Future of Work – Where EVERYONE Will be a Leader

In the future of work, everyone will be a leader.

Why?

The skill set of a leader include superior communication skills, negotiation skills, conflict management skills, relationship building skills, critical thinking skills and more.

The skills listed above are not just for leaders anymore – everyone within the organization needs to up level his or her ability to think and behave like a leader.

In an ILM research report it found that in the future of work teams will need to be agile, communication will need to be swift and decisions will need to be made quickly. This requires that every member on the team be a ‘leader’.

The key element for success in a company where everyone is a leader is a culture of  ‘shared leadership’.

The immediate response to the statement that ‘everyone will be a leader’ may be negative. You may think it would never work because there would be too many cooks in the kitchen. That thinking would be true IF you were trying to make everyone a leader in the traditional sense.

In order for a culture of ‘everyone is a leader’ to work there needs to be a foundational structure of ‘shared leadership’ otherwise it won’t work.

In the future of work where shared leadership will be the norm the structure of everyone as a leader will work beautifully and here’s how:

• Everyone will have the fundamental leadership skills developed to the highest level possible which increases personal contributions
• Everyone will focus on sharing leadership in order to get the results as a team
• Shared leadership will increase employee engagement and happiness and is conducive to part time and remote working structures
• Everyone as a leader creates ‘real’ accountability due to a standard of personal leadership and autonomy within teams

What can you do now to be future ready now?

• Create buy in and dialogue around a shared leadership approach
• Provide training and development for existing leaders and all non leaders on evolutionary leadership skills
• Review HR structures to see if they are in alignment with a shared leadership culture such as incentives for teams and recognition for shared leadership behaviors