1. Foster engagement at work
Employee disengagement is a growing phenomenon. Many feel disconnected, unappreciated, or a lack of purpose at work. This results in reduced motivation, minimal investment in daily tasks, and lower productivity. There are many reasons for such disengagement: lack of recognition, lack of career development opportunities, ineffective leadership, or a misalignment between personal and corporate values.
Remote work and constant change like employee turnover are redefining professional relationships. Leaders must adopt a more motivating approach to rekindle engagement by focusing on humans and team-focused initiatives.
Currently, just 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, meaning they have great jobs in which they are developing with a rich mission and purpose. If that number were to rise to 50%, workplaces everywhere would change.
Gallup, It's the Manager
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Implement regular recognition rituals.
- Involve the whole team in defining objectives and expectations.
- Train leaders in active listening, benevolent communication, and constructive feedback.
- Give purpose by connecting daily tasks and projects to a common vision.
- Offer clear development paths.
- Regularly measure engagement amongst your teams.
Example: To make their employees feel more engaged and boost commitment, a team-motivated manager decides to entrust them with developing a new organizational method based on quarterly objectives. They also create a digital recognition board to reward team initiatives. Three months later, the exchanges have deepened, and the energy has returned.
2. Retain talents in a mobile market
52% of employees are actively seeking or watching for new job opportunities, highlighting the risk of turnover for organisations with low engagement.
Today, talents are no longer only looking for job security or a good salary. They aspire to a work environment that is aligned with their values, meaningful, and providing development opportunities. Professional mobility has now become the new norm, and companies need to stand out to attract the best resources and retain them.
This challenge is all the more strategic as the departure of key employees can result in loss of skills, organizational memory, and team cohesion.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Define personalized career paths.
- Value daily contributions through sincere recognition.
- Promote internal mobility.
- Offer training opportunities.
- Link tasks with a collective goal to give them meaning, beyond profitability.
Example: A manager notices that their young talents are considering leaving after two years with the company. They decide to work with them on customized development plans, including cross-functional projects and targeted training. They also hold quarterly reviews to highlight successes publicly. Within six months, the attrition rate has dramatically dropped.
3. Deal with labor shortage
An ageing population, changing skills requirements, and evolving career aspirations widen the gap between companies’ needs and available profiles. This shortage of skilled talents, already critical in some industries, is becoming an obstacle to performance, innovation, and growth.
For leaders, the challenge is not only to recruit differently, but also to rethink attractiveness, retention, and development of in-house skills within the organization.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Build lasting partnerships with training firms.
- Offer solid onboarding experience.
- Create a sense of belonging within teams and the company.
- Develop your employer brand.
- Promote internal mobility and mentoring.
Example: Faced with a shortage of welders, a company partners with a local professional training center and takes on interns. An internal mentoring program is launched. Several interns are then successfully hired.
4. Manage conflicts
Conflict is part of working with teams. Yet many leaders avoid or minimize conflict instead of seeing it as an opportunity for clarification, realignment, and improvement. This ultimately creates underlying tensions, damaging the atmosphere at work, and affecting team performance.
Rather than turning a blind eye, a better leader can recognize conflicts, manage them, and transform them into opportunities for relational growth. This starts with creating space for honest conversations that surface tensions early and constructively.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Create spaces for dialogue where disagreements can be expressed constructively.
- Train leaders on nonviolent communication and conflict management techniques.
- Integrate professional mediation as an accessible resource, whether internal or external.
- Clarify roles and responsibilities to avoid conflicts related to authority or territory.
- Encourage regular, respectful feedback to defuse tensions.
Example: In a factory, two supervisors regularly clash. The manager organizes mediation with a neutral third-party and redefines each employee’s responsibilities. A shared schedule is implemented to facilitate coordination. Gradually, the tension eases, and the team gains stability.
5. Promote diversity and inclusion
Promoting diversity is not just about recruiting a variety of profiles; it’s a deep commitment to recognizing and valuing what makes each person unique, beyond their origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, abilities, or culture.
We’re talking about inclusion when a person can fully be themselves at work without constantly adapting to “fit the mold.” A team where everyone feels listened to, respected, and entitled to express themselves without fear of judgment is a team that innovates, collaborates, and grows.
Leaders must embody this commitment and translate it into concrete, ongoing practices.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Train leaders and teams on unconscious bias.
