Over the past two years, I’ve conducted 100 weekly interviews with top executives, academics, consultants and diplomats from around the globe. For the 100th anniversary, I want to revisit the key themes and summarize some key learnings.
Below, we dive into what top thinkers and leaders are focusing on. These leaders continue to build their own inner capacity to deal with life’s challenges, and are staying current on a broad range of topics that impact their organizations, from technology to geopolitics. They are focusing on evolving their organizations to remain successful as the ecosystem in which they operate continually changes.
Here are seven tips I've gleaned from speaking with the amazing leaders who enable us to overcome the challenges we face and create a brighter future than our current reality:
1. Realize your leadership potential, planning and managing your development. Many successful careers start with a clear sense of purpose and values. Several of our successful leaders spoke about their journeys, including how they started with a strong sense of who they were and what they wanted to contribute to the world. Their purposeful foundation set their direction and also gave them strength as life’s challenges arose.
2. Practice resilience and wellbeing. Every leader faces challenges in their professional and personal life. The listener data tells us many are interested in topics such as mindfulness and understanding, and managing their brains. As they face increasing demands and complexity, the need to manage thinking and energy becomes paramount. Highly effective leaders continue to develop better coping systems to keep up and avoid overwhelm and burnout. They are also managing their thinking and unconscious habits.
3. Maintain a leadership mindset of the future. The definition of strong leadership is evolving. Several interviews discuss topics relating to updating the leadership algorithm or leadership mindset to enhance the overall capacity. These include conversations about a strategist mindset roughly aligned with Jim Collins’ Level 5 Leadership model. Leaders need to continue to understand the ecosystem in which they operate and enhance skills across a broad range of topics.
4. Manage emerging risks. Leaders and their organizations are facing risks now that were not as prevalent even 10 years ago. Two that stand out based on listener volume are cyber security and smear campaigns. Leaders and boards are concerned about the possible loss they face if they are hit with either of these. Leaders are educating themselves on the risks and possible solutions.
5. Learn about trends and build skills. As organizations become more complex, leaders are building skills in areas that they didn’t need to understand in the past. These skills range from understanding the quickly evolving field of analytics, to storytelling in order to improve communication, and learning to work across a workforce with a broader range of ages and expectations, such as millennials. The range of topics leaders need to be aware of is increasing, and there are skills that are becoming more important as we read about topics like how warmth improves leadership success, according to the Kellogg School.
6. Go global. Organizations continue to work across borders and employ a global workforce. Global thought leaders are focusing on issues ranging from building cultural awareness, to engaging with a diverse workforce, to citizen diplomacy in engaging productively to impact global issues. Leaders need to build the capacity to continually evolve their organization.
7. Understand evolution. In addition to staying current on trends and making small changes, leaders need to develop the ability to continually update and even transform their organizations. This transformation builds on all the prior topics. Leaders need to develop transformational skills and identify key areas of focus as they manage a myriad of projects. Topics in this section involve focusing on creating a highly engaged and vibrant organization, managing the ups and downs of complex change, and building an organization that continues to learn and grow in response to significant industry changes.
As leaders and their organizations face ongoing changes, they will need to continue to update how they think about leadership and how they manage their energy to be able to navigate the challenges with sufficient clarity and energy.
Today’s leaders also need to continue to stay abreast of the latest trends. They need to bring their full energy to update their organization. In doing so, they should leverage the latest trends to meet their mission and delight a broad range of stakeholders — from clients and employees, to financiers and the communities in which they operate.
