Leadership in 2021 and beyond

Our business world has changed so much in the past year, and companies around the globe have a significant opportunity to?shift their leadership models…

If they’re clear on what leadership of the future looks like.

Join me and other global business and technology leaders online June 30th?to understand how you can shape the leadership of your organisation for a competitive advantage.

We will be discussing the accelerated reliance on technology and the range of new leadership trends this has catalysed. While many organisations during the COVID pandemic were more inclined to prioritise cost and efficiency initiatives, some leaders allocated technology budgets differently, prioritising innovation, diversification, and employee-customer experience.

EQ ADAPTABILITY

‘Emotional intelligence’ didn’t make the list when the World Economic Forum forecast their ‘top 10 skills for 2015’, but emerged as number six on the list for 2020?(G, Alex, World Economic Forum, 2016 ).?An added challenge facing today’s leaders is how to effectively channel ‘human skills’ such as empathy in a remote working environment. When so much effort is required to process and send non-verbal cues through an interface, an energetic dissonance is created. Command-and-control leadership requires the smooth rituals associated with board rooms, audience, and magnetic presence. Today requires more command-option-command, or adaptability and empowerment – a style I call ‘the leading edge ’.

Only leaders who are both tech-literate and tech-enabled have the ability to reach remote workers in a way that feels high touch. Technology mature organisations have both the systems in place to support process flow, and the applications embedded to optimise productivity. An additional part of the architecture is the tech-fluidity to allow employees and customers to control the way they wish to communicate and be communicated with.?

As quickly as the pandemic has revealed an organisations’ technology maturity, it has exposed the emotional intelligence of its leaders. Issues such as mental health, social polarisation and economic anxiety permeate our professional lives, requiring leaders to not only relate strong purpose-driven messaging to their people, but as we beam in from kitchens, loungerooms and bedrooms, leaders must remain relatable to their teams like never before.

More complex still, is the new hybrid arrangement, where the juggle between physical and virtual attendees requires a dial up of both verbal and non-verbal cues. Bringing everyone along on the journey is critical, especially in an age where #languishing is being tagged as the general mood of 2021. As popularly observed Adam Grant; languishing is the sense of stagnation and emptiness we can’t seem to shake off even as we being to emerge from COVID.

Which comes first – culture or technology?

New world leadership is about enablement of others.

Technology is an enabler of culture, but culture is just as much an enabler of technology. A shiny new platform will not inspire curiosity if the cultural driver to reward curiosity is not there.

Deloitte’s?2020 Global Technology Leadership Study ?shows rapid prototyping, design and testing, and iterative development are becoming the norm for businesses that prioritise technology adoption. Their delivery teams—including both business and technology stakeholders—aim to minimise the time between the idea and execution, deliver the solution incrementally, and quickly course-correct based on customer feedback and how the solution is being used.

For innovation to be brought into the core of the business, the culture must be embedding practices such as ‘play’, ‘improvisation’ and ‘fast failing’ into the day-to-day working rhythm. To be a market disruptor, leaders must build the case for change and then adjust their teams to be comfortable with constant change.

A perspective attributed to Darwin reads, ‘it’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it’s the one most adaptable for change.’?The ability to initiate and navigate change is one of the most critical capabilities demanded of twenty-first-century leaders.

Automation is becoming more useful as technology develops in terms of project management, real-time feedback, overcoming language barriers and monitoring productivity. These technology usages are largely reactive. It will be the leaders who push for human-centred transformations that break down silos, increase agility, improve innovation, and leverage data to become closer to the customer that will thrive. Technology adoption should give leaders the ability to reimagine business models and scale change in new markets.

Tech-enabled cultures get out in front of technology and stretch the boundaries of what is possible. They will be the ones to seize the most compelling business opportunities, using the best technology almost available!?

From echo chamber to ecosystem

Just as music is what happens between notes, competitive advantage is what happens between mechanisms in the business. The global pandemic has amplified the significance of our global impact and our local reliance. The challenges we face in today’s world are complex, systemic-based problems that no one individual or company can solve alone.?

As such, in an ecosystem world, we face a new challenge of a shift towards a model where no single individual has formal control. We are entering the age of distributed leadership. But are traditional, hierarchical leaders ready to let go?

This new ecosystem model brings to the fore trust-based leadership, the importance of purpose, and creating a culture of curiosity, learning, and collaboration.?

Amy Edmondson is attributed with brining the term ‘psychological safety’ to the workplace lexicon. She argued that there is a difference between trying to demonstrate leadership?of?the ecosystem, as opposed to demonstrating leadership?in?the ecosystem.??Her research shows that in the absence of psychological safety, homogenous teams outperformed diverse ones. But with the presence of psychological safety, a diverse team will outperform a homogenous team. In particular, while a homogenous team may be well suited to delivering standardised, routine tasks, diverse teams were far more likely to produce ‘breakthrough’ (aka high) performance.?

The way companies adopt technology will either facilitate or threaten trust in the ecosystem. Customer experience along with employee experience must be a two way street. Senior leaders have entered an age where the paradigm has flipped. Listening is more important than speaking. Empowering others is a critical component of any power dynamic. And the ability for change to be led from anywhere in the organisation is what will set the course for an agile and responsive journey into the future.

Today leaders have a rare – and brief – window of opportunity to leap ahead, and transform through purposeful, human-centered change, or risk being left behind.?