What are the essential Leadership skills in 2030 ? (Part 1)
I came across a great blog post about what Leadership will be in 2030, which was published in August/2020. The author was looking at a time window of 10 years and his assumption is that businesses will be different as time goes by and the effective leader in 2030 needs to have a few characteristics/skills besides setting a vision and executing on strategy. He defined a list of mindset aspects that will be required: (1) Global Citizen; (2) Servant; (3) Chef; and (4) Explorer. He also defined a list of skills: (a) Coach; (b) Futurist; (c) Technology Teenager; (d) Translator; and (e) Yoda.
(If you are interested in a description for each of these points listed above, you need to go back to the original blog post I am referring to)
In this post I will be sharing some of my impressions from the lists above and some things that came to mind as I was reading it. I will begin with the mindset first, covering topics from 1–5, and starting with being a Global Citizen. It is already normal these days to global organizations operating in multiple countries and continents, but it is easy to come to the conclusion that not everyone effectively and efficiently operates across different countries/cultures/languages/time zones. The leader of tomorrow needs to be a native/natural global citizen. Not only embracing the global perspective, but living it! To the point where there no other possibility of being successful without having teams that work well across multiple countries.
Moving forward, the Servant mindset is something really important and it reminds me of the inverted leadership pyramid where the tip of the pyramid (which is actually the traditional base) is the employee/customer and the bottom (traditionally the tip) is the CEO. The idea is that the CEO is serving the managers, that in turn serve the employees who are the most important part of the organization, since they have direct contact with customers on a daily basis. And the customers are ultimately being served by the entire organization.
The Chef mindset is key to a leader, just like in a kitchen, balancing numerous ingredients to come up with masterful meals. This reminded me of a great podcast episode about a book that discusses the Paradoxes of leadership (this topic probably deserves a post of its own). A great leader must step up to the challenge of a “both/and” perspective, rather than stepping back into the “either/or” practices. It is not about finding a balance, but it is about being 100% of both at different times. A great leader knows when to play each card and navigates well the spectrum of, for example, being both humble and confident (one of the examples of a paradox) or being both stubborn and open minded. The name of this blog carries “Human” in it, and technology is core to software engineering, and that is why I really connected to it, when it was mentioned that managing well the ingredients of Humanity and Technology is a unique capability and two of the most essential ingredients of a business.
Last, but not least, the Explorer mindset is really important and it brings flavors of Agile, Lean Startup and Product Discovery perspective. The Explorer leader knows when to change to adapt to a fast changing world around them. Taking risks, embracing the unknown, knowing when to pivot/adapt, and acknowledging this is needed is definitely key for leaders in 2030 (I would say that this is true in 2021 already).
In Part 2, I will cover some of my impressions on the skills: (a) Coach; (b) Futurist; (c) Technology Teenager; (d) Translator; and (e) Yoda.
