Courageous, Action-Oriented Future Leader

Paul E. Fein - The IDD Leadership Group LLC - Managing Leader & Director ? New York [email protected]

Courageous, Action-Oriented Future Leaders - Builders of intellectual curiosity!

Leaders need to be visionaries, always willing to adjust approaches to challenging issues, driving well-defined goals and objectives. The desired outcomes can be assembled through the careful assessment of potential decisions. Leaders need to be outstanding active listeners and to look for exceptional organizational opportunities. These forward-looking individuals need to be flexible and adaptable in all problem-solving activities. These courageous leaders must be collaborative and innovative in the selection of learning and development approaches as well as events, willing to take dynamic risks with the handling of evolving tensions. There must be some psychological safety that can assist with the freedom of thoughts and choices. Different opportunities and business directions can be achieved through the use of data and information about successful actions. Leaders demonstrate presence and energy by influencing as well as impacting others, and by driving powerful encouragement to be organizational contributors. And strong insights and understanding by leaders should be shared openly, and along with the acknowledgement of great achievements. Leaders inspire people and drive organizational performance with purpose and value. There are many areas for focus to build feelings of company employee belonging and adaptability. The following ten components are unique leadership skills and competencies that are requirements for future authentic leaders to be impactful and successful.

Leadership Purpose – always focused on the future

As per Simon Sinek – “All great leaders have charisma because all great leaders have clarity of WHY; an undying belief in a purpose or cause bigger than themselves.”

Leaders of the future need to establish organizational direction based on a clear and well-defined purpose. They build true business plans that utilizes knowledge and skills, impacting successful outcomes and inspiring different possibilities as well as creative thinking. The dynamic purpose needs to be founded on the components of what, why, and how to drive the operational aims as well as the pursuit of excellence. With a clear direction, key is for leaders to connect with people with meaning, enhancing changes specific to established core values. This also drives accountability and growth in handling uncertainty and instability. A future-focused strategic vision drives business approaches and processes to manage diverse crises and transformations. So, future leaders need to propel goal achievements and have a powerful willingness to handle challenging obstacles.

Leadership Self-Awareness – always focused on the future

As per John C. Maxwell – “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Building self-awareness leads to self-discoveries as individuals and team leaders, as well as group interactive members. So, enhancing collaborative activities to drive harmony may result in higher levels of adaptability. Critical outcomes and goal achievements are usually possible based on passionate and empathetic leadership behaviors along with the acceptance of personal weaknesses. Confidence in decisions can occur based on deep self-awareness and the open sharing of creative ideas, all supporting personal growth and change. There can even be self-reflective activities to better understand the needs of others, teams, and even oneself. Situational awareness can help support and enhance collaborative inclusion as well as encourage a focus on critical and the right goals.

Leadership Courage – always focused on the future

As per Winston Churchill – “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

As per Thomas Moore – “We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like a simple, obvious suggestions, but it involves courage and risk.”

Future leaders need to be courageous to address major challenges with dynamic passion and to drive successful business accomplishments. They must be willing to rise to all challenging occasions and to encourage others to be willing to accept difficult issues. Leaders must build hope and confidence to deepen connections, relationships, and internal partnerships. The unknown potential outcomes can be based on the acceptance of errors, failures, and nonsuccesses, all without blame. Leadership courage is key to the handling of global anxiety and challenges. And navigating in unchartered water can be a new awakening. Yes, moving out of one’s comfort zone and accepting discomfort can build personal resilience to challenging issue and, even, result in the celebration of constructive feedback.

Leadership Trust – always focused on the future

As per Warren Bennis – “Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.”

As per Abraham Lincoln – “The people when rightly and fully trusted will return trust.” Leaders build connections and happiness by demonstrating high levels of trust. Honesty, openness, and pride can inspire and drive personal leadership trust as well as a willingness to be vulnerable. Organizations always need to focus on continuous changes specific to supporting the vision and to achieving people as well as team goals. Leaders must cultivate actions that boost critical objectives and stimulate honest feedback for potential changes along with needed improvements. Rewards and recognition can raise the effectiveness of management successes and performance outcomes. Future leaders need to enhance trust and commitment by leading with tremendous competencies and valued characteristics. Yes, values, integrity, caring, judgement, all build the human connection and a faith in the future. Honesty and authenticity will always augment personal commitments.

Leadership Humility – always focused on the future

As per Blaine Lee – “When people honor each other, there is a trust established that leads to synergy, interdependence, and deep respect. Both parties make decisions and choices based on what is right, what is best, what is valued most highly.”

