"Covid-19 and the movement for racial justice have upended the normal ways of working," writes Edith Cooper in this New York Times guest essay about the changing world and the still-long road ahead to achieve gender and racial parity on boards. The writer shares a recent experience with a "60-something white man" acquaintance who, feeling anxiety about shifting paradigms, worries he won't get board appointments now, and expressed envy towards Cooper because she "must be in great demand—as a Black woman." Cooper, who serves on the boards of Amazon and PepsiCo, points out that not only is the assumption that her race and gender are her most "relevant credentials" offensive as she is a seasoned senior executive with expertise that is valuable to boards, and the implicit belief that giving women and POC board jobs somehow means "lowering the bar" is also wrong and revealing of "deep-seated biases"— the hand-wringing over white men being passed over in favor of people with marginalized identities is also not grounded in reality: "The percentage of board members in Fortune 500 companies who were women was only 26.5 percent in 2020," and "women of color made up only 5.7 percent of those boards." Now, amidst radical workplace upheaval we "have a unique change to reorient corporate America," and to "build a more equal world," but it requires challenging "the status quo," and you can explore the author's recommendations in the full post here.

Get Through the Last Few Weeks of the Year

"We’re now at the point in the calendar where end-of-year burnout takes hold," as people struggle to manage end-of-year deadlines in concert with holiday, family, and pandemic stress, which creates "a perfect, energy-draining storm," says this helpful charter piece on keeping employees engaged in the home stretch. These last few weeks of the year can be "a lot to slog through, let alone lead through," but there are "concrete strategies for leading effectively," as the new year approaches. There are many tactics you can put to work right away including the "Nobody speaks twice until everybody speaks once" rule for holding more inclusive meetings or the "If you had a magic wand . . ." open-ended question that solicits feedback about what team members would change if they could. Explore the full list of actionable tips and practices for getting through the last month of 2021 here.

**For more on this, explore our post from the archives: "A CEO Manifesto for Better Meetings."

Satya Nadella on the 2 'Megatrends' of the Future

In this interesting Harvard Business Review interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he identifies two "megatrends" shaping the future of work. One is "hybrid work" which reveals workers' desires for flexibility in "when, where, and how they work." The other is "the great reshuffle," which centers the "why" of work which has employees grappling with questions of meaning and re-thinking their careers. For leaders to be effective as these megatrends reconfigure their workplaces, they must exhibit "care," which is the "real currency" in a virtual world when people no longer have "constant human connection." The power of "care" extends to the "heart of design thinking" which is actually "empathy," a leadership competency managers need in order to understand "the unmet and unarticulated needs of people," which can in turn help them meet the "unarticulated needs of the marketplace." He sums it up this way: "The source of all innovation is the most humane quality that we all have, which is empathy." Explore all of Nadella's insights in the full interview here.

**For more on leading with empathy, explore the incremental six-step Blueprint process which includes human-centric prompts for reflection and a leadership manifesto for leading with a "people first" mindset in a rapidly changing world.

What Leadership Lessons Have You Learned?

What lessons have you learned? What takeaways really stand out? We invite you to share them with us by tweeting at @DougConant with hashtag #LeadershipThatWorks2021 (we'll retweet the most thought provoking observations).

An analysis of over 140,000 anonymous feedback messages from employees all over the globe, covered in this fascinating Officevibe post, reveals what employees really want from their managers. The top desire expressed by employees? The want for their manager to "be a part of the team." The data revealed that when leaders act "as an outsider from the team, and not a real member, it becomes a barrier to building a fully trusting and understanding relationship." While employees overwhelmingly expressed a wish that managers would be more present with them, they didn't necessarily want more "one-on-ones," so much as they hoped "for more presence from the manager in the day-to-day life of the team," and that their team leader would be "more involved in daily group conversations." And, mere presence isn't enough; when leaders do participate in team activities, they should listen, show genuine interest, and not give the impression that they're squeezing it into their agenda because they're "too busy." To understand all the ways you can more fully integrate with your team to become a member, not an "outsider," read the full post here.

Leadership Peer, Did you miss The BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit this fall?

Last month marked our ten year anniversary! In this post, we celebrated a decade of "Championing Leadership That Works" through resources, training, philanthropy, and more.

In this post from the ConantLeadership archives, ConantLeadership Founder & CEO Doug Conant gets at the "reason for the season" with ten leadership tips for making people feel valued.

In last month's newsletter: 'Tend-and-befriend,' the six 'C's of purpose, how to push back at work, and more.