In the last article, we have seen that, to be successful in VUCA (Volatile, Uncertainty, Complex and Ambiguous) world, we need to bring in our own VUCA – Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility. In this article, we will look at 10 Leadership skills that would be required in the Leaders of tomorrow, as defined by Bob Johansen from Institute for the Future. In the next article, we will cover how to develop these leadership skills.
Bob Johansen describes the 10 leadership skills, moving from basic, Maker Instinct (tapping into creativity of each individual) to the higher order, Commons Creating (not just to win for yourself but to win for others, ability to create social assets and shared assets). It would be difficult to cover each of the Leadership skill at greater detail (due to constraint of real estate). I’ll cover the broad aspects of the Leadership skills out here and will be available in person to discuss any specific skill at greater detail.
Bob Johansen’s 10 Leadership skills are as follows: Maker Instinct, Clarity, Dilemma Flipping, Immersive Learning ability, Bio-Empathy, Constructive Depolarizing, Quiet Transparency, Rapid Prototyping, Smart Mob Organizing, and Commons Creating. These skills are very different from typical Leadership skills that we are exposed to. I will cover how we can develop these skills in a future article.
In view of the space, these skills will be addressed in two parts. Part 1 will cover the first five leadership skills and part 2 (to be published next week) will cover the next five leadership skills.
Let us dive into these skills:
Maker Instinct: Ability to exploit your inner drive to build and grow things, as well as connect with others in the making. Each one of us has an inner instinct of a maker, creator that we were not able to tap into. However, in the future world, the new media will allow the maker/creator instinct to flourish. The word ‘consumer’ would be lost as everyone would like to personalize the products/services that are available in the market. Hence, Leader of tomorrow needs to not only nurture her maker instinct but also that of others around her and of customers. She needs to be able to bring together the community of maker instincts (source of Innovation) to create a larger change in the world.
Clarity: Ability to see through messes and contradictions to a future that others cannot yet see. Clarity has always been important for Leaders but has never been as difficult as in VUCA world. Having clarity in VUCA world means that being clear about where you are going but very flexible on how you get there (This is called Commander’s intent in military). It is different from certainty. Certainty is brittle in VUCA world as we need to deal with unexpected events all the time. Clarity is about knowing what you do not know. It is about taking a leap of faith and being flexible. Clarity is about being able to communicate your intent/direction in a simplistic manner (without being simple) while allowing your team the flexibility to get there.
Dilemma Flipping: Ability to turn a dilemma – which unlike problems, cannot be solved – into advantages and opportunities. VUCA world will be loaded with dilemmas – problems that cannot be solved and that will not go away. Leaders must be able to engage with dilemmas and learn how to win – even if they cannot solve. They should be able to turn dilemmas into opportunity to win. Best Leaders usually delegate problem-solving to others but save dilemmas for themselves. They must learn to thrive in the space between judging too soon (classic mistake of a problem-solver) and deciding too late (classis mistake of the academic).
We can understand dilemma flipping through the following example better. Up to one third of Bangladesh is flooded annually in the worst of monsoon seasons, and environmental reports are projecting that water levels will only keep rising in many parts of the country. Rising water levels prevent many children from attending school – resulting in increased dropout rates. Dilemma is about how to increase the attendance to schools thus increasing the education level of the children. Problem of flooding is not going to go away in Bangladesh. Hence, Architect Mohammed Rizwan flipped the dilemma into an opportunity and decided that if children cannot go to schools during the floods, school would come to them. Working with local boat builders, he modified the boats to incorporate social panels, electricity, and flexible spaces. The first school set afloat in 2002, and today, there are over 50 floating schools that operate and serve 90,000 families. A classic example of how to look at a situation, assess it and turn on its head to create an opportunity.
Immersive Learning Ability: Ability to immerse yourself in unfamiliar environments, to learn from them in a first-person way. Gaming and Immersive Learning would be the new learning pedagogy of the VUCA world. Leaders cannot learn through the regular approaches of class room training. They need to immerse themselves in new situations/simulations; they need to engage with VUCA world to learn from it. This could be done through gaming or by real life experience of traveling, living abroad or getting into situations that would make them real uncomfortable and learning from such experiences in a first-person way. Incidentally, younger generation is an expert in immersive learning ability because of the large amount of time spent by them playing games (in virtual world). According to Dr. Jane McGonigal, world-renowned game designer, average person would have spent 10,000 hours playing video games by the time they are 21 years old. Hence, their ability to adapt to a new environment or rapid changes is much better than us.
Bio-Empathy: Ability to see from nature’s point of view; to understand, respect and learn from nature’s patterns. To be successful in VUCA world, it is important to learn and understand from nature and apply them to our leadership skills. In VUCA world, teams’ achievement trumps individual achievement. A Leader has to take holistic approach of her team by focusing on health, wellness and well-being of the team. Typical metaphors used in Leadership today are ‘foundation’, ‘pillars’, ‘levers’ – all derived from engineering. However, future metaphors (that will be successful in VUCA world) would need to be about ‘seeding’, ‘nurturing’, ‘ecology’ – all coming from nature and Biology. Last few decades have been ruled by Engineers. Future would be heavily influenced by Biology and Life Sciences. As a Leader in VUCA world, it is important to understand that bio-empathy is at the core of sound decision making. Leaders with strong sense of bio-empathy are self-aware and conscious of the decisions they are making. They are able to succeed by aligning the internal purpose and motivations of their team members with the larger objective that need to be achieved.
We will continue the next five skills in Part 2. Imagine the world getting more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – what skills do you think you need to be successful in such a world?
