Chapter 22

Trends Shaping Future Leadership Attributes

Karie Willyerd and Jeanne Meister

In This Chapter

• An overview of shifts in workforce demographics, globalization, and social technologies.
• Effects that workforce changes will have on leadership requirements.
• The essential leadership characteristics of the future.

 

To understand the future of leadership, we first must understand the business conditions leaders will face and the employees who will make up the workforce of the future. Understanding those conditions allows us to predict the kinds of skills and competencies leaders will need over the next decade. We propose at least three major shifts will create new dynamics and new requirements for the leaders of the future:

• shifting workforce demographics
• globalization
• social technologies.

Shifting Workforce Demographics—Age, Gender, and Ethnicity

In nearly every country in the world, the shifts in demographics are unprecedented in the post-industrial age. In the decade from 2000–2010, the population of Europe declined by 1 percent, and the decline is expected to accelerate over the next 40 years. Germany, Italy, and Spain are all expected to experience population declines ranging from 14 to 25 percent (Delong 2004). In many Asian countries the demographic situation is similar to or more pronounced than that seen in Europe. For example, in Japan the working-age population has already peaked, with 3 million fewer workers in 2010 than in 2005. China will have nearly as many senior citizens aged 65 or older as children aged 15 and younger by the year 2030 (Zakaria 2008).

In the United States, the boom and then bust of birth rates has led to large cohorts of generations, such as baby boomers, and small groups such as Generation X (see figure 22-1). The baby boomers, who have dominated the workforce for nearly two decades, will now take a back seat as the millennial generation roars into the workplace. Generation X, the smallest cohort, will never accede as the largest workforce segment. As baby boomers exit the workforce, an interesting question to ponder is whether the next generation of leaders will come largely from Generation X, who have waited patiently for their turn at the helm, or whether they will be passed over in favor of selecting leaders from the largest segment of the workforce, millennials.

As we move into the future, most workplaces will have five generations working side by side—traditionalists, born before 1946; baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964; Gen-eration X, born between 1965 and 1976; millennials, born between 1977 and 1997; and Generation 2020, born after 1997.

Future leaders are thus likely to face the challenge of leading the most age-diverse workforce in history. Those employees who are in the workforce and healthy at 60, according to the World Health Organization, will on average be physically capable of working until they are 74 if they are male and 77 if they are women (WHO 2004). If baby boomers in the United States now work as long as possible, that means that the leading edge of the boomers may not begin retiring until 2020, while some traditionalists will continue to work into their 80s.

At the other end of the age spectrum, millennials will be entering the workforce in record numbers. While they currently represent 22 percent of all workers, by 2014 they will make up almost 47 percent of the workforce (Tapscott 2009). The post-millennial generation, Generation 2020, will be entering the workforce by 2015, so in just a few years, leaders will face the challenge of managing five generations of workers.

The gender composition will also change, as more women are entering the workforce and staying in it (Rampell 2009). Though women still face other issues when it comes to equal employment, women are now about to surpass men in U.S. payrolls for the first time in history. Women are now half of all U.S. workers, and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families, double the number of households in 1967 when the 1950s and 1960s sitcom Leave It to Beaver epitomized the average American family (Shriver and the Center for American Progress 2009).

Ethnicity is also shifting in the United States. From 1980 to 2020, Caucasian workers in the United States will decline from 82 percent to 63 percent. The Latino portion alone will almost triple, from 6 percent to 17 percent, by 2020, and will be almost 30 percent of the U.S population by 2050 (Rodriguez 2008). Thus the face of the new generation of workers will be less and less Caucasian (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education 2009).

Global Markets and Access to Global Talent

Leaders of the future will encounter a marketplace more globally dispersed than any of their predecessors. The churn in Fortune 500 companies is just one example. If a company was on the list in 1980, there was a 56 percent chance that it was still listed in 1994. But for a company listed in 1994, there was only a 30 percent chance of its still being on the list in 2007.

The headquarter locations of the Financial Times Global 500 are increasingly moving to Brazil, Russia, India, and China (collectively known as BRIC). Between 2005 and 2008, the U.S.-based global headquarters decreased from 219 to 169, a decline of 23 percent. Japan also lost slots to the tune of 9 percent in the same period. Brazil collected 6 global headquarters, an increase of 120 percent, while Russia grew by 225 percent, India by 160 percent, and China by a staggering 400 percent (Financial Times 2008). Thus, future leaders will increasingly be working in companies that are not headquartered in the United States.

