12 Biggest Leadership Trends for 2022 (and beyond!)

I don’t know what your calendar looks like right now, but I have a day blocked off next week for 2022 planning before taking time off for my Christmas break.

What should leaders focus on in 2022?

If you want to discover the best ideas for your organization moving forward, increase engagement of your team, decrease turnover, and discover the leadership superpower of 2022, then you’ll want to find out my predictions for how leadership is changing.

There are some significant leadership changes coming not only in 2022 but are the future of leadership as we know it.

Watch the video here (or keep reading below):

1. Experiments are here to stay.

Now I know a lot of leaders are not excited when I share that with them and I understand because there's an inherent level of failure that exists when it comes to experiments but only if we see the outcomes of experiments not going the way that we imagined as a failure. Then sure that's true. If we see it as a learning experiment then it's not true because failure can't exist within an experiment then because every experiment can lead to learning.

So here's why experiments are here to stay. As technology advancements continue to advance exponentially and globalization continues to increase we're gonna see that change, ambiguity, uncertainty, and even volatility becoming our norm and when change, especially change and ambiguity are our reality then we have to lean into experiments because challenges will arise that we actually don't have solutions for yet and so we have to discover these solutions and the only way that we can discover these solutions is through experimenting.

Simply based on the last 21 months I can guarantee you that you are gonna face challenges in 2022 and beyond that you haven't faced before and likely others haven't faced either. So can you see how it's going to be really important for leaders to embrace leaning into experiments in order to discover solutions to challenges that none of us have faced before?

2. Being an expert does not necessarily mean what it did in the past.

Here's what I mean by that. With the rate of change and all the information that becomes increasingly available to us every day it's simply impossible to know everything there is to know about a subject that's available these days. The leadership expertise moving forward is going to be much more about who you are as a leader and how you lead, not about having all the right answers about a particular field or particular subject.

3. Listening to others is a must for effective leadership.

I want you to think about listening as a leadership superpower. You might think I'm exaggerating but let me tell you something about listening. Moving forward what has long been said to be true about kids is also going to be true about adults: they do not care what you have to say and what you know until they know that you care about them, and that they are not simply a means to an end, your end. And the only way that we can genuinely care about others is to start by listening to them first.

4. Establishing trust actually needs intentionality on your part.

People used to inherently trust those in leadership positions. Moving forward your trust must be earned it will not be a given as more and more people distrust institutions as a whole more and more people distrust people in leadership positions as well. It doesn't mean that people aren't going to trust you as a leader anymore but it does mean that you have to become trustworthy in their eyes which is gonna take intentionality on your part as a leader moving forward.

#5. The people on your team, including yourself, must be treated as whole persons.

There is one thing that the great recession is teaching all of us and that is if people aren't able to show up as their whole selves they'll flat out quit. Each of us has a professional life, a personal life, a family life, a relationship life, a hobby life, a volunteer life, and everything in between. And people expect to be treated as whole persons, not as siloed parts of themselves. That doesn't mean that you have to decrease your expectations of people but it does mean that you have to create spaces and environments for people on your team to show up as them their whole selves. Gone are the days when people are going to willingly check part of themselves at the door.

To that self-care is going to become more important than ever before. As I already said, who you are as a leader is everything, and just as people on your team need to show up as their whole selves so do you. The reality is that you will never find time to take care of yourself as a leader you have to make time. And let's be honest, the demands of leadership are ever-increasing sometimes by the day. So as a leader you must make time for self-care for yourself. Your mental health, your emotional health, your spiritual health, and your physical health are vital to who you are and how you show up as a leader.

And here's what's awesome about when we make time to take care of ourselves as leaders and place an importance on our whole self and our health as leaders it has a ripple effect in our organizations and with our teams because when we model for others what it looks like to value and love and take care of ourselves, when other people see us doing that, it can become a catalyst for others doing that for themselves as well. It's a win-win.

6. Your team can tell your intentions from every interaction they have with you.

They can tell from your conversations, from your emails, from zoom calls, from messages, from text messages. So make sure that your intention is clear and get really clear: is this for me and about me or is this for them and about them or maybe a mix of the two? People know if they actually matter to you or if there's simply one more person on the team.

