Leadership and the Future
Look around you, there are no shortages of potential leaders for the future. But will they be ready to lead when they are in leadership roles? How are we preparing leaders for the future?
There are some stellar youth leadership programs and one of the best is found in the Girl Scouts. Since Girl Scouts was founded over 100 years ago, the organization has progressed in conjunction with the issues facing young girls and with the evolution of women in business and leadership, web design and innovation. (Fast Company, October, 2011).
There is no doubt that leadership development for future leaders will look different than it looks today. In addition to curriculum updates a la the Girl Scouts, it will be essential that leadership development also factors in the way the young people think since technology has been woven into their lives. We know the Millenials and GenXers are digitally savvy, but think about the even younger ones coming up, Generation C (named for connectivity, communication and collaboration) ". . .if millennials and Generation C think differently, think about how will your organization design and engage young leaders in profoundly new ways for when Generation C joins the workforce?"
To engage these up and coming leaders, three future trends are summed up by Mike Henry, a leadership development practitioner:
Leadership development will become more personal. As organizations become flatter and as they cut back on people expenses, organizations will purchase less and less leadership development. As a result, more individuals make the selections of what training is purchased; more purchases will be made one-person-at-a-time. Also, more will demand the ability to set their own pace.
Leadership development becomes more internal. It becomes more about who you are, than how you behave once you have a position. Besides, there simply aren’t enough positions, and too many of us have been victimized by someone we didn’t respect who just happened to be in a leadership position. More and more of leadership development will continue to be about how to gain the respect and trust of others or how to inspire others. Respect and trust become the fuel for the new leader.
Trial and error feedback loops will accelerate. Several factors in our world point to everything happening quicker. We won’t listen to a week-long training class and then try to apply that in our jobs for the next 6 months. We need our leadership development in blog-post sized chunks so we can try them out this afternoon. And if they don’t work in a day or two, we’ll try something else
Source: Lead Change Group, 6 Trends of Leadership Development
Article Curated by Jeni Nichols, Sonoma Leadership Systems
Note from the Editor:
We've been delivering The Leadership Challenge Workshop for many years and have seen leaders grow and gain skill and confidence. We are grounded in the belief that leadership is an observable and learnable set of skills and abilities. The co-authors of The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner state. . “ any skill can be strengthened, honed, and enhanced if we have the motivation and desire, the practice and feedback, the role models and coaching, and the support and recognition.”
The future needs good leadership and it's our job to provide future leaders opportunity to strengthen and hone their skills. . . .and most importantly be a role model for them.
To be an integral part of leading in the future, leaders must learn new skills. To help you do that, look into The Leadership Challenge Mobile Leader Tool now available at iTunes. It's compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. . We've found it to be a way to ensure that we're forward thinking and preparing for the future by checking in with the present.
- Pat Schally,
pat@sonomaleadership.com
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Over 25 years of ongoing research, with data from over 3 million individuals makes The Leadership Challenge® the most trusted name in developing leaders. For more information on this leadership development model, click below.