- Provide safe and confidential spaces for free expression.
- Regularly measure inclusion, not just diversity.
- Diversify circles of influence and decision-making.
- Highlight the contributions of all profiles, without distinction.
Example: A recruit from a cultural minority feels isolated in their team. Alerted, the manager sets up a working group with volunteers from various backgrounds. Together, they build a cross-sponsorship program and revise the onboarding process. Three months later, cohesion has strengthened, and new employees find their place more easily.
6. Address personality and generational differences
Today's teams combine various profiles, with different backgrounds, personalities, generational expectations, or cultural references. These differences can enrich teams and organizations – provided we recognize the complexity of human interactions and know how to value them.
The leader’s challenge is to understand these differences, adapt their management style, and foster a climate where diverse strengths and perspectives complement each other.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Use tools such as DISC or MBTI to better understand the specificities of each profile.
- Adapt leadership and communication styles.
- Create reverse mentoring initiatives.
- Make teams aware of the richness of intergenerational approaches.
- Value complementarities rather than uniformity.
Example: A manager spots tensions between employees of different generations. She implements cross-mentoring in teams of two: younger employees coach older ones on digital tools, while the older ones pass on their know-how and field expertise to the younger generation. They also set meetings in various formats to meet employees’ preferences. Gradually, relations calm down and exchanges become more fluid.
7. Preserve well-being and work-life balance
20% of employees globally experience daily loneliness, which affects engagement and productivity.
Work has accelerated, demands are overflowing, and the boundaries between professional and personal life are increasingly blurred, especially with remote work. The result: chronic stress, mental fatigue, isolation, even burnout. These issues concern all organizations.
The leader's role is to spot the warning signs, promote a healthy work environment, and show by example that it is possible to perform without burning out.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Hold regular one-on-one meetings to discuss mental workload.
- Train employees on recognizing signs of ill-being (irritability, withdrawal, lateness, etc.).
- Encourage disconnection and regular breaks.
- Offer accessible mental health resources (support lines, psychologists, etc.).
- Implement a policy for flexible work schedules.
Example: Acknowledging several signs of work overload in their department, a manager temporarily cancels project deadlines, reorganizes team priorities, and offers a monthly half-day off to rest and recharge. As a result, absenteeism has dropped, and staff is more motivated.
8. Drive productivity in a remote setting
Remote and hybrid work models are now widespread. While these ways of working offer greater flexibility and well-being for many employees, they also bring significant leadership challenges, such as maintaining team cohesion, ensuring clarity of objectives, and monitoring productivity without micromanaging.
The difficulty is not so much to achieve objectives, but to consistently do so while cultivating trust and autonomy. This requires ensuring that team members understand their roles, expectations, and how their contributions align with organizational goals.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Establish regular team meetings, both face-to-face and remote.
- Choose efficient and accessible collaborative tools.
- Provide clear expectations, responsibilities, and deadlines.
- Define shared key performance indicators.
- Involve teams in planning their schedules and communication channels.
Example: A remote project manager notices that cohesion dropped in their team. They set a weekly progress review meeting including time for personal exchanges, create an informal channel for non-professional conversations, and organize a quarterly face-to-face meeting. Team productivity, collaboration, and relationships rapidly increase.
9. Manage change effectively
Organizations are constantly changing: restructuration, technological shifts, new business models... Yet many fail to manage these changes due to a lack of anticipation, communication, or appropriate support.
Great leaders are resilient to change and guide their teams through uncertainty, allaying fears, giving meaning to transformation, and implementing a culture of constant adaptation.
During transition and times of workplace upheaval, understanding expectations, feeling involved, and having clear goals can make a big difference in the quality of worker engagement and productivity.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Clearly communicate the reasons, phases, and benefits of the change.
- Identify internal ambassadors to support the transformation.
- Offer human support through coaching or exchange groups.
- Monitor buy-in using simple indicators (participation rate, qualitative feedback, etc.).
Example: During the implementation of a new digital tool, a manager involves key users in testing it from the outset. They hold weekly meetings to plan the deployment and gather feedback. This approach has reduced resistance and speeded up the adoption of the new tool.
10. Embody ethical and trustworthy leadership
Employees want to follow fair, transparent, and consistent leaders who can make decisions that are aligned with strong values. It's not just a question of competence but of embodying moral responsibility and integrity.