The ease of conducting work virtually also increases the likelihood that future leaders will have teams based around the globe. Virtual workplaces have workers organized in global teams who may not report to offices, may not keep set hours, and may be compensated more in cash than in benefits. Akin to transient white-collar workers, they collaborate electronically with participants from three or four continents, through virtual worlds, teleconferencing, instant messaging, posting updates to social networks, or by using document-sharing sites. Savvy recruiting functions are able to find talent from around the world, with no need for expensive relocation. Leaders of the future will not only have to work without being in the same location as their teams, they will also have to work asynchronously. Although it is possible to find one or two hours in a day in which to conduct a call linking continents, anything longer than that becomes an imposition for at least one time zone, so the possibility of synchronous work becomes less and less likely. These shifts in how and where work is done will place new demands on leadership skill sets.

The increased access to global markets will create more interdependence between nation states and large multinational companies, causing a need for integration and collaboration among leaders. This collaboration will extend to how leaders interact with governmental institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The global impact of the sub-prime lending crisis in the United States created a painful awareness of how one country’s economic policies and governance can affect other nations. “The CEO of the future is going to have to be somebody who deals well with government,” predicts David Gergen, a media and political commentator (quoted in Reingold 2008).

Social Technologies and Mobile Access to the Exploding Information Universe

At the time of writing this chapter, hundreds of millions of people actively construct, maintain, and communicate their identities using Facebook and a host of other networks such as MySpace, Twitter, Friendster, Orkut, LinkedIn, and Bebo (Facebook 2009). Though this number is substantial, what is even more impressive is how fast it is growing. An estimated 250,000 new users each day are creating online profiles and maintaining them on a social network. Just one year ago, Facebook ranked 45th as a destination spot for traditionalists.

Today it ranks 3rd, according to The Nielsen Company (2009). Video and photo sharing sites have also exploded in popularity. In 2009 people in the United States watched more than 7 billion online video streams per month on sites such as YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo, and Daily Motion. This audience represented almost a twofold increase from the previous year (Swanson 2007). Globally, more than 2.5 trillion text messages were sent in 2008 (Stross 2008).

Along with this unbelievable volume of communication come some standards and expectations of access to information and the expectation of transparent, two-way communication. Anyone who has shopped on eBay or Amazon has been given the opportunity to rate, tag, and comment. Yelp, the website that aggregates user reviews and comments for service providers, is just one example of a philosophy that relies on “the wisdom of the crowds” to contribute and rate anything from restaurants to doctors. In the not-too-distant future, leaders should expect to be evaluated publicly on something like the equivalent of Yelp for bosses. Being open to public feedback will become a requirement for leaders of the future, if this trend continues.

Increasingly, social technologies are penetrating corporate environments as well, with one study showing the top investment for Web 2.0 technologies inside companies is the implementation of social networks.

Leaders must grapple with a host of issues on how to manage all these social technologies and digital content in the workplace as it will affect every part of corporate life. Increasingly, employees are carrying their own social technology connection platforms with them in devices such as laptops, iPods, mobile phones, and slate computers, each one suited to a different aspect of their busy lives. As one Generation X woman said, “I have to keep a list of how to communicate with everyone I know. Brad likes to text and Facebook, but won’t answer voicemail. Tori won’t even join Facebook but does email and texting. Ida loves everything.” Knowing how to communicate with employees is already a challenge and becomes even more so for leaders as the choice of connection platforms increases.

The lines between work time and the rest of life begin to blur as work leaves defined times and spaces. Expectations for leaders to cross the 8-to-5 time barrier will become mandatory to build relationships and trust. At Zappos, an online shoe retailer known for its customer service, managers dedicate 20 percent of their time to after-hours, nonwork activities with their teams, building rapport and trust.

The pace of technology change shows no indication of slowing down. As one article in The New York Times declared, the millennials are already old fogies in cyberspace by their 20s, as Generation 2020 emerges with an expectation of books on e-readers, phone calls via Skype, and applications they’ve used since they were toddlers (Stone 2010). Cody Brown, the 21-year-old founder of kommons and NYU Local posted a guest blog on TechCrunch on April 11, 2010:

If you, as an author, see the iPad as a place to “publish” your next book, you are completely missing the point. What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print then copy and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn’t work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren’t any serious readers anymore? No. He would have looked at the medium, then blown our minds…. I’m 21, I can say with a lot of confidence that the “books” that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.

