What was so evident at the World Economic Forum two weeks ago (and what we see so often now in our work with world leaders) is the stark reality that we are at the dawn of a new era. Davos was a dense experience, filled with macro-level discussions and sweeping global trends. Beneath these conversations lies a fundamental truth: Leaders today are being pulled into deeper complexity, and they need help adjusting themselves and their mindsets for the encroaching journey to lead others through this massive shift.
With today’s complexity comes the need for deep leadership—the need to stretch beyond the familiar, to expand leadership capacities, to look inside oneself, and to unlearn what is no longer serving. This is not a strategic challenge for leaders; it’s a personal one. The complexity of the world is in full evidence now. How we are going to navigate it is the biggest challenge we face.
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A New Era
We have visibly moved from a world that used to be complicated, with one crisis that would define a generation, to a world that became multi-complicated, with multiple crises everywhere (or “polycrisis”). Now, we are in a massive shift from complicated towards the complex. This means we are facing situations altogether novel and multifaceted for which there is no precedent, no playbook or “best practices”—fewer and fewer prior experiences to lean into. This naturally has many implications for leaders who will need to be pioneers, willing and determined to carve new paths through so much that is unfamiliar and uncertain. What is particularly conspicuous is how little attention is being devoted to how leaders are to do this. And yet the need for an evolved leadership capable for the complex age is urgent.
As leadership specialists we look at the challenge through that lens, and what was palpable at Davos and what we see daily with our clients is that the journey into leading in the complex world is both an external and internal one. We see leaders taking on the external, filling up and feeding their brain, learning about AI, learning about geopolitics. Outward curiosity is there. But there is an accompanying need for more inward curiosity. What is missing and pressing is for those who are going to lead their organizations through this new complex era to look inward and to ask:
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What do I need to do this?
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What am I missing?
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Where are my weak spots?
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Where do I gain energy and where do I drain it?
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How can I get there with and through others?
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How am I developing myself?
How Leaders Can Respond
In the past, complicated world, leaders needed to steer and to provide answers. They relied on the competencies of results orientation and team leadership and on the trait of determination. In the “polycrisis” or multi-complicated world, leaders needed to make sense of trade-offs, to connect dots among the crises, to ask questions and to compile answers. The competencies they needed to add were collaboration and strategic vision and the additional traits of insight and curiosity towards the outer world (external).
Now, in the complex world, leaders need to move from making sense to sensing—to gauging the polarities at play, to practicing deep listening (and to avoid throwing their biases when asking questions). They need to make room to sense what they do not see and to address what is not being said, asking:
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What am I not seeing?
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What is coming or could come?
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Where does it come from?
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What are the implications?
Arriving at this place of emboldened curiosity and interrogation requires a lot from leaders right now. It is understandable that they are often overwhelmed. We encourage them to see themselves as the vessels (or containers) that have been chosen to hold this complexity and translate it into action for their organizations. This mandate demands they tap into their existing, relevant capabilities but most pressing that they cultivate more, expressly the new capacity to sense complexity and engage and inspire others to create and experiment within it.
Leading into the future, therefore, leaders urgently need to make space for new knowledge because the reality we are seeing is that their “container” fills up, at some point. They are unable to take on the new work of consciousness and sensing (much less lead others) unless they adapt, evolve and lose things.
To openly gauge and negotiate the complex realities of the present, leaders want to do two things: First, they need to stretch themselves. This is very hard to do, it means delving into places where they face their insecurities. It requires courageous self-examination around existing vulnerabilities and fears. This is challenging for leaders, as they are not expected to go there. But in meeting these places, they unlock far greater leadership potential for navigating the vast unknowns of the complex era upon us.
As challenging, leaders need to get rid of some of those things that no longer serve them and often hold them back. This is difficult for everyone, not just leaders. This implies that we must unlearn things that we have learned over time. That process is in and of itself highly complex and one of the pressing challenges that the new leadership for this era will have to crack.
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As we continue to reason through all that we are seeing and hearing from leaders at global events like Davos and in our daily work, what we are concentrating on is the need to prepare leaders to lead for the long term, beyond all the noise of the short-term. This means adapting for the complex and transforming themselves to be the vessels capable of sensing through massive unknowns. Looking inward as well as outward, leaders will be in a better place from which they can face complexity with the openness and curiosity needed to unearth new pathways and needed progress.
