The five qualities of a good leader in a changing world

We live in interesting times. With digital disruption, jobs of the future will be vastly different from what they are today.

Just exactly what they will look like is hard to say. According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report, by 2020, over a third of the desired core skillsets of most occupations will comprise skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today.

From what we can already see today, jobs of the future will be a lot more flexible, collaborative and mobile. Portfolio careers will be on the increase, in that people will likely not only switch jobs several times in their lifetime but also follow multiple pursuits. Humans will work alongside robots, and softer skills such as sociability, creativity and critical thinking will rank high with hiring managers.

Amid these shifts, the key to resilience is to be adaptable and open. At the same time, some qualities of success remain constant. In particular, everyone has a take on leadership. Over the years, I have developed my own mantra in this regard, something I refer to as the five I’s of leadership.

• Individual accountability. Leaders are people who take an end to end view of the universe, of their world and of their jobs. They take ownership, problem-solve, and hold to the notion that the buck stops with them. In large organisations, it is easy to push decision-making up the chain, or hide behind a consensus. Those with individual accountability, however, don’t do that. They accept that their role is not limited to a microcosm or a silo or space. Rather, they know that they have an ability to make an impact and hold themselves accountable for end outcomes.
• Initiative. Initiative is the capacity to define an agenda. In our highly wired world, most of us could live our whole lives working on an inbox. Turn on the PC in the morning these days, and one is flooded with a hundred messages. We could spend the whole day working off messages in our inboxes – which is someone’s agenda. Or we could create our own outbox, which is to define our own agenda for impact. The real trick in leadership is: How can we define an agenda that leaves our job, board or community a better place than what we inherited or found?
• Innovation. In this fast-changing world, now more than ever before, leaders need to embrace a spirit of innovation. Innovation is not about creating the new iPhone; it is having the capacity to question the status quo. One thing the technology revolution taught us is that everything can be done differently. This is harder said than done because we are all creatures of habit. Leaders question why things are done the way they are, and make it a priority to reimagine what is the customer’s true job to be done. 
• Inspiration. Leaders inspire others, and take people along with them on a journey. These are not just people who are junior, but also peers, adversaries, seniors. To be able to inspire, leaders have got to be able to communicate – to sell a vision – and take people on paths and directions that they did not even know existed.
• Intent or purpose. Finally, leaders must have intent or a sense of purpose, both for themselves as individuals or the organisation they are directing. What is our purpose on earth? Why were we born? What are we going to leave behind as a legacy? If we are able to grasp the answers to these questions, and to act with a sense of purpose, that will be extraordinarily powerful.

All of us are leaders in our own right. Wherever we are, and whatever we are called to do, if we can exemplify these five qualities, we can make a big difference amid the changes upon us.