Management isn’t what it used to be, even just a decade or two ago. With the widespread adoption of hybrid and remote work, new business strategies, and technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), corporate culture has evolved, and the manager’s role has had to evolve with it.
Today’s manager must be able to combine people skills, digital fluency, and strategic thinking, not just supervise tactical projects. In a market where competition for top talent can be fierce, those pursuing management roles must position themselves as future-forward leaders with the hard and soft skills to help their prospective leaders and direct reports succeed.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through some of the skills every modern manager needs to master for success in 2026.
1. Emotional Intelligence & People-Centric Leadership
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, and to quickly process and empathize with the needs and emotions of others. This includes having high self- and social awareness, knowing how to build relationships across departments, effectively managing stress and conflict, and communicating effectively.
With many teams operating in remote or hybrid environments, managers often don’t have the luxury of being in the same room, or even the same part of the country, as their direct reports. Although you might be on regular video calls together, this physical distance can make it more difficult for managers to observe team dynamics, as well as for employees to feel confident bringing up conflicts or concerns when they occur. When they have high levels of emotional intelligence, managers can better support their teams across a variety of challenges, professional development opportunities, and big wins.
Rapid change has become a hallmark of modern corporate culture. It can often be challenging for both new and established employees to adjust to disruptions such as company-wide strategic pivots or internal staffing changes. Managers who can master EQ in leadership can provide more psychological safety to their team in these situations, helping employees to take more creative risks, ask better questions, and pursue innovation without fear of failure.
Here are some ways managers can develop a higher EQ, and why it matters for their team:
- Active Listening: Listening without judgment or distractions while engaging thoughtfully with what others are saying in meetings is an essential step towards building trusting workplace relationships. This can help improve cross-departmental communication, leading to better work that is delivered faster and with less client feedback.
- Feedback Loops: This continuous process helps managers understand where their direct reports need support, while allowing employees a chance to feel heard, be recognized for big wins, and celebrate their accomplishments.
- Self-Reflection: Understanding your own triggers, how they impact your behavior, and how to manage the emotions that come with them is an essential skill for managers to support their employees, as well as their own well-being.
2. Communication & Influence
Effective team communication is about more than just talking. When you have great communication skills, you should also be able to align your team on strategic and tactical goals, be adaptable across multiple channels, and be an engaged listener to leadership and coworkers.
Virtual meetings are a modern marvel, allowing top talent from around the globe to collaborate almost instantly. However, meeting via a conferencing platform can make it challenging to replicate the conversational flow of being in the same room, and you’ll need to develop specific strategies to communicate effectively before, during, and after virtual meetings. This might look like:
- Creating Strong Agendas: Well-organized agendas can help prepare attendees by providing project context, key milestones, and action items. This helps keep your meeting on track, allowing everyone attending to be able to ask questions or address any concerns within the allotted time.
- Establishing Use Guidelines: You might use multiple communication platforms throughout your workday, and it’s important to establish guidelines for when to send a message via chat or email, and when it’s more appropriate to discuss over a live video call. This can help prevent important communications from getting lost in the shuffle because employees aren’t aligned.
- Thorough Follow-Ups: Send clear, actionable follow-ups after meetings that summarize key discussions and outline next steps for each participant. This helps attendees stay aligned and gives teammates who were out of office or newly onboarding a clear understanding of important project decisions and context they may have missed.
Managers rarely work in a vacuum. They need to collaborate closely with partners across teams to keep projects moving forward. For example, when work touches Marketing, Sales, and Procurement, clear communication and coordination help prevent delays and keep everyone aligned on deliverables.
Improving communication skills takes practice, but it’s one of the most valuable skills you can develop to support your team, especially if you’re making influential leadership decisions. Think about how you can simplify messages to be more efficient without sacrificing details, and ask for feedback from people in your organization whose managerial communication skills you admire. You might also consider scheduling a role-play communication exercise with these stakeholders. That way, you can refine your skills in a more comfortable setting without feeling like you’re always learning in front of clients or executives.
3. Strategic Thinking & Decision-Making
Managers are responsible for a wide range of decisions. While they may still offer tactical support to their direct reports, modern managers are increasingly expected to look beyond day-to-day tasks and focus on shaping a clear strategic direction for their team.
This shift is even more pronounced with the rise of artificial intelligence. As AI takes over many operational tasks, managers will have more time (and need) to dedicate themselves to thinking strategically about future outcomes. This could include helping employees gain visibility on executive initiatives, supporting their team’s professional goals, and aligning with leadership on their department’s productivity and key performance indicators (KPIs).
When making a plan for how to improve strategic thinking and decision-making skills, managers can look to a few different approaches:
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Seek out colleagues from other departments for input that can give you a holistic view of the broader organization’s goals and strategy. This additional context can help you make more informed decisions for your team.
- Scenario Planning: Consider different outcomes for projects and initiatives, planning for both the best and worst case scenarios. This can help you avoid being blindsided by unexpected pivots and lower your stress if changes happen.
- Data-Informed Decision Making: Data like KPIs, customer analytics, and employee utilization can help you get a quantitative look at a team’s performance. However, you’ll also need to consider qualitative factors like the company culture, project pain points, and individual employee needs to get a deeper understanding of the “why” behind the data to make decisions that consider the whole picture, not just hard numbers.
Being a future-forward thinker is a major part of modern leadership strategy, and it’s a skill that is extremely valuable for advancing in your career, no matter the industry. Enrolling in certificate or degree programs like our Master of Strategic Communications (MASC) combines real-world practice with academic insight to help you become a thoughtful leader of your team.
