Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Meet your new leaders: Supportive, creative, and employee-focused
COVID-19 | Agile | Leadership
November 19, 2020 – Agile leadership has become more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s likely to stay that way. Consumer and retail executives we surveyed now increasingly say they favor leaders who empower others and promote an open environment over those who practice authoritative or consultative leadership.
To read the article, see “Consumer organization and operating models: Bold moves for the next normal,” August 14, 2020.
customizer here
Visual form
Multi-category comparison chart.
Layout / body structure
The chart is a single panel that lines up leadership behaviors side by side so the reader can compare how their importance has shifted since the pandemic began. Read across the behavior list, comparing the relative height or position of each behavior against the others.
What is being compared
It compares different leadership behaviors for consumer and retail companies, including employee empowerment, comfort with ambiguity, rapid decision making, and the creation of a creative, open, and trusting environment. The chart is comparing behavior importance rather than company performance or time-series totals.
Measurement system
The measure is survey-based importance, with all behavior categories plotted on the same response scale. Category labels identify the behaviors, and the chart shows which traits rose most clearly in priority during the COVID-19 period.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The visual organizes the behaviors into a single ranked or side-by-side comparison so the most emphasized leadership traits stand out from the rest. The chart is built to show the cluster of agile behaviors together rather than isolating only one trait, which makes the overall leadership model shift visible at a glance.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart shows a move away from more traditional top-down leadership and toward agile behaviors that give employees more room, faster decisions, and a more open culture. The strongest visual emphasis sits on supportive, empowering, and creative leadership traits rather than authoritative ones.
Key standout values or extremes
The clearest extremes are the behaviors called out in the source text as rising most in importance: employee empowerment, comfort with ambiguity, rapid decision making, and a creative, open, trusting environment. This page leans more on the ordering and relative prominence of the behaviors than on one oversized numeric label.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a static chart image with no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart image is the full visual on this page.