The need for leaders to be technology confident and constantly learning will accelerate as we head into a future defined by generations who access information so differently than prior generations.

What the Next Generation Wants from Leaders

Who is being led turns out to be just as important as who is leading. According to recent research, looking at the members of a group is just as important, if not more, than looking at the leader. This is because leadership involves leading from within, fitting into the group, and exerting influence, not imposing views from above (Reicher, Haslam, and Platow 2007).

To understand what people want from their managers, we surveyed 2,200 working professionals from four generations around the world on what they seek from employers, both now and in the future. In a second survey, we queried 300 human resources (HR) executives from around the world about the practices they have in play now, and those they expect to use in the future. One of the items we asked of each of the generations was to rate the leader capabilities that were important to them. We then asked HR executives to rate managers in their companies on each of those same areas. Figure 22-2 shows the preferences of more than 500 millennials from around the globe, who as we’ve stated will comprise half of the workforce in less than five years. Their preferences are compared with a skill assessment by HR professionals of the managers of their companies.

In some of these items, the gap between what millennials want and what skills managers have is not far apart. However, there are some important variances to note. For the skills that matter most to millennials, the current leadership skill set is far less than effective. Millennials want managers who will help them develop their careers, sponsor them for development, give them straight feedback, and mentor them. They are not the only generation who wants this, but it is more pronounced for millennials. For example, all the generations agreed they wanted a manager who would give them straight feedback, yet this is a skill rated as ineffective across a wide swath of organizations. Does this suggest that our current training programs on performance management need to be rethought? Instead, should we be focusing on programs and platforms that give managers the skills to give ongoing, constant, bite-sized direct feedback and skills for crucial confrontations when continuous feedback isn’t enough? Is the annual performance review a dinosaur?

Also important to millennials is the need to know that someone is helping them with their careers, their development, and their mentoring and coaching goals. Again, this is rated below average in our current leadership profiles. In an era where anyone can communicate with anyone, anywhere, and at any time, perhaps it is time to rethink what it means to be a leader. If we were to create platforms that unleash the power of peer-to-peer learning, could millennials get their needs fulfilled from anyone in the organization, instead of relying, as is traditionally done, on their managers? Imagine an open mentoring platform that allowed anyone in the organization to volunteer for micro-mentoring engagements that lasted only a few weeks at a time, or allowed managers to buddy up and mentor dozens of employees at a time through an online platform. By having a platform that allows employees to share their knowledge with one another and including rating, tagging, and commenting features, authors are able to get feedback from anyone who views their content. All of these and more are ways we can begin to distribute the traditional role of leadership in ways that enrich both the lives of employees and leaders.

The Emerging Essential Leadership Capabilities

As we have democratized information through the growth of social media tools, our need for bureaucratic hierarchies has been eliminated, and self-governing, involved employees have both the information and power to be involved in the organizational governance process. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, agrees, “In the old organization, you had to have this whole army of people digesting information to be able to feed it to the decision maker at the top. But that’s not the way it works anymore: The information can be available across the ranks, to everyone in the organization. And what you need to ensure is that people have access to the data they need to make their day-to-day decisions. And this can be done much more easily than it could be done in the past. And it really empowers knowledge workers to work more effectively” (Varian 2009).

A few forward-thinking companies have commissioned projects to anticipate what the future of leadership will be in their own organizations, including General Electric and Cisco. Both companies have invested considerable time and effort to define what their leadership capabilities will need to be in the future so that they can begin developing those capabilities now.

We not only reviewed what global shifts were occurring that would affect future leaders, but also talked to some of these companies and thought leaders who want to get ahead of the development curve, and found five leadership areas that seemed to recur. In figure 22-3, we cover five leadership areas that seem to be emerging as requirements for the leader of the future.

Collaborative Mindset

Leaders who have demonstrated a collaborative mindset and who work comfortably in a networked leadership environment will be essential for working in conditions that require cooperating with competitors, working across cultures, and navigating complex markets. Almost any leader rates himself or herself high on collaboration skills, but we believe the collaborative mindset of the future takes this skill set to a whole new level. Allowing decisions to be “hacked,” as Gary Hamel, a professor and management expert, promotes, will improve the quality of decisions, but will require leaders who have thick enough skins to endure letting anyone at any level in the organization have a voice.