4. Data Literacy & Digital Fluency
Understanding and using data to make informed decisions is a crucial skill for modern managers to learn. Digital fluency is a necessity for successful leadership, especially in a workforce that is embracing hybrid work and AI-enabled workflows.
In a hybrid work environment, asynchronous collaboration is a natural part of a team’s workflow. Different employees might be tackling parts of the same project at various stages or leaning into flexible schedules that can make live calls difficult to schedule. Working asynchronously provides employees with space to dive deeper and produce more creative work, but it requires managers to develop a strong understanding of digital tools to keep everyone on track.
From chatbots that all employees might use daily, like ChatGPT or Claude, to more in-depth projects involving programming or software engineering, AI-enabled workflows are changing the way nearly every industry approaches its work. Managers will need a deep understanding of these capabilities to ensure their teams operate as efficiently as possible while also meeting company standards for AI adoption.
Building data skills as a manager can sound intimidating, but like any other new skill, there are many different ways to incrementally increase your knowledge. Taking short courses through reputable providers can help you learn about the broader systems of data literacy and AI on a more flexible schedule. You might also schedule a brief meeting with an analytics expert at your company to walk you through the specific dashboards that are most relevant to your team and how to interpret them.
5. Adaptability, Resilience & Change Management
The work world changes fast. AI innovations, AI agents, and large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, are rapidly altering how employees and leaders at all levels approach day-to-day and future-focused work. Adaptability is key for modern managers to successfully navigate the workforce, both in terms of their professional relationships and personal stress management.
Modern managers, and their teams, should embrace an “always learning” mindset, especially when it comes to technological experimentation and workforce expectations. Instituting regular, constructive feedback loops can reinforce this by helping everyone feel comfortable addressing big wins and areas for improvement. Conducting small, intentional experiments with new technology can help managers adapt to innovation without becoming overwhelmed, enabling them to confidently support their direct reports as they do the same.
Change management skills will be crucial for helping managers guide their teams with fewer disruptions through the leadership transitions, policy changes, or procedure adoptions that might come their way. By acting with resilience leadership in mind, managers can remain calm while maintaining a clear vision. This not only provides stability for their team but also helps them prioritize their own mental and emotional well-being.
6. Coaching, Mentoring & Talent Development
In the past, management styles were often focused on task supervision and provided a strict hierarchy between managers and employees. Today, managers are taking a developmental approach to enable team members to grow as people and professionals, not just output machines.
Managers are now more like coaches, helping their teams become autonomous leaders. When employees feel like their development is being prioritized, it helps them feel more engaged in their work and encourages retention because an investment is being made in their future. Managers also benefit from this autonomy. When their teams can operate without constant oversight, managers have more time to devote to the long-term strategic thinking necessary to move their department forward.
Regular one-on-ones can give managers more opportunities to develop strong relationships with each employee and understand their pain points and goals. This closer look into each individual’s professional needs can help managers curate development plans and delegate work with growth in mind.
7. Inclusive & Ethical Leadership
Inclusivity and ethics are central to modern leadership. Today’s managers lead increasingly diverse teams, making bias awareness and inclusive practices essential to creating a workplace where people feel respected and supported.
Strong Inclusive leadership skills help build environments where every team member feels welcome, heard, and able to do their best work. Actively seeking diverse perspectives, listening with intent, and making decisions grounded in integrity all contribute to a culture of trust.
Transparent decision-making can also give employees a greater sense of security, especially during times of change or repositioning. When employees can trust that management will be transparent, even when the outcome isn’t ideal, it gives them confidence in both themselves and the organization.
How to Prioritize & Develop These Skills
So, how should new managers prioritize developing these skills while also keeping up with their current workloads? Self-auditing by choosing 1-2 skills to focus on each quarter, and focusing on a micro-learning approach, can create a sustainable path to leadership development with a lower likelihood of burnout.
In the same way managers coach their teams, they can benefit from seeking out mentorship from leaders to strengthen their own management approach. These mentors can give managers unbiased advice on their current strengths and weaknesses in each category, helping them determine which skills to prioritize. Once they have a clear path for how to start developing as leaders, managers can begin integrating their learnings into their day-to-day work.
Summary
In the past, managers often relied on a more directive leadership style and focused closely on overseeing daily tasks. Today, many managers take a more empathetic approach, prioritizing growth and development. To succeed in today’s corporate world, managers need to be strategic thinkers who can lead diverse, autonomous teams. Emotional intelligence, strong communication skills, data literacy, adaptability, focused mentorship, and a mindset of inclusive leadership aren’t nice-to-haves anymore — they’re non-negotiables for being viewed as top talent in today’s competitive marketplace.
If you’re ready to hone your skills and become a more capable leader, check out our Bachelor of Arts in Management program.
Frequently Asked Questions
Emotional intelligence, communication, strategic thinking, data literacy, adaptability, coaching, and inclusive leadership.
No one is born a leader. While some personality traits help, research shows management skills can be developed via targeted practice, feedback, and learning.
Skill development is ongoing; prioritising one or two skills per quarter and practising them daily yields measurable improvement.
Managers need digital fluency to use analytics, remote collaboration tools, and AI-enabled workflows, and to lead teams through digital change.
You can develop management skills in the following ways: leveraging micro-learning (online courses, certifications), real-world practice (coaching team members, leading projects), and tying learning directly to your current role for relevance.
