Tomorrow's Leader:
Identifying the Next Generation
by Carlton D. Becker
[Talent Management Magazine February 2008]
Past performance success still goes a long way to help determine who to put in leadership positions, but new criteria quickly has emerged to reflect the changing pace and emphasis of business. As a result, importance is now being placed on emotional intelligence, ability to respond to and relate to other cultures and comfort with leading and identifying large-scale change opportunities.
Over the years, organizations have relied on "readiness charts" and "strengths and weaknesses" assessments to identify those individuals who could lead an organization, business or department in a manner that minimized risk. With the onset of globalization and faster modes of communication, however, it has become imperative to identify characteristics that would enable people to be successful in a different future than the one we had been preparing for.
Organizations that flourish in this new market will be those that do the best job of developing their people to support strategic initiatives, building high-performing work teams around the world, and functioning effectively in virtual environments. Traditional organizational structures and thinking are incapable of meeting these dynamic demands.
Current Trends and Their Implications for Tomorrow's Leaders
No one knows exactly what the future trends are that will impact individual businesses, but several current widespread issues have definite implications for would-be leaders. They are:
1. Globalization
It's important to keep in mind organizations will continue to be more global, to the point of losing their national identities and becoming true global organizations. Leaders are going to find themselves increasingly in situations where the ability to work with diversity - in its broadest sense - will be absolutely critical. The ability to speak two or more languages and the ability to negotiate and mediate human rights issues also will be key skill sets.
2. Virtual Organizations
Although completely virtual businesses might remain a pipe dream, the need for nimbleness in the global arena will force organizations to seek out and implement alternative work arrangements to assuage work difficulties related to widely distributed employee groups. Leaders will need the ability to work with minimal direction and supervision, to build teams through vision and value of work, to take on different roles as situations demand, and to "let go" and empower others.
3. Solutions Orientation
A significant number of global players are looking for ways to expand their business models and increase shareholder value. One of the more popular ways to do this is to get into the "solutions" business. For example, instead of just building jet engines, a company might become an outsourcing organization that supplies engineering, manufacturing, leasing, maintenance and consulting in one package. Therefore, the most successful leaders will have the ability to take charge of situations without formal titles, while emphasizing the benefits of doing so. They will need to be big-picture thinkers who recognize cause and effect over geographic and demographic areas quickly, and can easily adapt and shift in direction as new opportunities arise.
4. Green Initiatives
No doubt about it, it's chic to be green. Businesses will not be able to ignore the impact of environmental consciousness on employees or their business operations. Already, governments are starting to exercise their power to impose energy taxes, recycling taxes and higher penalties to get rid of industrial waste. Many companies quickly learned that substantial savings can be made through green initiatives. The challenge for would-be leaders is to communicate effectively with various stakeholders and institutional investors to ensure their support. Of equal importance will be the ability to balance business needs with environmental needs and the ability to take a stand for longer-term community benefits.
5. Moral Compass
Ethics play a big part in defining leaders. Today, major government entities are trying to establish moral standards. This means future leaders will need to operate under differing standards throughout the world, lead corporate initiatives that address greed and fairness, and set standards and get others to behave within established guidelines.
6. Interim Leadership
In the fast-moving distributed environments businesses must operate in, predictive models show that leadership is increasingly becoming a temporary thing. Work is increasingly project oriented, requiring leadership for defined periods of time. Someone who was a leader on project A might be a technical adviser on project B. Thus, leaders will need to be highly comfortable handling short work engagements or fleeting opportunities.
Any discussion of future capabilities, or competencies, is fraught with one specific hindrance: present thinking. When people look at future competencies, they tend to put them in the context of what is currently known. For example, when a management review team assesses an employee to determine potential leadership capabilities, it is assessing the individual against the competencies and behaviors established for current success. Hence, organizations continually replicate themselves. High potentials look, think and behave similar to the current leadership, often shunning the entrepreneur or outlier - that bright employee who marches to the beat of his or her own drum.
To effectively assess an individual for future competence, new definitions of current competencies will be required, as well as identification of competencies not yet on the corporate radar. These will need to be based on future trends and the organization's ability to practice sustainability.
Here are a few examples of how to take current competencies and redefine them to reflect future needs:
a) Strategic thinking
b) Makes sense of the world and recognizes where the business needs to go next; understands global business implications and what that will mean in terms of redefining and reinventing the current business model; knows how events in one global sector will impact other sectors.
c) Creates a compelling vision to be on the forefront of change.
d) Partnering
e) Builds trust by focusing on long-term common goals and sharing key learning.
f) Works effectively with a diverse constituency; recognizes and works with cultural differences; able to mediate solutions.
g) Builds alliances with influential people, both internally and externally to the organization; understands social networking and actively pursues connections.
h) Promotes joint development, marketing.
i) Business acumen
j) Understands unrelenting shareholder demands for profitability and the increased pressure of institutional investors on markets.
k) Balances fiscal responsibility with corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Given the changing nature of work, competencies that span several aspects of new work arrangements will need to focus on skills and attributes associated with influencing, negotiating, inquiring and motivating. The volatility of certain markets is likely to encourage people to move in and out of organizations. To remain nimble, companies will structure themselves around core initiatives and outsource or partner externally to provide supporting or noncore services. This places a premium on those leaders with a skills cache spanning multiple competencies who also possess the ability to "drop in" on a given situation and take charge.
Byron Reeves, Ph.D., the Paul C. Edwards Professor of Communication at Stanford University and co-founder of Seriosity Inc., recently said, "If you want to see what business leadership may look like in three to five years, look at what's happening in online games." Reeves teamed up with IBM for a study to look at massive multiplayer online role-playing games. The result is a very interesting glimpse into how leaders develop and operate in environments that are highly distributed, global, hypercompetitive and virtual. One of the observations of the study is that, given the opportunity, people will step up, take charge and respond to feedback, as defined by the results of their game play.
The global playing field also requires leaders to master a cadre of global skills, such as respect for human rights, management of volatility, concern for the environment and community, and creation of safe havens for workers to come in from their communities and escape discrimination. After all, no organization can move forward if its workers don't feel safe and valued.
Challenges
Where do we find tomorrow's leaders? Just about anywhere. Minting top-notch MBAs is no longer the sole province of the United States. India and China, for example, have ramped up their business school offerings and are turning out highly qualified management candidates. Talent managers also are referring to a new global manager profile in their recruiting efforts. The profile of a leader who has lived or studied in two or more countries outside of the individual's home country, speaks two or more languages, holds an MBA from a leading institution with a global focus and enjoys learning about new cultures has emerged. The individual also must have a high emotional intelligence quotient, be a peacemaker, be decisive and be able to respond rapidly to nonstandard situations.
As work changes, individuals will get more opportunities to participate on teams that take them out of their current technical specialty or comfort zone. This movement creates a major challenge for talent managers to set up parallel learning and development programs within the organization. What used to be the dual-career ladder will give way to parallel learning tracks where individuals can go in and out based on the activities of current assignments. This will compel development programming to be extremely flexible and available 24x7. And, chances are, people will need greater guidance in planning their future, as the number of options will increase substantially. "Up" will no longer be the only direction.
William Gibson once wrote, "The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." The future of leadership is here. We just haven't recognized it yet.
[About the Author: Carlton D. Becker is principal at BowmanBecker Consultancy LLC.]
