Are New Leaders Ready to Lead?

In my last article we saw how we can balance professional and personal life. This month’s focus will be on “Young Leaders”.

New generation leadership is about leading in the most turbulent of times. Leadership in the current times are influenced by constant change, geopolitical volatility, technological disruptions, and economic and political uncertainty. Leadership in the current era is about taking not one, but many courageous decisions. There are important implications when it comes to managing disruptions and forces of change.

Leadership has significantly evolved over the last two decades, in correlation with the evolving dynamics and complexity of the corporate world. In conjunction with our roles at work, our personal lives have also evolved. Leadership has a new definition and characteristic in both our personal and professional lives.

Mastering and staying on the top of these major forces of change will be the defining characteristics of new generation leaders.

I have listed below the critical success factors and characteristics for new generation leaders:

Clarity of Direction

They choose projects carefully and, with their long-time horizons, view setbacks as temporary blips in an otherwise straight path to a goal.

Thinking and Acting Systemically

They posses understanding and empathy for others — but they can’t let everybody’s “stuff” allow them to lose focus

Resiliency

They can maintain equilibrium under pressure, leadership resiliency is about handling stress, uncertainty, and setbacks well.

Influence

They develop a range of influencing styles to help get different people with different perspectives on board and gain cooperation to get things done.

Learning Agility

They can adjust, adapt, respond, and be resourceful in the face of change.

Thoroughness

They prepare well for meetings and are professional in making their presentations. They have a sense of whose support can help them at various junctures.

Participative Management Style

They encourage subordinates to put in maximum effort and to be part of the team, promise them a share of the rewards, and deliver on their promises.

Analytical Thinking

They understand that they cannot achieve their ends overnight, so they persevere—using tact—until they do.

These behavioural and personality characteristics are critical to shape the new generation leader’s ability to lead, sustain and grow their organizations. They should be able to drive a strong sense of purpose throughout the business to guide future direction and to strongly impact performance.

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With over three million people promoted to management roles every year, training and mentoring is critical.

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In conclusion, new generation leaders are being tasked with the objective of “becoming different” and “becoming better”. The forces that will test the mettle and character of a new generation leader are not organization specific anymore and nor are they category- or industry-specific issues. They are much bigger, wider and more impactful in terms of the ability to disrupt organizational strategies and growth paths.