Myths of Leadership Author Jo Owen: How COVID Shifted Management (Full Q&A)

When author Jo Owen published the first edition of Myths of Leadership: Dispel the Misconceptions and Become an Inspirational Leader in 2017 — before COVID and the mainstreaming of virtual work — the business world looked very different. In the second edition, Owen highlights how the pandemic massively accelerated a revolution in leadership.

b.: What did you find yourself adding to the book? Did you go back and say, “Oh, I thought this five years ago, but I don’t believe it holds true today”?

Owen: Well, there’s obviously quite a bit of misses, like [saying] the office is where work happens. And it’s like, “Well, yes and no, and it actually doesn’t have to.” We’ve discovered that we can deconstruct the office, so that’s a good miss.

The really interesting thing about the pandemic everyone’s talking about is … well, what’s going to happen to city centers? And what’s going to happen to the delis and the sandwich things in the city center? And will there be unused offices? That sort of all interesting stuff.

But … you can hear the big “but” coming … from my point of view, the really interesting thing is what isn’t being talked about: The pandemic is massively accelerating a revolution in leadership. We have made several discoveries about leadership as a result of the pandemic.

One, we’ve discovered that the office is a paradise for control freak managers, because they can just walk across the office floor and help at will. They can’t do that when they’re remote. They can’t walk across the floor, and they have to make this conscious effort to call someone and have a reason for calling.

So in practice, they can’t do that the whole time, which means — horror of horrors — they have to trust their team to do the right thing when they’re not being watched. So right there you’ve got a big revolution about command and control, which was under siege before the pandemic [but is] now really crumbling down.

So it’s not that the pandemic created the revolution; it’s simply accelerated a revolution which was already there.

The second thing we’ve discovered is that the office was very forgiving of mediocre management. So if you [as a manager] made a mistake in the office, you knew about it very quickly. You see it, you hear it, and you can deal with it in real time. … You can’t do that when you only speak to your team once a day. If you misspeak in that daily call, then your team members have a whole day to ruminate over what you have said or not said. Inevitably, they do not presume the best — they presume the worst and they start catastrophizing. Suddenly out of this thing that you’ve slightly misspoken, you’ve got a bit of a nightmare on your hands.

There are two major differences here. One is that the skills bar has risen dramatically. You have to be far more purposeful and deliberate in everything you do as a leader or manager when you’re managing remotely. You can’t do ad hoc. So that’s the first difference.

The second difference is that you now have to learn a new set of skills: out goes command and control, in comes trust, influence, and persuasion. Out goes the 20th century skills, in comes the 21st century skills. You put those two together, and what that says is that the move to hybrid work is not just a change for good; it is a change for better because only the best managers will rise to the challenge — and the weaker ones are going to go to the wall.

Unfortunately, they will take down a lot of people with them in the process. This is going to be a bit of a fork in the road for leadership and management. So I actually find this to be a really exciting change.

b.: There are certain kinds of software that employers can download onto employees’ computers that can track their activity. Do you think that’s a good move for leadership?

Owen: No! It’s a nightmare on steroids! Look, this is the revenge of the 20th century traditional command and control manager who cannot let go and does not trust their team. And if you want to really demotivate your team … “How do I most demotivate my team? I know, I will show them that I do not trust them one little bit and that I am going to monitor every keystroke and I’m going to have the camera on every moment of the day and I’m going to be on top of them all the time and that’s how I’m gonna show I don’t trust them.”

And then they’re really surprised that the team isn’t performing. It’s like, “Hello! We’re in a new world.” Learn trust now. Trust is really hard in a remote world …

I can tell lots of stories about how even some of the most high-tech firms — that thought they could do everything remotely — were gobsmacked by the effect of when their team actually got together, often accidentally, and suddenly they’d find the trust, communication, motivation and productivity all goes through the roof. Trust is something you normally build in person, through shared experiences.

That has led to two classes of employees — aristocracy and proletariat — in the COVID world. The aristocracy are those staff who’ve been around the organization for quite a long time. They know how it works perfectly. They’ve got those networks of trust and influence already established. So they can hop on a call and they know exactly what to say. Those aristocrats are often the people who have the longest commute to the nicest houses, and they’ve got a nice place to work at home.

Now let’s talk about the COVID proletariat. These are the people that are suffering. They might be sharing a flat with people they probably don’t really like. They have to work from the end of the bed. It’s a nightmare. And because they’re new to the world of work and new to the firm, they don’t have those networks of trust and influence. They don’t know how to build them. They don’t know the culture. They don’t get it.

If you look at the stats, [aristocrats] are the people that are most desperate to get back into the office. Meanwhile, the proletariats are saying that they are very happy working from home. So you can now decide: are you an aristocrat or are you a proletariat?

The catch is that actually the proletariat wants the aristocrats to be in the office because they’re the people that they can learn from and receive mentoring from. So there are things you can do to help accelerate trust remotely. For instance, you can curate your background. Have stuff in your background, which discloses something about yourself personally. And then when you get chatting at the start, that’s a chance to start a conversation.

