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The 21st century has started with a bang and within these short twenty years, our globe has undergone some major events, incidents, inventions, discoveries, wars, skirmishes etc. The century itself started with Y2K threat.

Then it continued with unfortunate incident of 9/11, Iraq war, launch of Facebook (yes, it is here with us for just about 16 years!!), London under terrorist attack, launch of iPhone, great financial crisis of 2007-08, Syrian war, defaulting of IMF payment by Greece, terrorist attacks on Paris, rise of Greta Thunberg, the Brexit, Corona..It is indeed a long list with a lot more not mentioned!!

So, are these isolated events in respective countries? As we know now, what happens in a corner of a world (Ex: Virus laboratory in a remote area or one bank / country defaulting) affects societies, individuals, businesses, and governments across the world. Each of the above incidents is directly or indirectly changing the way how businesses are run.

But here, let us focus on just what is in future for Business leaders. Can they manage, survive, and progress with the skill sets they picked up in previous century?! Or for that matter, even previous decade?!! A Leader should have toolkit which can handle this highly flexible and ever changing business scenario. That tool kit has undergone a big change too!!

Let us look into few of the changes leadership role must be adopting and is expected to master in new era. Each may need a day to deliberate upon, but let us just list down a few of them:

1. Strategy Reviews: Strategy reviews once a year in an "Annual Strategy" meeting in an exotic resort? Which will also be a well deserved break for Top managers? Just forget it.

It is time to review your strategies on a more frequent basis. Possibly twice a year if not once a quarter. Your business deserves what some strategists calls "always on" reviews. PESTLE changes are taking place at a blink of an eye now.

2. Product range: So, you were producing a range of products. How often these are drastically improved or changed? May be you may want to add or substitute some of your old products with a new range of products.

Remember, what Toyota did in India, replacing a well accepted Toyota Qualis with even better Toyota Innova? You need not wait for customer to change his taste; you can give a better product to customer without him asking for it.

3. Multicultural workforce: Many organizations employ workforce from many states if not from many countries. SAP employs more than 140 nationalities in their workforce. In this age of globalization, in India, organizations can have people from, may be 15 or 20 Indian states or nationalities from abroad.

As a Leader, are you trained to lead these multicultural teams? Can same phrases, words and body languages be used to address employees from such diverse backgrounds?

4. People skills: This brings to your people skills. We are in era of millennial employees who are knowledgeable, confident, know what they want and do not take kindly, if they are abused at work. Just because one occupies a "C suite", it does not mean he is entitled to be arrogant or can use cuss words. Time for leaders to command respect rather than demand respect. And positional power is a "passe".

Do you allow your teams to disagree with you? Or you are happy with a group of "Yes men" surrounding you? Is it not apt to be an empathetic, humane, considerate and "Lead as an example" leader ? Your employees watch your feet not your words!!

5. Performance Appraisals: As a leader are you used to conducting "Annual appraisals"? Still using forcibly fitting your employees into a "Bell curve"? Just for information, many big organizations, such as TCS, IBM, Accenture, have stopped forcibly fitting employees (comparing one employee against another, even though individual, skill sets, work content, innovation level etc, all may be different) into a curve.

It is time to recognize individual contribution and plan reward. And to consider qualitative contribution rather than mostly quantitative contribution. It makes sense to recognize an individual rather than treating him / her as a "data"! Certainly employees are not going to wait once a year, to get feedback about their performance!

6. VUCA world: Does a leader have with him the "stuff" to face VUCA world? Serenity is the last word in business world! A leader is in the top, only because he is expected to see change before others see it, right?!

A VUCA world leader is expected to spend more time in scouting the horizon, looking for opportunities and threats and take proactive actions, rather than reactive actions, after an event happens. But is the present day leader is equipped and trained for this?

7. Collaboration: I touched this point in an earlier article too. As I am penning this, for the first time in human history, a private company, SpaceX, is carrying US astronauts to ISS! New / changing / challenging situations, means more collaboration and partnership at various levels such as Strategic, Operational, Financial etc.

An organization cannot function in a 'silo' anymore. It is highly connected world out there. It makes sense to collaborate with strategically appropriate individuals, organizations, institutions, governments, even competitors, as required. A leader has to take first step.

8. Embracing Technology: Leader must be a "Tech Savvy" person now. Is there any other option? By "Tech savvy", it does not mean a leader must know all that is happening inside his organization alone. It means, he must be aware of all emerging technologies that are out there and also what are fast approaching.

If a CEO of an auto ancillary unit, is not keeping himself updated on what is happening around the world in Battery technology, certainly I would say, he is not tech savvy. On the same breath, if a leader does not adopt required technology (Digital or otherwise) which makes his organization & people more productive, and his customer more happy, obviously he is missing the boat. Right?

9. Celebrate failure: Failure is considered to be a "sin" in many conventional organizations. So everyone is happy to repeat time tested, but outdated process, actions and get limited results. Time for change!! Failure is acceptable and in some cases may be even necessary. A person who has never made mistake has never attempted anything new!

As a leader, learn to recognize and celebrate failure of your team. It may sound crazy, but each failure makes your team more resilient, more innovative and more successful in reaching the objectives.

10. Lead from behind! : I am borrowing this phrase from Nelson Mandela's autobiography, "Long walk to freedom". We have seen enough leaders who always want to be leading and ahead of their teams all the time (sometimes even hiding their teams), especially to showcase success!!

What is required now is "Leading from behind" where a leader sets objectives, form teams, encourage innovations, and empower younger & more agile team members to go ahead, just coming into picture for course corrections. In this way, organization can reap many successes which a single leader can never achieve.

11. Challenge Status Quo: Do not be happy (even if you are making profits !) with your present situation. It may change soon. Remember, only a dead fish will go with the tide. While steps can be small, look for quantum results. "Reasonable man adapts himself to the world, unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself, therefore all the progress depends on unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw

So it becomes important for modern leader to create passion, motivation in his team to go for tough challenges. But as we discussed earlier, this does not mean, driving your team crazy but it means you are going to set your teams on a journey of innovation, self realization and success.

TO SUM IT UP: The role of leadership is never easy. It is said leaders now face 300% more stress compared to the stress leaders faced about 60 years back. Several factors contributes to this increased stress and expectations from a leader. A recent McKinsey article calls for four new roles for leaders. A Leader must be a Visionary, Architect, Coach and Catalyst.

But it only means that leader must be more proactive in learning and keeping himself updated continuously. It is his responsibility to make himself equipped suitably, to take his function / organization through turbulent times. Anybody can steer a ship in placid waters, but it takes a skilled captain to steer a ship through stormy ocean!

Question is, whether leader is trained enough to steer his organization through the ongoing and oncoming storms!!