With the many changes that have occurred in our workplaces during the last three years, business leaders (managers, trainers, business owners) face an interesting challenge—how to guide effectively the efforts of our most valuable resource, the human beings who do the actual work. As their lives have changed—from confidence and assurance of bright, vibrant futures to multiple uncertainties about jobs, investments, and personal/national security—their workplace behavior also changes. Whether that change is positive for them and for their employers depends, in part, on the environment that management and ownership cultivate in this changed work world.

Business leaders may choose to respond to the current situation with a focus on “returning” to normal, concentrating employee efforts on the work-at-hand. In so doing, business leaders will stabilize their workplaces, and provide some calm to anxious employees. Yet, that effort will likely not meet the longer term needs of people who have been traumatized by the significant losses of recent time—money, jobs, security, safety, sense of well-being.

Responsible and principled business leaders will look further. They will challenge themselves beyond the immediate need and consider what kind of future they would like to create. In drawing insights from psychology and systems theory, such leaders can broaden their perspective beyond today’s business concerns, learn how people respond to change, and cultivate possibilities for both more effective workplaces and business relationships. These more visionary individuals will become part of a movement to incorporate the best of business processes into a new, more effective business model—a more sophisticated and capable work environment that we could call, the New Normal.

An article exploring this topic at some length is available for use as a discussion tool among business leaders who believe that work is/can be more than a just a job. Read and download the article from www.spiritedwork.info.