And if you're not sure how your communication comes across then do a four-week audit of your communications from the last four weeks with each of your team members because it might be true that you actually communicate value and worth to some team members but not others. So look back at your communication with everyone over the last four weeks and see what it says about them. Do you think it conveys that they are valuable and play a part an important part on the team or not? And if when looking back at your communication for the last four weeks with your team doesn't feel so good to you, then what better time to change it than now?

7. Collaborating with others reigns supreme.

Moving forward if you hope to discover the best ideas for your organization, to not only survive but thrive in these changing times, if you want to increase the engagement of your team member,s, and decrease turnover, then you have to lean into collaborating with others. Gone are the days of leaders sitting alone in their offices making decisions all by themselves. People genuinely want to be involved and the reality is that you will not discover the best ideas moving forward unless you collaborate.

And when I say collaboration I don't just mean with your team. I also think that the more you can collaborate with others in your community and in your neighborhood and around the world the more success your organization is going to experience moving forward. I believe that this is not just going to be true in 2022 but absolutely for the next decade moving forward. Collaboration is vital to the success of every organization, internal collaboration as well as external collaboration.

8. Risk-taking must be embraced.

This goes back to prediction number one that experiments are here to stay. The reality is that when we lean into experiments risks are an inherent part of them. Anytime we're trying something new, we cannot be sure with a hundred percent certainty that we know exactly how things are gonna turn out which means there's always an inherent amount of risk involved when we are experimenting and trying new things and facing new challenges and discovering new solutions. So leaders moving forward 2022 and beyond have to embrace risk-taking as a norm and a core value of who they are. Even if you're taking calculated risks there will always be a part of what you're doing when you're trying something new that you cannot know for certain how it's going to turn out. So embrace that risk as you move forward.

9. Trying new things is still more important than not failing.

Moving forward leaders must let go of perfection and rather embrace progress over perfection. If you like to wait to make decisions until you have every single piece of information you think you need then you're actually missing out on one of the most important factors of decision making and that's getting feedback. Yes you need the right kind of input before you can make a decision but the reality is is that you will not know if it was actually a right decision, a good decision, the best decision, or not until you get feedback from those who it impacts.

So please stop waiting for everything to be just so and perfect before moving forward and rather embrace progress over perfection and get the feedback that is really essential for actually making really good decisions as you move forward.

10. Taking responsibility when things don't go well or when mistakes are made is going to be more important than it is even now.

People have much less patience for leaders who pass the blame than ever before. As the leader, your organization's culture rises and falls with you. So if failures or mistakes happen while you are the leader you have to take responsibility for it. It comes back to you period. If you want an example of how leaders are still passing the blame to their team when it comes to failures or mistakes being made, then check out my video on Rachel Hollis's "apology" after her TikTok rant went viral and offended countless people. So my advice to you when mistakes are made or failures occur is to genuinely apologize for it, own it, take responsibility for it, learn from it, grow from it, make the necessary changes, and move forward.

11. Sharing your power is something you must tap into.

Meaning people are more aware than ever before of the value that they genuinely bring to you your organization and to your team. Meaning if they are not trusted with increasing responsibility and ownership they're gonna go somewhere else where they will be. Gone are the days where people will wait for years upon years for more responsibility. People do not want you to rush in and save the day, they want to know that you trust them so much so that even if they make a mistake they get to accept the responsibility of it learn from it and try again.

12. You need to embrace your own unique style of leadership.

Now there are leadership skills that need to be learned and I believe that everyone can learn how to be an effective leader but the reality is that each one of us is unique and so how those leadership skills are actually lived out should look different for every leader. We should not copy other people's styles of leadership. I will always be a loud leader who runs down the hallways when I'm excited and in a hurry, I will likely be the loudest person in the room with the loudest laugh as a leader but that's because that's who I am and I don't expect any other person to lead and demonstrate their leadership in that way. As leaders, we have to find our own authentic unique leadership voice and lean into our unique ways of leading. The reality is that there is no right leadership personality.

So in 2022 and beyond I really want to encourage you to learn the leadership skills that are essential for becoming an effective leader and lean into your own unique style of leadership. So those are my 12 predictions for the leadership trends of 2022 and beyond.

I'm super curious which of the 12 are you gonna implement immediately or do you disagree with some of them? Let me know in the comments below and here's to leaning into our leadership in 2022 and beyond.