The business landscape has changed within the past two years more than it had changed in two decades before. While some of the trends we’re seeing were on the table before 2020, the Covid pandemics fast-tracked the process of evolution in the business world.

If you look at the past decade, you can see that leaders were predominantly obsessed with the stock price and business results. The company’s purpose and social impact were terms that were used only as words and barely brought to practice. Technology – especially AI, were nowhere as advanced as it is today, social media were merely taking off, and organizational hierarchy was firmly in place, unchallenged. The next decade will be defined by a very different style of leadership.

While some aspects of leadership will always have to remain (setting a vision, and executing the business strategy), future leaders will need to have different skillsets to lead effectively. This is because our businesses will look and operate fundamentally differently in ten years, which means we need a new type of leader at the wheel of these organizations.

Leaders are already struggling 

Sadly, most of nowadays’ leaders are, frankly speaking, not good. Things like the massive exodus of the workforce, difficulties to attract new talent, and lack of innovation coming from the big players speak clearly for themselves. Most of them, are not bad people, only unlucky not to be trained properly to take on the roles of the leaders in this environment. It is the same thing as if you have a pilot license for a single-engine, and then being asked to fly the Dreamliner (my aviation background never fails to present itself).  You might get it in the air, but you aren’t going to go far.

One of the main indications of the change was the massive exodus of the workforce and unwillingness to return to the previous status quo as it was seen in the post-covid world. The orders from the top management started to be questioned and challenged, people didn’t only want to see the paychecks, but also a purpose and a social impact. Nowadays, more than ever, we’re demanding that the company has its purpose and vision, and we can play a role in it. Moving forward, these qualities will be strengthened even more, and future leaders should be prepared for their changed positions.

Good leaders vs toxic leaders, and their direct impact on the business

I have worked with companies where people were looking forward to going to the office, proud of being employed by the company, and doing things beyond their job description. They were excited to learn new things, preferred collaboration over competition, and were encouraged to grow. Numerous studies show that companies operating in such an environment have not only happier employees, but also blooming business results, and growing stock prices. Why?

The math is simple – take care of your employees, and they will take care of your shareholders and customers.

I also worked with companies where employees were dreading the end of the weekend, were backstabbing each other, and competing with each other rather than with the company’s competitors. The company culture was toxic, and nobody was certain what a tomorrow would bring. Unsurprisingly, the leaders on the top were encouraging those behaviors, and they spread like a virus. And yet, despite the atmosphere of fear, and tensions around achieving business results, these companies didn’t do that well. As we know that there is a direct correlation between the quality of the leader and the quality of the business results of the company, and in the essence of its individuals, these results are not that surprising.

What will then the future leadership look like?

According to available data, the future leader needs to be innovative and flexible over anything else. To change and adapt to the new era will be essential not only for the individuals but for the company’s survival in general.

Promote digital literacy, AI, and machine learning

The role of future leaders is to train their people on how to transition to the world where AI will be taking more and more place in our workplace and will become a normal part of business operations. Starting from eliminating the fears about being replaced by robots, through the possible areas of automation to promoting digital literacy skills, leaders in the future will have the key roles in transitioning to a more digital world. Automation of processes will release a lot of space for honing the soft skills and can be also used to enhance and improve the employees’ experience.

Embracing the purpose and meaning

The purpose-driven lifestyle took over since the pandemics locked us all inside. I had very prominent clients quitting their high-paying jobs simply because they realized that “their heart was not in anymore” and the only motivation was the monthly paycheck. That is often for the top-performers not enough. It seems that this trend is nowadays widely spread, and people are demanding to be a part of the company’s purpose, and make a social impact.

Creating a culture that motivates people to stay

People rarely leave the workplace for the sake of better earnings, but often leave because of the company culture, or an uninspiring boss. A future leader must ensure that he creates a culture that motivates people to stay, not drives them away. While the ongoing globalization and virtual teams make it challenging to create a culture that will motivate people to stay, a role of a future leader is to ensure that this will be happening. By giving people in the whole organization the voice, and more importantly, listening to their voice, by embracing differences, and allowing everyone to utilize their strengths rather than put them to the box, the future leaders will have to work even harder on creating appealing cultures.

Empowering people, attracting talent and intellectual property

People are always the most important thing in the company, and as a leader, you should never put that into your mind. That’s why there is so much emphasis on the recruitment process, training of new hires, and then, the further employees’ development. What will be different in the future is that the employees’ development shouldn’t be tied to one particular role, but rather to the company’s vision, and utilizing individual skills. That not only strengthens the organization as such, but will also help employees to make qualified decisions, increases productivity, and decreases dramatically micromanagement.

Empathy as a top must-to-have skill

Empathy has always been a key skill for the leader, but its need is now emphasized more than ever – with the pandemic’s impact on mental health, an increase in stress, and pressure to innovate. It is proven that an empathetic leader has a direct impact on employees’ engagement, and their innovative ideas. Empathy tops the list of what leaders must possess.

Embrace inclusion and diversity as a way to innovative solutions

Inclusive and diverse teams are the key to finding innovative solutions – often from very unlikely places because they are coming with a fresh perspective. An example? There are numerous ones, but the most famous ones are probably the hospital that drastically improved the patient transfers from surgery rooms to ICU by following the same processes as the F1 pit crews or the biotech giant that wanted to make MRI scans less stressful for kids by playing the images and audio stories from Disney movies. Any leader in the future must actively build inclusive teams to bring such innovations to their companies.

Let me conclude by saying that we’re living in a very fast-changing environment. We will experience more changes in the upcoming decades than we have experienced in the past hundreds of years. The question only is how fast we can be to follow those changes, and our leaders are, undoubtedly, the key element to that.