The future of leadership: robots, remote working and real-time reactions
| Published date | 10 April 2017 |
| Pages | 89-90 |
| Date | 10 April 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-12-2016-0112 |
| Author | Oliver Watson |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
The future of leadership: robots, remote
working and real-time reactions
Oliver Watson
Oliver Watson is Executive Board
Director for UK and North America,
PageGroup, London, UK.
Navigating the changing
leadership landscape
It is no secret that the ability to spot
and nurture leadership is key to
business success. But, as
technology continues to
revolutionise the way we live, work
and lead, are companies fully
equipped for what lies ahead?
As an organisation that places some
of the world’s best talent into
leadership positions, PageGroup
always has one eye on the future,
and it is recently partnered with
trends predictor Foresight Factory to
look at exactly how leadership might
look in five to ten years.
The resulting report focusses on the
key challenges impacting senior
leadership today, examines the
trends shaping the future of
leadership and also gets to grips
with the tricky transition from people
manager to business leader.
Here is a snapshot of what we
discovered.
Internal challenges
Future-proofing your business is
critical to success – in fact, the
Institute of Leadership &
Management (ILM) discovered that
more than nine out of ten UK
organisations say that a lack of
leadership skills is affecting their
ability to achieve their goals.
Despite this, the majority of
organisations currently struggle to
identify future leaders, citing a lack
of succession planning, difficulty
understanding the core challenges
that future business leaders will
face and an inability to separate
management versus leadership
skillsets as key pain points.
External powers at play
Combined with these internal
challenges, a progressively more
global and digital world brings with
it a whole new set of problems.
With workforces increasingly
diverse, dispersed and digital, a
leaders’ ability to adapt to,
motivate and mobilise
multiculturalism has never been
more crucial.
As flexible working impacts
traditional working patterns and
structures, and leaders contend
with competing priorities and
growing complexity of processes
and systems, even basic
leadership tasks can become
difficult to perform (Institute of
Leadership and Management,
2014).
Meanwhile, digital is no longer an
emerging concept, it is an
embedded business practice –
requiring companies to identify
leaders with the abilities to
navigate in an online world –
something that is far easier said
than done.
Strategic commentary
DOI 10.1108/SHR-12-2016-0112 VOL. 16 NO. 2 2017, pp. 89-90, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 89
To continue reading
Request your trial