Figure 22-3. Five Emerging Leadership Requirements

Being This Kind of Leader ...	Requires These Management Behaviors
Collaborative mindset	• Inclusive decision making • Genuine solicitation of feedback
Developer of people	• Mentors and coaches team • Provides straight feedback
Digitally confident	• Uses technology to connect to customers and employees
Global citizen	• Has a diverse mindset • Prioritizes social responsibility
Anticipates and builds for the future	• Builds accountability across levels • Champions innovation

---

Source: Future Workplace L.L.C. Used with permission.

Recognizing that feedback can come from anywhere, leaders of the future will have to maintain an open mind to sort through inputs from an extraordinary range of voices, from low-level employees to disgruntled customers. Brian Dunn, the CEO of Best Buy, says, “I . . . have a program that searches the Internet anytime somebody mentions Best Buy out there. Sometimes it’s really great things, sometimes it’s obscenity-laden, but I have a huge appetite for it” (Bryant 2009). As Socrates said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Leaders who maintain this mindset, and therefore thirst for collaboration and the wisdom of the crowds, will be well served in the future. Of course they will then need to exercise judgment and experience to make decisions, but seeking collaboration first will be essential.

Developer of People

As we showed earlier, the next generation of employees wants leaders who see the development of people as one of their most important goals, including providing honest feedback, career guidance, and learning opportunities. The mass exodus from the workplace of baby boomers will leave a giant talent hole in organizations. The issue is not that there will not be enough people to fill the slots; rather, the right skill sets will not be available to fill critical roles, and organizations will be competing for the same set of people with the scarce skills needed. Consider that by some estimates only 30 percent of the people eligible to apply for entrance into the military qualify or, that in the United States, a student makes a choice to drop out of school every 28 seconds. The competition for scarce skills will be fierce, necessitating an organizational strategy to develop skills inside the organization. This quest for talent will include reaching into middle schools to entice students to pursue careers in fields where there are not enough graduates. Leaders at all levels will have to play a hands-on role in developing the skills they need for their organizations to compete successfully in the marketplace.

Digitally Confident

The leader of the future also will need to be digitally confident and able to speak the language of the newest generation of workers. The structures of management common to most organizations evolved to control and pass information from level to level in the hierarchy. New technologies have not only made that unnecessary but have also freed people from this hierarchy. Leaders will need to embrace these new methods of communication to connect with a virtual workforce scattered around the planet.

Blogging, wikis, virtual meetings, social networks, microblogging, and video sharing are just a few of the tools that leaders will need to use to reach employees with messages of strategy, direction, change, inspiration, and motivation. Just as baby boomers had to learn how to use email instead of copying and routing interoffice mail envelopes, so will the next generation of leaders need to learn to use the new tools of the trade of leadership in an environment of openness and collaboration.

Global Citizen

A fourth facet of the leader of the future is being a global citizen, in the broadest sense. This means being not only a leader who can work well across cultures but also one who realizes the value of working with governments and NGOs in the intertwined dependencies of the future. Likewise, our leadership and management practices must be informed by the ecology of the organizational environment in which employees reside and in which markets change constantly. Millennials have volunteered their time, are environmentally sensitive, and have seen the abuses of unbridled self-interest in leaders. They will expect to work for leaders who build a company that focuses on the triple bottom line—people, planet and profits.

Anticipates and Builds for the Future

Finally, anticipating the future and building the capability to address it is the fifth capability area required for the leader of the future. As Hamel says, “There’s little that can be said with certainty about the future except this: sometime over the next decade your company will be challenged to change in a way for which it has no precedent” (Hamel and Breen 2007). Being able to scan the marketplace, search for trends, and build a sustainable company will ensure that short-term success leads to long-term viability. This includes building the skill sets needed to support that future and not counting on layoffs and rehiring to get the skills needed, because demand for talent will be tough for all but the most competitive companies.

Honoring the Past, Anticipating the Future

Leaders are constantly faced with the pressures of living in the present, while keeping an eye to the future to navigate the course. If we are to have any hope of shaping the future, we must begin preparing by anticipating it, building our own skills to face it, and helping others to develop their skills. Our debt to those who entrust us with the leadership of their organizations is to build a sustainable organization and a renewable people capability to compete in the global marketplace. Are you prepared?

