A Guest Blog by Vanessa Fudge, CEO – Leading Well
It’s a challenging time to be a leader. Not only can we no longer rely on a minimum 12-month planning cycle to provide a foundation of certainty, but who do you think is left to fill the expectation gap (or chasm) between the organisational needs, challenges and priorities and your people’s expectations about their roles, their wellbeing and their priorities? These are big shoes to fill!
VUCA* and BANI* aside, our planet, societies, communities, industry sectors, organisations and workplaces are being subjected to enormous systemic changes that are impacting all facets of our lives.
*VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous)
*BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible)
So what is a future-ready leader? What leadership qualities and capabilities can enable leaders to lead with confidence and clarity in this emerging new leadership landscape?
From our ongoing research in the field globally as well as our experience from clients across many sectors, we see the following three principles as critical components for Future-Ready Leaders:
Critical new leadership capabilities – that may not have made their way to your organisation’s leadership capability framework as yet
Fundamental leadership practices and principles – that may have lost their impact or become diluted over time
Inner presence for outer impact – driving leadership impact from a foundation of quality inner presence
In this first of three articles, we’ll briefly explore the critical new leadership capabilities that leaders need to be developing. Also, please let us know if you would like to receive the remaining two articles in this series on Future Ready Leadership.
New Leadership Capabilities
Most organisations these days have implemented a leadership capability framework – which guides development plans and performance metrics. There is an abundance of them. Typically, they group associated capabilities together under 3 to 6 core areas – such as Achieves Results, People & Culture, Shapes Strategy etc. – each with a subset of descriptors and behaviours.
When we look at leadership from a future-ready leader perspective, we see a few challenges with this approach:
Adding to the example above, there are a number of leadership capabilities we believe are critical now for future-ready leaders that aren’t yet appearing on most capability frameworks that we’ve been exposed to.
Here are some examples:
AI Leadership – this is not just about being AI-savvy. This is about taking your people with you on the AI transformation journey, not leaving your people to work it out for themselves. Click here to find out more.
Systems Intelligence – moving beyond IQ and emotional intelligence, this constantly evolving reality we find ourselves in asks for a new intelligence – systems intelligence – that can zoom out to find clarity and lead dynamically through complex, ambiguous challenges that don’t respond to our standard problem-solving approaches. Click here to find out more.
Systems Leadership – Particularly applicable to CEO’s and senior executives is the ability to not just lead their function or group but to lead the entire organisational eco-system. Being able to ‘lead the system’ requires a unique perspective and insight in order to sustain organisational momentum through change and deliver commercial and cultural outcomes. Click here to find out more.
Let us know if you would like to receive the next two instalments in the Future-Ready Leadership series.