Leadership Development – Future Unlimited

10th August 2030, Moscow Russia. Alisha is preparing for an opportunity of a lifetime — the kick- off meeting of her first project as a Program Director for sustainable energy generation, and conservation Inc. It has been a tough competition with thousands being evaluated across the globe for this mission critical project. She is 24 years old and has been chosen because of her unique ability of working with diversity of all kind. Her core human expertise is inclusion and sustainability of all forms of life. Alisha is excited about the opportunity yet anxious about the huge expectations from the project.

Her team includes Troy, a 13 year old from Bulgaria, who has a few patents in natural energy generation processes; Maya a 69 year old grandmother from Peru who has been key source for galvanizing support of world economic forum and sponsorship from 29 countries towards the need for clean energy for our future generations; Ki is 40 year old aboriginal from Australia who has been researching with his tribal roots to capitalize the universal energy for community well-being; Rex and Leo are robots based out of San Francisco with expertise in big data and machine language programming; Kabir is 32 year old environment scientist with expertise in systems thinking and design and has a unique ability to decipher natural process flows and design aligned systems.

The team is meeting virtually for the first time, where everyone is working from their own home offices and logging into the meeting through their holographs representing them. The biggest challenge for Alisha is to develop a shared purpose and vision which is compelling enough for every member to commit into the program and get involved in all passion and energy.”

This will not be fiction but a norm by 2030 — we will neither be solving similar problems like today nor will our operating norms will have any resemblance to what’s there today. Naturally, all the skills and competencies needed to succeed in today’s world will be under scanner. Diversity of all kinds will get their true expression and appreciation, geographical boundaries will come down, office infrastructure will be unaffordable, transport producing any kind of pollution will be heavily taxed, environment conservation will be emerging as the new industry. With artificial intelligence and machine language at its peak, human research will be focused on expanding human intelligence and brain capacity. 

The paradigms of leadership will go through serious transition too. We will not have the luxury of having teams who will think and act like us, operate from same locations, nor will have the time to interact and build relationships. While skills and competencies will go through changes, some of the personality related traits will continue to hold good. Shared vision and purpose will be the core binding factor for the teams and organizations and the ability of leaders to create the same will be biggest differentiator. As major job of a leader will be to develop solutions for the situations and issues which have no precedence, curiosity and learnability will be important to succeed. Leaders will have to take risks and be courageous enough to experiment with new approaches, ideas, innovations. In the world through transition, resilience will be required much more than ever before. Self-awareness will be critical for self-transformation and for driving organizational and social transformation which will be key task for the leaders of the future.

The competence that will differentiate the leaders of tomorrow will be brain capacity and intelligence, systems thinking and ability to tap in huge network for mastery and expertise. There is a huge change in the way we do work with IOT, AI and machine language coming in. Most of the skills that are necessary for employment in today’s world will no longer hold good. Machines are learning and evolving faster than predicted; and to manage and control them, we will need smartness and intelligence of a different kind. Unless we continue to evolve and tap into the true capacity of human brain, we are at a risk of losing the war with machines in long-term. Networks of all kind will hold the true power and capability to create and tap in the network will actually reflect the true potential of human brain. The neural network of individual brain when connected to community network should be able to create neural network that’s multiple times more powerful that IOT in true sense of managing the world.

Leadership Development will be the responsibility and ownership of leaders and to adapt and survive they will have to continuously learn. Although content will be easily accessible, leadership development will be driven by learning from own and others experiences. Learning will be situational with curiosity to understand all related factors and impact, personal reflection and interpretation of impact on self and others, conceptualizing and experimenting with some proof of concepts, and then bringing in the change. 

Leaders will have to work on increasing the brain’s capability using mindfulness techniques or brain exercises that enhances brain power; and organizing mindfulness retreats, brain games, net-working and ideation events will be trends in the future.