The leader of the future.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Let’s be real. Again.
The leaders of the future look nothing like the leaders of the past. And, let’s hope, the leaders of today undergo an evolution that will enable the workforce of the future to be everything that we expect and hope for them to be. We ARE counting on them.
This means leaders of today need to get out of the way or evolve. If you are a true authentic leader, I know you can do this.
The workplace of the future will demand leaders that understand the fundamentals behind getting to gender balance in their organization. The workplace of the future will demand leaders that are culturally literate. And, the workplace of the future will demand that leaders effectively embrace a multi-generational workforce.
Gender Balance
As a leader it is essential to learn the fundamentals of why and how to achieve gender balanced teams in your organization. It is not just HR’s job, it is not just the job of the CEO, nor the job of your boss or your boss’s boss. Plain and simple, it is YOUR job. Your job as a leader, a leader that people will want to follow, is to be able to ask the hard questions and implement change.
This means that you understand why your company (which overall consists of 50% women) is still NOT gender balanced and can answer that it is because the majority of women hold staff or support roles in predominantly one or two departments only. This means that you know why it is important to add more women into your engineering development teams that are creating the next AI and machine learning platforms. This means that you understand why it is important to fix the broken ladder rung for women and that you possess forward vision in pursuing new pathways (or skyways!) to leadership for women.
To be a leader of the future it is critical to know why gender balance is important and then to understand the framework for how to lead in dismantling this legacy of imbalance.
Cultural Literacy
The leader of the future will also understand, and I mean REALLY understand, the people that they work with, their backgrounds, their cultural belief systems, and be open to viewpoints and outlooks that are different from one’s own. I’m not talking “diversity & inclusion” in the context of today. I’m talking the future of leadership where there will be no need for D&I departments sitting within HR. Instead, pure cultural literacy and an understanding of people will be the default, leaders who take the time to learn about others and be open to differences. THIS is leadership.
Multi-Generational Teams
Being a leader of the future means embracing your multi-generational workforce without judgment or bias. Age is a number, yet so is performance. Young doesn’t always mean agile and available for long hours. Old doesn’t always mean slow and outdated. The next decade will test our inter-generational leadership skills as we see a greater breadth of generations working side-by-side than ever before in history. As young enter the workforce with different kinds of learning credentials out of high school and as old are retiring later and later, the leaders of the future must lead with open minds, open hearts, and have the vision to be effective across all age groups.
This is the future of leadership. Time to get on the boat and embrace gender balance, cultural literacy, and multigenerational teams. Someone else is not doing the work for you. It’s your job, leader.
First published by Kristi Rible at www.thehuumangroup.com