Leaders must prepare now for capabilities needed for 2020
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WE CAN foresee many great transformations taking place in the year 2020. With the rapidity of information, the advancement of communications and technology, along with the diversity of workforces, the fourth industrial revolution is expected, which will i
Also in 2020, there will be five generations in the workplace working together and we will start seeing Generation Z – those who were born after 2000 – entering the workforce.
This trend will, undoubtedly, reiterate the dramatic change in demographics in terms of age, race and gender.
Besides the change in demographics, we will see technology at its best, offering us access to information, convenience, accuracy and savings in the cost of communication.
Plus, the cost of transport will be drastically reduced thanks to virtual reality, while the virtual office will become the new norm, with people moving globally and going digital.
Simply put, these transformations will surely change the way we live and work.
Some jobs will soon vanish, while other jobs that don’t even exist today will become common.
Consequently, skills that are considered important in today’s workforce will be changed.
It will become critical for leaders to keep up and change their leadership capabilities accordingly to survive and thrive in this near future.
Organisations need to adjust their cultures to support the global reach.
This means a change in work hours, cultural-awareness workshops, team-building with offshore counterparts, and an increasing reliance on social and digital technologies.
So how do these trends create change in the future leader? Which capabilities are needed for the 2020 leaders?
These are the questions that companies must have the answers for today in order to prepare in time.
This year, the World Economic Forum released a report on “The Future of Jobs”, highlighting employment, skills and workforce strategy for the future. APMGroup has also researched leadership capabilities needed for 2020 and, not surprisingly, the two papers agree on many points.
First, as the world is becoming highly unpredictable, change is the only thing that is constant. This means risk and uncertainties are unavoidable. Leaders will need to have the ability to cope with these ambiguities with resiliency, which requires complex-problem skills.
Second, when technology is persistently advancing, new business models are being created on a daily basis. Those who can innovate and improvise as well as respond to immediate events fast enough will gain a competitive edge, which means that creativity is essential.
Third, as mentioned earlier, we will see the workforce becoming even more diverse when people can travel from place to place easier.
Multigenerational workforces will appear everywhere and generational differences in methods and means of communication will cause problems.
Exemplary leaders will need to be able to communicate with people from other generations to encourage the exchange of information and knowledge that each of them possesses, so they will surely need skills in people management and coordinating with others.
Next, the ability to build trust will become ever more important for leaders towards the future workforce.
Titles alone cannot guarantee that your employees will believe and trust you, which means you will need to build trust with emotional intelligence and negotiation skills.
Building trust takes time and effective communication, and is a skill we need to teach our leaders if we want our institutions and culture to thrive.
A willingness to learn new things openly is a feature critical for successful leaders. This will be about leaders having the cognitive flexibility to admit there is room for improvement, so they will need to learn, unlearn and relearn continuously.
Last, future leaders are required to have critical thinking as well as judgement and decision-making skills to be able to craft both short- and long-term plans suitable for their organisational direction in each phase.
They need to develop the capacity to recognise that the future may well be tomorrow, and to consider long-term implications in decision-making.
All in all, we may not know what will happen exactly in 2020 but undeniably we will see many transformations affecting every industry.
To thrive and compete in the ever-changing business landscape, leadership will be essential, so critical leadership capabilities must be developed today to build tomorrow’s leaders.
Thidarat Ariyaprasertis is a |senior consultant at APMGroup, a consultancy specialising in organisational and people development. She can be reached at [email protected] or www.facebook.com/apmisgroupthai.
