Humanizing Leadership: A 2021 Perspective

After what seemed like 10 never-ending months of lockdown and travel restrictions that severely impacted our way of life and paralyzed the international education industry, 2021 has felt much less like a year of transition and much more like a year of redefinition. A year that has slowly chipped away at the 9-to-5 work culture we had grown accustomed to and instead altered traditional standards of workplace etiquette, reporting structures, metrics of success, and ultimately leadership into more realistic and often more equitable and inclusive definitions.

Like many others, I spent the first few weeks of 2021 virtually onboarding into a new role, on a new program, at a new organization (in my case, the International Research and Exchanges Board [IREX]). My colleagues—whom I have still yet to meet in person—were not at all concerned with the fit of my shirt or the precision of my shave, but rather with my ability to acknowledge that they also were much too preoccupied with other aspects of life to be concerned with these pre-COVID-19 expectations.

The mere acts of showing up, focusing on a task, and contributing to said task were deemed honest successes for all involved. The shift to virtual work, which undoubtedly presented a new range of challenges, also brought us back in touch with humanizing leadership. 

Humanizing Leadership

The next couple of months at IREX consisted of virtual networking and icebreaker activities, where I continued to meet colleagues across various practices. I quickly discovered which coworkers had children or