Ethical leadership is based on fair decision-making, exemplarity, and the ability to create an environment of trust, even in situations of uncertainty. Without trust, effective leadership simply cannot exist.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Communicate with transparency even in difficult times.
- Involve employees in making decisions.
- Implement an ethics charter reflecting company values.
- Provide training on responsible decision-making through workshops and experience sharing.
Example: Faced with tough decisions due to a budget cut, a manager openly shares the constraints with their team and organizes collaborative sessions where team members work together to find solutions. This transparency strengthens employee confidence, and ideas from the team help limit the social impact while maintaining performance.
11. Encourage innovation at all levels
Innovation doesn't just come from a dedicated department. It must be collective and ongoing.
The real challenge for leaders is to create a culture where everyone dares to suggest ideas, without fear of judgment or failure. This means accepting trial and error as a way of growing, and valuing everyone's creative contributions.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Introduce idea-submission mechanisms that are easily accessible.
- Highlight initiatives, even those that don't make the cut.
- Free up time for creative thinking.
- Implement a rapid idea selection and testing process.
Example: A manufacturing company launches an “Innovation Month” to challenge employees’ creativity. A technician's idea – adding a sensor to avoid a recurring blockage – is tested and implemented. The initiative becomes a powerful strategy to boost engagement.
12. Master new technologies
70% of employees who fear AI will replace their job are considering or actively looking for new employment, underscoring the need for reskilling initiatives.
Artificial intelligence is profoundly transforming businesses. From predictive analysis to recruitment, from conversational assistance to performance assessment, it is now being integrated into processes directly involving human relations.
Leaders must have the ability to use these technologies appropriately, without losing sight of the humans they’re leading, all while preserving ethics, transparency, and team autonomy. It's not just a matter of adopting AI, but of managing it responsibly.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Explain how AI works and what its limits are.
- Ensure transparency of decision-making criteria.
- Train leaders and teams in the ethical challenges of AI.
- Maintain human judgment in sensitive decisions.
Example: In an HR department, AI is deployed to pre-select job applications. The manager decides to involve their team in defining the criteria and creates clear guidelines on how to use it. Employees feel reassured and better empowered.
13. Balance automation and human values
Automation, robots, and new technologies also play an increasingly important role in companies. While these tools increase efficiency and reduce repetitive or tedious tasks, they also arouse fears among employees. Great leaders can reassure, explain, and support their teams, optimizing performance without sacrificing the human value of work.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Involve employees in choosing and deploying automated tools.
- Clearly explain the objectives of automation (quality, safety, time savings, etc.).
- Train workers on new tools and procedures.
- Value human input (judgment, human relations, emotional intelligence, field expertise).
Example: A supervisor organizes workshops on an automated production line to identify high value-added tasks that operators could take over. They offer training to help them improve their skills. The team feels like it is an active part of the transformation and is providing efforts to make the initiative successful.
14. Integrate sustainability into organizational practices
The ecological transition is becoming an inescapable reality. Customers and employees alike are increasingly demanding that organizations adopt more responsible practices.
Leaders must reconcile economic performance with a positive impact on the environment, without falling into greenwashing or slowing down innovation.
Solutions to leadership challenges:
- Include sustainability in the company's global strategy.
- Measure the environmental impact of projects.
- Increase employee accountability through concrete actions.
- Provide training on ecological transition.
- Promote internal success stories related to sustainability.
Example: A logistics company wants to reduce its carbon footprint. The director involves teams in choosing greener solutions. A realistic plan is created collectively, strengthening buy-in and collective pride.
Transforming leadership challenges into growth strategies
These challenges are not obstacles to be avoided; they are signs of a leadership model undergoing profound transformation. A new approach is emerging – more human, more collaborative, and more grounded in the realities of the floor.
Against this backdrop, one conviction stands out: it is high time to rethink our understanding of leadership. The goal is still managing people, but also fostering a culture of trust, creating space for open expression, sharing responsibilities, and putting meaning at the heart of every decision.
In the face of constant change and uncertainty, today’s leaders are called to build environments that are people-centered, inclusive, and resilient. To prepare for this role, leadership coaching is a powerful tool and its importance shouldn’t be overlooked. It offers leaders space for reflection, alignment, and growth, enabling them to fully embody this transformation. It supports each person on their leadership journey, helping them lead effectively and grow into their full potential.
