4 Future of Work Skills Every Leader Needs

The basics skills of a good leader include communication, conflict resolution and delegation – the master skills needed for leaders to be future of work ready go way beyond the basics. 

Here are 4 future of work skills that go beyond the basics:

1. HIQ – Human Intelligence Quotient is the ability to understand human behaviour – leaders of the future will have enhanced abilities to understand people at higher levels. For example a leader will look beyond the face value of an employee behaviour and instead investigate the psychology behind a behaviour – if a millennial is perpetually arriving later than agreed a leader with high HIQ would investigate the situation such as where does the millennial travel from, how does the millennial get to work and come up with creative ways to help the millennial get to work easier.
2. Emotional Mastery – beyond emotional intelligence is emotional mastery – leaders of the future will need to build their emotional mastery muscle. This includes being hyper aware of his or her own emotional range – typical emotional reactions to high pressure situations and being able to choose and respond with emotional appropriateness.  In addition a leader with high emotional mastery will be able to discern the emotions of others and customize his or her communication approach to attune to the emotions present in an interaction.
3. Intuitive Creativity – master leaders are often highly intuitive and able to read people and situations with clarity. The future of work skill needed by leaders to inspire and increase motivation of their teams requires intuitive creativity. Intuitive creativity is the blend of heightened intuition along with the ability to link creative solutions to what is being intuited. For example a leader may have an employee who says that he or she is engaged however the leader can ‘read’ that this is not true. With intuitive creativity the leader would gently guide the employee to share that they are not happy or engaged – then the leader would offer creative options based asking questions , gathering information along with intuition to come up with plans of action.
4. People First Perspective –  every where we turn we are hearing about automation, robots taking jobs, AI and digital transformation. These are real and relevant to the future of business AND leaders who are focused primarily on technology solutions and getting people to ‘get on the bus’ are missing a key piece to being a future ready leader. Leaders must be building the daily muscle of ‘people first’ and to continually ask “how does this idea, project, technology ultimately improve results for people?” (customers, employees, suppliers etc.) A people perspective is a skill and requires leaders to give equal or more importance to being a better human being than placing higher importance on technology and profits.