Leadership Roles Beyond 2020 and Key Changes from a Recruiter’s Perspective

Leadership roles are evolving in the 2020s. And with that evolution of roles, leaders are evolving, too. For instance, leadership is more about guiding not supervising. In contrast to routine task direction, managers and leaders understand what their employees want from their job. In addition, they understand how to achieve the best outcomes. And today, executive leadership knows how to engage and retain employees to get the jobs done right.

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Some of the clarifying ways that all leaders adapt are through the development and broadening of base leadership skills. Many of these are active leadership skills such as passion, action, selling a vision, and problem-solving. Of course, these will continue to strengthen in importance for diverse leadership roles in the 2020s.

Adding to the Skill Sets of Core Leadership Roles

Other key leadership skills that continue to be important in the next decade are flexibility, comprehensive thinking, and risk-taking. Leaders will also want to retain focus on humility, empathy, influence, cultural fit, authenticity, and openmindedness.

Future leaders and managers are experts at assessing the skill sets of candidates. Not only will team members need to be analytically competent, but they will also need to have soft skills. For example, employees need to demonstrate both creative problem-solving and people skills. Furthermore, managers that identify these competencies and leverage them are in a good position to build successful teams.

Beyond these skills, successful leaders demonstrate that they represent changing thought processes and use them to unite organizations. Similarly, their focus should be on moving groups forward toward a common cause.

Leadership Roles and Leaders Move Fearlessly Forward

Leaders that are Agents of Change

Successful leaders and managers in the 2020s step outside their comfort zone and welcome – even drive – change. These leaders have courage, strategic focus, and wisdom to take leaps of faith and find ways to achieve business goals. Above all, they support the evolution of their organization and teams to thrive in rapidly changing environments.

Leaders that are at Ease with the Unknown

The top leaders and managers are comfortable with chaos, uncertainty, and the unknown. They thrive and work well when things aren’t clearly defined or predictable, and they stay fast and nimble to respond quickly and effectively in a dynamic operating environment. These leaders are the ones who are best prepared to take their teams and organizations to the next level.

The Ability to Identify New Solutions

Similarly, as agents of change,  leaders and managers in 2020 and beyond are innovative and creative, with a demonstrated ability to come up with new solutions. Changing business landscapes and disruptive technology means capturing new opportunities and ideas. These leaders are successful at shaping the impact of disruptive forces of change, rather than being passive and reactive.

Create New Areas for Growth

The best leaders and managers successfully guide their organization and teams through the major cultural demographic shift already in progress. These leaders recognize it as a growth opportunity, and they leverage strategies like cultural fluency and intelligence, innovative team-building, and novel marketing strategies reflecting the new cultural demographics. Diversity is seen by these leaders as not a cost center, but a profit center encompassing the talent and market for strategic growth.

Leadership Roles that Take Action

Finding and Closing Opportunity Gaps Quickly

The successful leaders and managers are those who identify and close opportunity gaps in their market. In doing so, they effectively manage competitive threats as they arise and anticipate trends and solutions. Broadening observations to find opportunities, exploring new frontiers, and identifying timing and depth of opportunities are critical elements. In addition, they innovate to overcome opportunity gaps and find new ways of doing things and driving team to evolve to meet goals.

Leading and Managing for Results

The top managers of the future may be those who focus on results only, rather than the how and where of team members’ work. The best managers will act to create work environments where the emphasis is on results and output, rather than hours logged and processes. This reflects a workforce that’s becoming more autonomous and independent, and the impact could be greater job satisfaction and employee empowerment. Leaders will need to have exceptional communication skills and relationship-management ability.

Leadership Roles that Respect and Embrace Knowledge

Leading for the Wisdom-Based Economy

As industries move further away from traditional workplace models with top-down, siloed, and hierarchical structures, leaders and managers must support cultures and teams that reflect the wisdom-based, not knowledge-based, economy. Knowledge and information are ubiquitous, so to stay competitive you need to do more with what you know. Promoting diversity of thought, along with continuous evolution, are key.

The Importance of Being Technologically Savvy

Whilst the leaders and managers of 2020 and beyond won’t necessarily be coding experts, they will have a comprehensive understanding of technology applications, capabilities, and trends. They need to have the technical skills to be able to advise their teams, and this can mean IT and other types of technical skills.

As the role of technology in organizations shifts from support efficiency to driving effectiveness and strategic vision, companies will require tech expertise among their senior ranks. These leaders need to be able to delegate between technology and human resources to maximize both types of resources.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence

As we leave the top-down structures behind and shift towards flatter and less hierarchical organizations, managers and leaders need to be emotionally intelligent individuals who can understand and invest in their people in order to empower them to flourish. Traits like accountability, transparency, fairness, honesty, and an ability to design systems and processes for humans are unlikely to be replaceable by AI tools in the near future, so they’ll be invaluable in the future leaders of the coming years.

Dealing with Cognitive Overload

As technology tools continue to evolve and the pace of work intensifies, the top managers and leaders of the coming years will be successful at managing cognitive overload. They’ll effectively deal with data and information from multiple sources and continue to adapt to the huge volumes of information moving through organizations.

Leadership Roles that Identify and Adapt

Outcentric leadership

The successful leaders of 2020 and beyond will be those who are “outcentric,” as opposed to egocentric. In tight labor markets dominated by millennials, the traditional do-it-my-way approach might not be effective. Outcentric leaders and managers are focused on developing their teams. As a result, they encourage them to be active, valuable contributors and value their input. They empower their teams and don’t micromanage. These leaders focus on the overarching business goal and build and support their team from that reference point.

Self-Discovery in Leadership Roles

Leaders and managers of 2020 and beyond are open to self-discovery. They are willing to explore biases and how they impact their own decision making. By staying open to self-discovery, these leaders stay open to diverse points of view. In this way, they are effective at managing diversity and proficient at encouraging and building on employee input. Because of this approach, they experience more cohesive teams, better employee satisfaction, higher productivity, and enhanced organizational performance.

Charismatic Communicators

The leaders and managers are good at communicating in a personalized yet contextualized way. These charismatic leaders engage employees and drive change by sharing personal experience and practical examples. In addition, they ground their stories in the organizational context. Also, these leaders and managers use personal communications to create inclusive teams and demonstrate concern for success and well-being. The outcome of this meaningful narrative can be smoother change, quicker buy-in from team members, and a cohesive team or organizational culture that supports the organization’s evolution.