In the past couple months Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing,” which adjusts costs based on demand — much like how you’ll pay more to fly the week of Christmas — angered Blink-182 and Bruce Springsteen fans with admission prices in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. Still, for all the grumbling, many of them reached for their credit cards.

But Ticketmaster might’ve finally met its match: Swifties. Fans of Taylor Swift are so outraged over the service’s recent meltdown that it’s led to a U.S. Senate antitrust hearing … and now they’re even suing Ticketmaster’s parent company for $2,500 each. (If you multiply $2,500 by how many T-Swift fans wanted tickets, it adds up to approximately infinity.)

Bad P.R. might not matter for an arguable monopoly, but for everyone else, short-term profits won’t matter if an entire generation swears they and your company are never ever getting back together.

Myths of Leadership: How COVID-19 altered management.

Podcast: Barbara Corcoran’s personalized advice.

(Source: Shutterstock)

It’s one thing to envision a great idea for a business, but managing a team is an entirely different skill. Some entrepreneurs can do both effectively. However, a solid idea will rarely flourish without solid leadership, especially as a company grows.

So, what makes a good leader? An entire industry of motivational speakers is dedicated to answering this question, but the answers are vastly different in a post-COVID world. We reached out to Myths of Leadership author Jo Owen, one of the U.K.’s foremost management experts and a former partner at Accenture, to explain this evolution.

10%

People who make natural leaders

[Source: Gallup]

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 new second edition, Owens 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: 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. … Which means — horror of horrors — they have to trust their team to do the right thing when they’re not being watched…

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.

b.: There are certain kinds of software that employers can download onto employees’ computers that 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 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 …

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

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. … 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 … You will be learning the rules of survival and success without even realizing it.

Myths of Leadership is available now.

• Going for a run: “Even at my ancient age, I still go for a run. There was thunder, lightning and rain at five o’clock this morning, and I still went for a run… It just clears the head.”
• No news: “What you don’t do is interesting. I do not listen to the news or watch TV because it fills your mind with all this garbage that you just get frustrated and angry about. … In the morning, you want to be clear, focused — not distracted — and optimistic.”

Wouldn’t it be great if you could sit down with a business tycoon who’s grown her company from the ground up — and accrued hundreds of millions of dollars — to talk about your business problems?

That’s the idea behind Business Unusual With Barbara Corcoran, a fun and surprisingly no-frills podcast in which entrepreneurs call Barbara Corcoran, the real estate mogul from ABC’s Shark Tank. Corcoran picks her favorite questions and invites that person onto the show for a one-on-one discussion that gets into the thick of their business. 

The podcast also showcases famous authors, investors, business owners, and other guest speakers to share their success stories and hard-learned lessons that got them where they are. If you’re looking for a refreshingly conversational podcast with real people (and their real businesses), Business Unusual With Barbara Corcoran will not disappoint.

(Source: Twitter)

“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 … It’s very hard to replicate this virtually, but it’s not impossible.”

— Jo Owens

Written by Antonio Ferme and Ali Saleh.