As you begin to disclose a little bit about each other, suddenly you’re beginning to build those bonds of trust, but that’s a very different way of building trust from being in the office. And again, you have to be quite purposeful and deliberate about it.

b.: Have you found that those working [completely] virtually find it more difficult to become invested in their job, as compared to in-office workers?

Owen: As you know, there are organizations that are fully remote. They tend to be the “it” ones. If your firm goes 100% remote, then actually everything is geared up to help the individuals survive 100% remotely and everyone is in the same situation. You have a level playing field.

That’s really important because the dangerous part of hybrid work is that you don’t have a level playing field. This actually has big implications for the gender gap and gender equality. This is not black and white, but the blokes are going back [to the office] somewhat more than the women.

What happens is that when you’re in the office, you’re in the information flow, you’re in the gossip flow. Before there’s a formal announcement, you know what the Death Star projects are coming down the line and you know how to avoid them. You know where the really juicy projects are emerging and you can make yourself useful for the people running it.

It’s marginal gains, but over time, the people who are in the information flow are going to be the ones that get the best opportunities. They’re also the ones that can actually spin their story best about what they’re doing and how they’re doing.

The people who are out of the office will have that story spun off, and it’s never going to be such a positive story. So over time, the people who are in the office more will do better than those who are out. And if the blokes are in more, over five or 10 years time, you’re suddenly going to find that those people are getting promoted first. You’ve now tilted the playing field in favor of men. It’s not black and white, but it’s just that there is definitely going to be a tilt.

b.: Is there a reason that the men are going in more than the women? Is it because [women] are taking care of their children?

Owen: Yes. Guess who gets the caring responsibilities? And sexism starts at home. So 100% remote works and 100% in-the-office works. When it comes to hybrid work, you have to be slightly cute and sensitive. If you allow a completely democratic freefall, there are going to be unintended consequences.

Often the most productive bit of a meeting is not the meeting. It’s what happens immediately before and immediately after in the corridor between meetings. That’s when you buttonhole someone and say, “Hey, could you just help me on that? What’s going on about this?” And they say, “Oh, have you heard about this great opportunity?”

It’s that informal interaction that is often the most important. In Japan, you never use a meeting to make a decision. All the meeting does is, it confirms the agreements that have been reached in private. The best influences are the people who line up all those agreements in private, so that by the time you get a meeting, everyone knows what the decision is. It’s very hard to replicate this virtually, but it’s not impossible.

b.: Especially if you were hired before the company went remote or hybrid.

Owen: Exactly. If you already know everyone, then you can just hop on Zoom for five minutes and say, “Have you heard about this? What do you think? Oh, blimey, what are we gonna do about it? Let’s talk to so-and-so. I will fix it.” And that’s all done.

But if you haven’t formed those bonds of trust, it’s really hard to do that. Because you don’t know who you should talk to and you don’t really know what the dangerous discussion is. You might be thinking you’re having a safe discussion here, but you discover you’ve been shooting yourself in the foot without realizing it.

b.: So what would you say to younger people as they’re looking to enter the corporate world in a hybrid space?

Owen: Head into the office. That’s it. Now, there is work that you may well want to do, which is really high concentration work that you can do from home. You just need to really focus on getting that work done. If that’s the work you’re having to do — IT, coding, research, writing a report, or other classic examples — fine. But if it’s not that sort of work that you’re having to do, just get into the office.

Stuff will happen. You’ll end up talking to people, all the serendipity and spontaneous discussions will happen. You’ll be able to observe what other people do. You’ll see people mucking up and you’ll go, “Oh, that’s interesting. I won’t make that mistake again.” You’ll see someone do something really cute and smiley and you think, “I’ll try that again myself.”

You will be learning the rules of survival and success without even realizing it. And you’re not going to be able to do any of that when you’re at home. So that’s the slightly old-fashioned advice, but if you’re new to the firm, it’s really important.

b.: Even in that scenario where you have [remote] work, [many] people need to go out to a coffee shop, or the library, or the office to get that work done in the first place.

Owen: Oh, absolutely. I suppose what hybrid work does is, it liberates people to think about where they are most productive. If you’re most productive in a coffee shop, that’s okay. That’s fine. If you’re most productive at a desk in the firm, that’s fine. If, for some bizarre reason, you’re most productive tapping at the end of your bed … fine.

You’re now liberated to have choices, which is good. But just be aware of those choices — and don’t just default into them. Be conscious about those trade-offs. The office is great for creativity, collaboration, networking, trust, building, influencing, all that sort of stuff. A lot of people do not find it so great for the really intense concentration work, although some people do.

b.: What would you say are three things that you do in the morning that help set you up for a successful day?

Owen: One, I go for a run. … Even at my ancient age, I still go for a run. There was thunder, lightning, and rain at 5 o’clock this morning and I still went for a run. It’s great. Love it. It just clears the head.

The second thing is something I don’t do … What you don’t do is interesting. I do not listen to the news or watch TV or anything like that, because it just fills your mind with all this garbage that you just get frustrated and angry about, and you can’t do anything about it.

In the morning, you want to be clear, focused — not distracted — and optimistic. I mean, who has ever listened to the news and come out feeling more optimistic and happy?

Myths of Leadership is available for pre-order now.