A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to facilitate a discussion on the future of leadership. The fifteen individuals in the discussion are senior leaders of a multinational company. 70% of these leaders have been with the company for more than a decade. They have grown and developed their leadership talents and skills within the confines of their company. Now they are curious on how to better lead the present generation where turn over has become unpredictable.
They are very eager to learn and expand their comfort zone. These leaders have come to realize that all the opportunities to becoming better leaders are outside their comfort zone. With this in mind, they invited into the discussion and wanted me to lead with research on The Future of Leadership. I came across an interesting article from the Center for Creative Leadership on the same topic and as such we used it as our guide. Here are some of our learnings.
The Current Situation
– The environment has changed – it is more complex, volatile and unpredictable.
(The leaders all agreed that this is very true and can be experienced in their organization).
– The skills needed for leadership have also changed – more complex and adaptive thinking abilities are needed.
– The methods being used to develop leaders have not changed (much).
– The majority of managers are developed from on-the-job experiences, training, and coaching/mentoring; while these are all still important, leaders are no longer developing fast enough or in the right ways to match the new environment.
The Challenge Ahead
– This is no longer just a leadership challenge (what good leadership looks like); it is a development challenge (the process of how to grow “bigger” minds).
– Managers have become experts on “what” of leadership, but novices in the “how” of their own development.
The Skills Sets Required Have Changed – More Complex Thinkers Are Needed
Reflecting the changes in the environment, the competencies that will be most valuable to the future leader appear to be changing. The most common skills, abilities and attributes cited by interviewees were:
– Adaptability
– Self-awareness
– Boundary spanning
– Collaboration
– Network Thinking
The most interesting outcome of this discussion was how the leaders felt comfortable talking about the current situation, the challenges and changes they are going through with acceptance and more changes that they have to adapt to in terms of leadership development. We will be going through further discussions and learn from the rest of the info in the article.
