in the evolving workplace over the next five years. Today, we look at skills, behaviors and mindsets individual workers will need to develop in order to be successful in the new environment.
We did it in this order purposely. If you are looking to be employed, or to develop a successful career inside organizations (as opposed to becoming an entrepreneur and doing your own thing), you need to know what employers are looking for so you can provide it.
To be blunt, the future belongs to those who can provide value to their employer and make sure the employer recognizes that value.
Develop comfort and facility with new technology, especially AI
Most technology comes at us in fits and starts. At the beginning of Covid, most people were unfamiliar with Zoom, for example. They may have used web meeting platforms but mostly as passive consumers, rather than presenters. Webcams became normalized. Collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams came into use.
Now the challenge for most people will be maximizing the power of those tools. Remember, the rule in software development is that eighty percent of people use only twenty percent of the features available with any given tool.
Most importantly, Artificial Intelligence will become ubiquitous. It’s already being built into almost every tool we use. Don’t shy away from using things like the transcription or note-taking tools in Zoom, for example. There are two important skills that will separate high-value AI users from the rest of the pack.
First, users must craft queries that get the results you need (not necessarily what you want.) More than almost any other tool, AI is designed to give you exactly what you ask for. If you ask questions that are too narrow in scope, or ask for data that meets your predetermined criteria, you may miss out on important context and answers that provide more value.
The second part of “AI-Literacy” is using the information provided but not relying on it. This is for two reasons. First, as silly as it sounds, Artificial Intelligence often hallucinates. If it doesn’t know an answer with one hundred percent certainty, some platforms will make educated guesses. This can result in factual errors or defaulting to the simplest, least creative solution.
The value humans bring to an AI-heavy workplace is to help craft the questions, but also to provide insight and innovation. Anyone can cut and paste the answer a machine produces. Can you recognize warning signs such as “most likely answers,” or solutions that don’t match your very personal experience? Valuable teammates can spot errors, rephrase the answers into something more easily communicated and understood.
Cultivate adaptability and flexibility
According to the financial times, ten percent of the jobs being filled today have titles that literally didn’t exist fifteen or twenty years ago, and those that do probably don’t bear much resemblance to the same job in the nineties. Think about the role of bank teller or administrative assistant. The job title says is the same, but the responsibility, work outputs and skills required to succeed are very different.
What this means is that being hired for a role doesn’t mean you have to (or can) stay in your lane. Not only will you need to change and be willing to stretch what it means to hold your current position, but if you have an eye to the future, it’s critical to know what new opportunities will exist in years to come.
Kevin Eikenberry’s new book, Flexible Leadership, is a great resource even if you aren’t currently holding a designated leadership position. (Yet. 😊)
Develop communication skills for the evolving workplace
What has been true forever is that those of us most likely to be considered valuable—those that regularly add value to their work—are people who can communicate most effectively. The evolving workplace requires a new mix of oral, written and listening skills.
Whether you are remote all the time, in-office, or in a hybrid environment there will be an increased need to communicate in real time, to a variety of audiences. Being as comfortable and effective in an in-person meeting as you are on a Zoom call will be essential. More of your work will be done asynchronously, so the ability to communicate in writing (without relying on AI) will matter more than ever and be prepared to write in a variety of modes. Reports are different than emails which are different than Teams or chat messages. Remember, whether you are speaking or typing, your value rests in how you interpret and communicate your thoughts and ideas.
Your ability to communicate your thoughts depends on the willingness and ability of your audience to hear you out. Listening and understanding who your audience is has never been easy (or come naturally to many people) but it will be more complicated in an increasingly dispersed workplace.
Build new relationships and (ugh) network effectively
Especially in a remote and hybrid workplace, it is easy to develop very strong relationships with your immediate teammates and colleagues. The problem is that your next position likely will come from somewhere else, inside or outside your current team and organization.
Building strong relationships is not only important to getting your work done now, but since most people hear about opportunities or are referred by someone they know, like and trust, the wider your circle of trusted colleagues, the better. This kind of relationship building and networking can be formal (LinkedIn, online groups, in-person events.) It can also mean taking advantage of being in the office to connect with more than just your immediate teammates.
If you’re going into the office a couple of days a week, are you using that time to meet people, learn what’s happening in other parts of your organization? Do you put your head down to work on tasks and avoid conversations? Be intentional about meeting others and, you know, talking.
Understand your employer and potential employers
We started this article by saying employees need to add value to the employer. But do you know what’s valuable to someone else?
Certainly, workers need to meet whatever requirements, KPIs or goals are set. That’s a standard condition of employment. In a perfect world, everyone else is doing the same thing, so simply “doing your job,” won’t make you stand out. If that’s the case, you are no more or less valuable than anyone else.
Knowing what’s important to an employer is the key to providing value. Let’s take a simple example. Many employees want to work from home at least some of the time. When they request this, the reasons are valid. Less commute time (and expense), better work/life balance, and a better attitude.
Those are great from an employee’s perspective. But does the organization really care? Sure, it’s nice if your workforce isn’t miserable. In reality, productivity, work quality and serving customers profitably are far more important.
Tie your goal of working remotely to those issues that matter to your employer, and you’ll increase your value. Can you be more productive out of the office? Will a flexible schedule allow you to be more responsive to customers in other time zones? That’s far more interesting to a prospective boss than you not having to fight traffic.
This means you’ll have to do some work. Read that company newsletter. Follow your employer and your industry on your newsfeed and alerts. Don’t just space out on all-hands meetings.
You can’t provide value if you don’t know what the other party cares about.
These five mindsets don’t come naturally to most people. It takes work and focus. If you’re looking for resources: The Long-Distance Teammate- Stay Engaged and Connected While Working Anywhere is a good place to start, even if you are in a traditional office environment.
We’ll dig more into this topic on an upcoming episode of our Evolving Workplace limited podcast series.
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