The 2020s have ushered in a dramatic re-shaping of what our day-to-day professional lives look like.

Think about all the changes we’ve been through, from the explosion of remote work to the adoption of artificial intelligence tools across nearly every major industry.

Both shifts (especially AI) have introduced a host of new “hard skills” necessary to successfully lead in today’s workforce. And that goes for everyone from the mid-level managers up to the C-suite executives.

Still, many of the most foundational management skills that set strong leaders apart remain unchanged.

After all, managing people, personalities, and talent—and articulating a strong, comprehensive strategy—remains as critical to a team integrating AI as it was to a company adopting email usage in the 1990s.

Put another way: At a time when the world is changing fast, many of the core traits that make a good manager haven’t changed at all.

Here are three essential management skills that apply to any organization.

Communication 

AI and remote work have vastly transformed how companies operate on a day-to-day basis. But that’s only heightened the importance of clear, strong, human communication.

And the stakes are high.

Grammarly and Harris Poll’s 2022 State of Business Communication Report found businesses lose up to $1.2 trillion annually as a result of ineffective communication.

That includes an average of 7.47 hours lost per week, per employee (roughly 18 percent of a 40-hour workweek!)

The study also noted that nearly 3 in 4 business leaders found their team had struggled with communicating effectively over the prior year.

Sure, those communication concerns were especially prevalent earlier this decade as the coronavirus pandemic forced teams into unexpected remote working environments.

But the upheaval and shifting strategies sparked by the explosion of AI have only maintained the need for leaders to be intentional about keeping strong, clear lines of communication with their team.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re leading a group of volunteers, a small startup, or a prominent team at a major corporation: strong communication is a cornerstone of any leadership post.

Prioritization and Delegation

• Urgent and important (Do it now!)
• Not urgent, but important (Schedule it)
• Urgent, but unimportant (Delegate it)
• Neither urgent nor important (Eliminate it)

Whatever your strategy (and there are plenty to choose from), there is a lot of value in proficiency at quickly triaging these to-do list items into their rightful categories.

And that’s a crucial management skill: Knowing what needs to get done now, what can wait, and what shouldn’t be occupying your team’s time at all. We only have so many hours in a day, and our time remains one of our most precious resources.  

Effective prioritization and delegation have always been essential tactics for any manager. 

But delegation (to AI) has also become a more ubiquitous skill for any professional, considering AI tools’ ability to handle many of the tasks we might have once delayed or skipped.

Follow Through

Anyone can sit in a meeting and vocalize a goal, but it’s the follow-through that counts.

How many of us have seen a myriad of good ideas sketched out on a whiteboard, only to reconvene a few months later and see that they never came to fruition?

The gap is as common a problem as the New Year’s resolution that falls off the rails on January 20.

And it’s something organizations are taking increasingly seriously. In a 2023 survey from consulting firm Deloitte, 74 percent of companies surveyed had established dedicated “strategy” teams, often hoping to close the gap between idea and execution.

Following through isn’t just a key difference between a high-performing and low-performing team—it’s the whole ballgame.
Core Management Skills

Ultimately, though, perhaps the most critical management skill is uniquely human, which is notable (and a little ironic) at a time when machines have become such a common part of our daily reality at work.