References

Brown, C. 2010. Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should Be an App, Not an iBook. Accessed June 11, 2010, at http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/11/ dear-authors-your-next-book-should-be-an-app-not -an-ibook/.

Bryant, A. 2009. You Want Insight? Go to the Front Lines. The New York Times, August 15. Accessed November 15, 2009, at www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/business/ 16corner.html? pagewanted=2&_ r=1&sq=You%20Want%20Insights? %20&st=cse&scp=1.

Delong, W. D. 2004. Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. New York: Oxford University Press.

Facebook. 2009. Statistics. Accessed May 15, 2009, at www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics. Financial Times. 2008.

FT Global, 2008. Accessed December 18, 2008, at www.ft.com/reports/ft5002008.

Hamel, G., with B. Breen. 2007. The Future of Management. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. 2009. A National Dialogue: The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Accessed November 30, 2009, at http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/ hiedfuture/ reports/ equity.pdf.

Nielsen Company. 2009. Six Million More Seniors Using the Web than Five Years Ago. Accessed July 14, 2010, at http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/ online_mobile/ six-million-more-seniors-usingthe-web-than-five-years-ago/.

Rampell, C. 2009. As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force. New York Times, February 6. Accessed May 14, 2009, at www.nytimes.com/ 2009/02/06/ business/ 06women.html.

Reicher, S. D., S. A. Haslam, and M. J. Platow. 2007. The New Psychology of Leadership. Scientific American Mind, August–September. Accessed December 17, 2009, at www.scientificamerican .com/ article.cfm? id=the-new-psychology-of-leadership.

Reingold, J. 2008. Meet Your New Leader. Fortune, November 14, 146. Rodriguez, R. 2008. Latino Talent: Effective Strategies to Recruit, Retain, and Develop Hispanic Professionals. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Shriver, M., and the Center for American Progress. 2009. The Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Changes Everything. Eds. H. Boushey and A. O’Leary, October 16. Accessed November 26, 2009 at www.americanprogress.org/ issues/2009/10/ womans_nation.html.

Stone, B. 2010. The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s. The New York Times, January 10. Accessed April 12, 2010, at www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/ weekinreview/10stone.html.

Stross, R. 2008. What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting. The New York Times, December 26. Accessed November 27, 2009, at www.nytimes.com/ 2008/12/28/ business/28digi.html.

Swanson, B. 2007. An Exabyte Here, An Exabyte There…. Accessed June 17, 2009, at www.discotech.org/ 2007/10/ an_exabyte_ here_an_ exabyte_the.php, October 3. Tapscott, D. 2009. Grown Up Digital: How the New Generation Is Changing Your World. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Varian, H. 2009. Hal Varian on How the Web Challenges Mentors. The McKinsey Quarterly: The Online Journal of McKinsey & Co., January. Accessed May 27, 2009, at www.mckinseyquarterly.com/ Hal_Varian_ on_how _the_Web_ challenges_ managers_2286. WHO (World Health Organization). 2004. The World Health Report 2004—Changing History: Annex Table 4. Accessed May 29, 2009, at http://www.who.int/whr/2004/ annex/en/index.html. Zakaria, F. 2008. The Post-American World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

About the Authors

As the vice president and chief learning officer for Sun Microsystems, Karie Willyerd led the top-ranked learning services department in the world, as recognized by ASTD in 2009. She has also been a chief talent officer for a Fortune 200 company, head of global leadership development for H.J. Heinz, and head of people development for Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft. A former journalist, she has had articles printed in dozens of publications, from newspapers to the Harvard Business Review. A cofounder of Future Workplace, along with Jeanne Meister, she is the co-author of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today (2010). She lives with her family in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Jeanne Meister is an internationally recognized thought leader, speaker, and author in enterprise learning. Meister was voted by her peers as one of the 20 top influential training professionals in the United States. She is the author of Corporate Quality Universities (1993) and Corporate Universities (revised 1998), and her research has been profiled in such publications as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Chief Learning Officer, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Workforce Magazine, People and Strategy, and The Financial Times. Along with Karie Willyerd, she is the co-author of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today (2010). She is a cofounder of Future Workplace and frequent blog contributor to Harvard Business.