Future leaders need to fully utilize the most important quality of humility to be effective and impactful. Always give credit to others for contributions, and accept personal challenges, making teamwork and collaboration more critical than issues with themselves. Grounded leaders see the values in others and deepens a culture of authenticity. Sincerity and honesty will help people and organizations be successful. A leader’s ego must always be controlled, elevating others and their qualities to make business contributions and to reach a dynamic vision. Humility in leaders grows openness in performance feedback and in the sharing of new ideas. Recognition can promote appreciation and strengthen the contributions by others. Transparency will also enhance humanistic and compassionate behaviors. So, humility equals authentic respect and genuine interest in the employee population and in the organization. The outcome of human interactions and connections should result in a compassionate spirit. And future leaders need genuine empathy since it is a positive behavior associated with emotional intelligence.

Leadership Communication – always focused on the future

As per Stephen R. Covey – “When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”

Leaders need to communicate from heart that inspires, founded on profound intelligence, and with strategic clarity. All effective, value-oriented business communications need to be constructed on real data and on employee desired needs. Key is sharing the organizational truths with total reality that is based on careful self-assessment. The messages being delivered need to provide information that can effectively influence a commitment to the company goals with energy as well as core targets. Straight talk removes negative challenges specific to clinical knowledge and the lack of in-depth reliability. Future leaders must always be communicators of powerful and consistent messages with all issues of chaos removed. These regular connections will build psychological safety and an openness to unique change.

Leadership Inspiration – always focused on the future

As per Maya Angelou – “I’ve learned that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Future leaders need to inspire high-impact ideas, to drive approaches to inquiries, and to build realistic actionable insights as well as activities. Big picture priorities need to be founded on critical behaviors and personal emotions. Key is to inspire and to motivate creativity along with the acknowledgement of organizational successes and personal achievements. Meeting unique needs and integrating agile processes will build a collaborative company culture along with problem-solving security.

Leadership Relationship – always focused on the future

As per Brian Tracy – “The glue that holds all relationships together – including the relationship between the leader and the led – is trust, and trust is based on integrity.”

As per Helen Keller – “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

Future leaders need to always focus on people and to gain the full participation in business activities, decisions, and goal outcomes. This leadership level of relationship commitment must be based on not overly pushing company needs, but on a balanced focus of many personal actions and activities, such as work and family. Building team connections by emphasizing and making everything matter will become the foundation of strong, collaborative, and impactful teams. Leadership support and true openness must focus on the right tasks and desired actions. And a deep awareness of optimism and ability to negotiate will always cultivate authentic relationships.

Leadership Coaching – always focused on the future

As per Mother Teresa – “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples."

Leaders of the future need to establish clear expectations for themselves to be able to build meaningful relationships through the utilization of the science and art specific to the coaching of others. Based on these key connections, the skill of asking critical questions along with strong active listening can lead to the handling of complex and challenging issues. The coaching dynamics will help individuals find value and prepare others to shift to a team-oriented structure with a creative-thinking capacity. Coaching leaders grow behaviors and thinking that will cultivate employee personal insights and support courageous willingness to take exceptional risks and make outstanding discoveries. Future leaders must fully accept vulnerability and the weaknesses of others. And an emotional component can move all coaching and active listening activities to higher levels of appreciation and acceptance of diversity.

Leadership Learning – always focused on the future

As per Robert Altman – “The role of the leader is to create a space where people can become more than they have ever been before, more than they’ve dreamed of being.”

Leaders are always on a continuous learning journey, finding approaches to problem-solving and flexible experimentation, going beyond psychological safety and inquires. Growing and learning new competencies and skills needs to be the foundation for innovative thinking and bold risk-taking. Development can enhance the freedom of thoughts and choices, leading to new opportunities to drive actions and to handle tensions associated with collaborations. By being learning visionaries, future leaders can boost capabilities to push actions into achieving positive organizational outcomes and outstanding individual as well as team contributions. Informative decision-making, based on both qualitative and quantitative activities, can help find real successes to challenges. Key in all development approaches is to use technologies in a virtual world will help grow self and others, resulting in an evolving learning culture along with engaging strategies. The learning journey clearly is an experience focused on behavioral changes and competency growth. All types of learning and engagement sessions along with coaching can drive transformations. Critical core development potentials need to be based on total flexibility and on a diversity of learning approaches. And customized content and highly focused objectives can truly enhance the leadership learning impact as well as all human connections. So, in-depth thinking is always built on relevant capabilities to grow meaningful ideas. The outcome will always build application of knowledge and skills, along with the stretching of abilities and the practice of capabilities. And future leaders need to have an aptitude for learning so that the utilization of skills to be strong problem-solvers and critical thinkers can occur. Yes, life is a continuous learning journey.

Closing Thoughts………………….. Future leaders will need to grow as well as cultivate their intellectual curiosity and become truly courageous, action-oriented in all leadership activities. The ten “characteristics” provided in this article are foundational for leadership effectiveness in the fast and evolving business world. There are probably more competencies required to drive high-performance excellence and dynamic organizational cultures. Yet leadership is a continuous development and growth journey, always focused on people and on company transformations. Authenticity and trust, compassion and optimism, must become critical personal competencies for future leaders so that they can enhance optimism in the future work world.