"I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back there”, he cried on the first day of school.

"But you have to,” she insisted.

"Why? No one talks to me. They all hate me. They won’t miss me at all,” he moaned.

"You must go back to school. You’re the principal!”, she said.

This is an old joke that suddenly seems very relevant for business and other leaders as they contemplate a return to the physical workplace in amid our nervous co-existence with Covid, even if we have not defeated it as yet.

At the moment, this return to work seems to be partial for most organizations, departments and teams here in Rwanda and across the world. For example, one municipal agency has two teams and one of them spends a week in the office and then a week at home while the other one does the opposite.

Surveys have shown that many workers around the globe are generally happy with such flexible, ‘hybrid’ arrangements as they can continue to juggle their professional and personal responsibilities at home; begin to travel again; and satisfy more of their needs for social affiliation, intelligence-gathering, manager guidance, direct feedback, and career networking in the office.

But for leaders, this can be a mixed blessing as they try to balance such seeming polarities as control and trust; structure and flexibility; speed and consensus: