Will the future of leadership change? Posted by Kimberly Bishop@ 12:47 pm on January 30th, 2007 | Filed under Leadership | 5 Comments
Do you think the notion of leadership and what it takes to be recognized as a leader is going to change in the next five years? What do you think?
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Leadership styles are constantly evolving and in today’s fast changing world, the speed of change is accelerating. The key skill for leaders going forward is the ability to guide and develop the team to anticipate, adapt and respond and to the needs and demands of our increasingly global world.
The fact that leadership is about focusing and developing talent is not likely to change. However, HOW that talent is developed and How that talent is focused will be changing a lot. Knowing how to develop your team and knowing how to lead multigenerational teams are two critical skills.
Moving forward, more teams will be virtual, coming together from great distances to produce a product, solve a problem, service a client. Leaders will be working with teams they don’t know well and from a distance. Leaders will need to be able to quickly assess skills and talent, build trust among the team members and inspire commitment and passion for the outcome. Daily on site check-ins and oversight will be less possible–being able to clearly communicate a common purpose, roles and accountabilities–and inspire action will become the role of the leader.
With 75 million Americans retiring in the next 10 years (including 50% of Fortune 500 CEOs) and only 45 million younger workers coming in to take their place, we’re definitely going to be seeing some big leadership changes. Globalization and virtual teams (or even virtual companies) are going to require leaders to be able to span geographic and cultural gaps that didn’t exist before.
The world of work is transforming before our eyes. Twenty years ago we started breaking the social contract of employment for life and job security - replacing it with a work force of free agency. Outsourcing and off-shoring are the most evident acceleration of this shift today. The loyalty level between companies and workers is at a historic low. This is not a reason for despair. Loyalty is being replaced by the potential for greater freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment. All of this resembles the way that movies are made. Financial, marketing, artistic, and technical talent - assembles, performs, and disperses until the next piece of work comes along. The implications of this shift for leaders are huge. As only one example, leaders of the future must be able to influence others without the formal authority that was resident in the old business model - one in which talent was owned by the company and controlled by the leader.