Part 1: Key Insights from the Future Leaders Summit
After being a corporate speaker and trainer for three decades, I recently ventured into the virtual world to host my first online event: the Future Leaders Summit. With an incredible 31 guest speakers, the Summit attracted thousands of attendees from nearly 100 different countries. And wow! I certainly learned a lot! And now I’d love to share some of my key insights with you.
What an honor it was to interview some of the world’s leading leadership experts and best-selling authors as they shared cutting-edge insights into the future of work, the changes and challenges we all face, and the essential skills needed for the future. With such a diverse range of speakers and topics, my goal was to inspire existing leaders, new leaders, potential leaders, entrepreneurs and independent entrepreneurs, in fact, anyone who wants to grow professionally and personally.
In part 1, I share some key insights from my interview with Graeme Codrington, a renowned futurist, researcher, and professional speaker. When I spoke with Graeme, it was easy to sense his deep passion for understanding the intersection of people and technology.
Where will the 2020s take us?
In my conversation with Graeme, he shared fascinating insights from his company’s research on where the 2020s may take us. He told me that the key mindset shift for us as humans is to look at the tasks we want machines to do.
Here’s the good news: About 30-40% of what people do can’t be done by machines. And even better news: there are several key skills that computers aren’t going to develop any time soon.
horizon scan
One of these key skills is what Graeme calls horizon scanning, or “what if” thinking. This is the ability to look to the future, to see what is coming and to develop scenarios. Many people have the attitude of wanting to protect systems that already exist. However, today’s leaders envision a future different from the one that seems inevitable given current systems.
creativity and intuition
Another key skill is the ability to generate new ideas, and Graeme said this is still something we don’t fully understand. There is a science behind this, but it is still very much related to intuition or intuition. In practical terms, this means knowing when it’s appropriate to work “outside the rulebook.” Human skills are needed to know when rules and procedures are not working and then find a creative and intuitive solution.
personal intelligence
I like the term personal intelligence that Graeme uses. It’s an interesting twist on the standard term we’re all familiar with, emotional intelligence. The focus here is really about knowing yourself. This includes being aware of your strengths and being comfortable with your weaknesses. It’s about being very aware of what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, and recognizing that because of that you have a team around you to compensate.
The best organizations in the 2020s will have leaders and people who are highly in tune and comfortable with who they are.
I was not surprised that Graeme mentioned the importance of knowing ourselves as leaders and recognizing that we have a team around us, because this is something that many of my Summit guests also talked about. So stay tuned for part 2 when I’ll share some of the key insights from my interview with Mark Sanborn, who is passionate about sharing that we don’t need a title to be a leader.
I hope you have enjoyed learning some of the key insights from my interview with Graeme Codrington. I would love for you to share his thoughts on some of the key skills that he believes will be essential for us to future-proof our careers in our age of automation.
Here is your success!
shirley