What will future executives look back on as the key foundations for their success?

By Branca Modrusan.

In 2032, what will future executives look back on as the key foundations for their success?

That was one of the questions we tackled at a recent iVentiv executive development knowledge exchange, a forum for peers in organisational learning to come together and have an open conversation about their challenges, successes, failures and emerging trends in leadership development.

My key takeaways from that discussion are:

• Breadth of experience. With change happening on multiple planes and at an exponential rate, what is certain is that the world’s economy will look very different ten years from now. Being exposed to different industries, cross-functional and cross-geographical experiences, and working across different client segments were highlighted as an indispensable part of developing future executives.
• Prepare for an AI-centric future. Inevitably, a decade from now, digital technologies will be even more integrated into our work and personal lives. While leaders are not expected to become experts in AI, they need to treat this knowledge area as another non-negotiable part of the leader curriculum so that they are confident and credible in driving strategic conversations around the possibilities offered by AI in their industry.
• Collaboration builders. In addition to these technical competencies, leaders will need to excel in creating conditions for collaboration. With increased complexity and speed at which companies need to react to external developments, one of the conditions for delivering on strategic ambitions is leaders’ effectiveness in driving collaboration and orchestrating inputs from a wide range of internal experts and external business partners into a multifaceted, yet holistic, strategy execution plan.
• Building followship. Ability to influence has long been recognised as an essential element of leadership. With social media establishing itself as one of the main channels in which ideas and information are spread, leaders need to be adept in using that medium. Connected to that is the leader’s ability to craft and communicate a compelling purpose and take others on a journey through storytelling, empowerment and an invitation to reimagine what is possible.
• Systems thinking. The leaders of tomorrow will need to be system thinkers. Gone are the days when maximising profits was the sole metric against which business leaders were evaluated; the zeitgeist of the new era calls for leaders to see themselves as the stewards of social change and, on a very large scale, the evolution of humanity.

Does this resonate with you? Do you feel leaders in your organisation are excited by the prospect of being the architects of fairer, more inclusive and socially responsible businesses and society?

For many of us in the leadership development space, it’s exciting to be partnering with forward-looking organisations in exploring and co-creating the new paradigm of working, living and being with one another.

To learn more about how we can support transformational leadership click here.