Leading Today

The world doesn't slow down.  We live with tons of uncertainty and unpredictability. As leaders, you're all too familiar with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) of today's world. Reflecting back on the last 5 years, there is no shortage of volatility in the past few years - from the pandemic to the ever-evolving economic changes to political and power dynamics. An annual piece of PwC research (PwC 2025) suggested that the following were the top five threats that CEOs are faced with today:

• Inflation

• Unpredictable economic environment making planning and investment difficult.

• Cyber Risks

• Skills Shortages

• Productivity and Growth

CEOs need strong leadership teams to navigate these external and internal changes. I make sure to stay on top of this research to properly serve leaders and their businesses with most relevant leadership development solutions. Given these recent trends, I’ve refreshed my research on leadership skills needs and saw fascinating shifts in the skills leaders need today and in the near future.

External Scan:

In summary, (see citations if you’d like to get into the details) I wasn’t surprised to see that external research emphasizes the following foundational skills 

1. Strategic vision

2. Communication

What I thought was more interesting is that the latest findings point to the increasing importance of more specialized, practical capabilities:

3. Talent development

4. Data literacy

5. Innovation with psychological safety

Not surprising, above all, agility emerges as the paramount skill: embracing ambiguity and operating in the grey - leading their teams through fast, ever-changing terrain.

External research is insightful but not always practical, I decided to pair these findings with internal research I conducted with a client recently identifying leadership gaps for middle-managers. Through that research I’ve also learned a new term for me! Organizational ambidexterity – the ability to simultaneously pursue both exploration (innovation) and exploitation (efficiency) (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2021). To me, this perfectly captures VUCA leadership for middle managers today: leaders need to foster a culture of experimentation while simultaneously empowering distributed teams to make decisions independently around efficiencies (acting like owners). Stay tuned for the next post where I dive into those findings...

What changes are keeping you up at night that you and your business are facing?

How is that impacting your leadership?

Citations:

Bennett, N., & Lemoine, G. J. (2014, January). What VUCA really means for you. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-really-means-for-you

PwC. (2025). PwC's 28th annual global CEO survey. [Report]. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2025/28th-ceo-survey.pdf

 Allen, T. D., Golden, T. D., & Shockley, K. M. (2020). How effective is telecommuting?

Assessing the status of our scientific findings. Psychological Science in the Public

Interest, 1 21(2), 40-68. 1. www.redalyc.org 

Avey, J. B., Reichard, R. E., Luthans, F., & Mhatre, K. H. (2012). Meta-analysis of the

impact of authentic leadership on follower attitudes, behaviors, and performance. The

Leadership Quarterly, 23(4), 681-698.

Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J., & Ying, Z. J. (2021). Does working from home work?

Evidence from a Chinese experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(1),

165-218.

LaValle, S., Lesser, E., Shockley, R., Hopkins, M. S., & Kruschwitz, N. (2020). Big data,

analytics and the path from insights to value. MIT Sloan Management Review.

Li, C., & Sun, J. (2021). Inclusive leadership and team innovation: The mediating roles of psychological safety and team efficacy. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 636253.

Messenger, J. C., & Gschwandtner, T. (2022). Hybrid work: Redesigning how we work.

LID Publishing.

O'Reilly, C. A., & Tushman, M. L. (2021). Organizational ambidexterity in the age of

disruption. MIT Sloan Management Review, 62(4), 44.

Wright, G., & Meadows, C. (2021). Scenario planning for strategic foresight. Springer.