Five Future-Proofing Leadership Skills from a Futurist and a Consultant

Your work is a whirlwind. The avalanche of new tech, intricate global connectivity, and overnight societal changes all make for a rapidly changing world. And that’s just what you face each morning – what will work life be like in 2050?!

Clearly, your leadership style will have to change to keep up. Fortunately, our podcast guests offer no-nonsense guidance on how you can adapt and future-proof your leadership growth. Here’s what futurist Susan Cannon and leadership consultant Mike Morrow-Fox recommend.

Specific leadership skills to nurture now to build future-ready leaders include:

– Continuous learning and innovation. Change has become so rapid, it’s common for business analysts to quip that firms can easily tumble “overnight” if they don’t keep pace. To keep your success on the rise, develop leaders who are constant learners and innovators. This skill ensures adaptability with both industry changes and global challenges.

– Cross-cultural competence. As the COVID pandemic’s supply-chain collapse proved, all organizations have dependencies beyond local and national boundaries. Cultivate leaders who can expand those boundaries both internally (by managing global teams, for example) and externally (building relationships and networks internationally). And, of course, even our purely local teams now have members with a wide array of cultural backgrounds, so managing them requires similar skills to leading a multi-national team.

– Agility. With changes coming rapidly, timelines for decision-making are shrinking. We no longer have the luxury of taking our time to collect all data possible before finalizing a path. Agility or quick-decision-making becomes a make-or-break skill. Corollary to this is abolishing the fear of failure; if you have to make rapid decisions, some of them will be wrong. Learn, tweak, and try again. Punishing failure is not an option!

– Emotional intelligence. Tired of hearing EQ on these sorts of lists? Perhaps it keeps appearing because it’s really important! Think of it this way: as tech, and AI in particular, become more prevalent in the workplace, the unique skills only humans can perform become more important. Beyond the fact that workers are more engaged when they believe their bosses care, EQ enables you to discover what motivates your team members more effectively. From both a personal and a business standpoint, improving leaders’ emotional intelligence makes perfect sense.

– Proficiency. Some researchers limit this to technological proficiency. That’s fairly obvious; with technology changing so rapidly, your leaders need to be able to keep up so their teams can use these ever-emerging tools. But proficiency in soft skills is doubly important for leaders; the uniqueness of each team member becomes more important as technology highlights the talents only humans have – talent you need to keep on your team to ensure success.

Many ways exist to help your leadership team develop these skills. Check with your HR department; they may well have relevant programs in their catalog already. If not, recommend educational and professional development courses or consultants (such as those services provided by the Innovative Leadership Institute) that address future-ready leadership development. You can also be hands-on at no cost by being a mentor and coach for those around you or by identifying senior leaders who would love to take on this role. And, of course, you can allow staff to carve out time each week for experiential learning: moving out of their day-to-day comfort zones to work a few hours in a different area of your organization.

2050 may feel like the far future, but the changes leading to it are arising even as you read this. Equip yourself and other leaders with the skills to make it a successful journey.

What steps are you taking to prepare for tomorrow’s leadership? Lift others up by sharing your wisdom in the comments.

This article was adapted from our remastered podcast episode Leadership 2050: Two Experts Uncover How to Become Tomorrow’s Leader, Today.

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