Leadership Skills Needed for the Future

Business is changing faster than ever. Strategic leadership is needed now, more than ever, to handle all the changes, challenges, and opportunities that are coming. And changes are coming. The future of the workforce. The future of finance. The future of technology. New industries. Effective leadership styles, strategic thinking, and adaptable management skills will be needed to keep up in this ever-changing world.

To get some key insights into what effective leadership development skills will be needed for the future of business, we spoke to Dan Wang, co-faculty director of the Executive Development Program: Leading Into the Future.

 

First, this leadership training program provides a solid foundation on the fundamentals of general management skills: economics, strategy, finance, marketing, operations, and leadership qualities. Then, the program takes a deeper dive allowing participants the opportunity to get immersed in the critical issues and topics of today whose understanding is paramount to future success (e.g. the future of work, climate, blockchain, and cybersecurity).

Typically an executive education in a program that has as many hours as this one, most of the time is spent shoring up on basics where there might be gaps. But what our program seeks to do is to weight the sessions and the content more toward special topics that the faculty expertise and the successful business practitioners who we can access through our location here at New York and through our resources at Columbia Business School can really kind of immerse participants into. And by special topics, I mean fairly specific topics such as blockchain and cryptocurrency to cybersecurity. In addition to getting a solid foundation in the fundamentals of general management skills, we also want them to be much more broadly minded. And so our leadership courses dive into these special topics that are really about the future of what we think executives ought to know is one factor that makes our program different. The second is that the way that we've structured the program as well is to maximize opportunities for creative interaction and creative recombination between the special topics that we cover. They are eclectic, ranging from various issues related to digital disruption, to concerns about business and society and stakeholders beyond a company’s shareholders. And what that does is that enables participants and participants to take elements from one special topic and rethink their assumptions about a different special topic. And it's the proximity of putting such different ideas close together that create this chance for innovation among our participants. That interactivity between participants and across sessions and across topics will be a hallmark of this program and something that our participants really remember.

We’re not out to give you the CliffsNotes version of everything and simply reading about what other great leaders are doing. We’re doing a deeper dive and developing leadership skills by providing high-quality, immersive training and engagement. You can learn about blockchain anywhere. So why would you come here? It's because we have folks who are not only skilled, effective leaders in the area but are skilled at communicating its significance. It's not just kind of broad-based general management skills and executive knowledge but rather effective leaders, great leaders, who have deep expertise in the special topics that we cover. For example, one of the modules is about professional networking. I've spent the past 15 years of my life as a network scientist. Not only are you getting the practical wisdom about networking for a career but you’re also getting the science behind it. Everything we talk about is backed up by decades of practitioner experience or research. Strategic leadership. It's not something that anybody can do. So there's the human capital associated with the delivery of this leadership training program that is unique and specialized.

We want our participants to be deeply aware of the important trends around business, society and technology that will make them able to converse with experts in these areas and to relate some of these novel trends and innovations as actionable items within their business. They'll be able to take advantage of the breadth of knowledge that they're able to gain from the expert business leadership that we're able to bring in that are uniquely available in the New York business landscape and also through Columbia Business School, that they'll be able to actually be experts and even more effective leaders themselves. Not only does our Executive Development Program immerse participants in these specialized topics so that they will feel like and be blockchain experts or cybersecurity experts or experts when it comes to navigating political activism in the business world, but they’ll be able to see the connections between them and why they have to consider all of these elements in one framework. And we're going to make it so that our participants understand the significance of being not just a leader of business operations but, I think more importantly, everything that their business touches. To me, that's the kind of effective leadership style that we hope these participants aspire to.

We’ve also structured this Executive Development Program to be interactive. You’re not just sitting in lectures or reading case studies. Those are not the most effective way to develop into an effective leader. The way that our sessions are planned, there are built-in structures for folks to get out of their shell. For example, it's natural for two participants, if they're in the same industry to find that out about each other and just hang out with one another the entire time. While our goal is to make those connections happen, we also want to expose participants to effective leaders from different markets and also different industry backgrounds too.

We want participants to feel inspired and empowered. They should be able to take away a body of knowledge and fluency in management skills, communication skills, and these special topics that enable them to relate to a wide variety of stakeholders whether a team member or an external stakeholder. And by empowered, I mean that in the business leadership roles that they aspire to, that they have a way to engage with any kind of potential future issue or potential future challenge that they might come across. For example, if a company is trying to transform digitally, they would know immediately the kind of language to use. That's empowerment. If they’re making a leadership transition or career progression from being a manager who is making internal operational decisions to a leadership role that's more outward facing where they have to engage with external stakeholders. Being able to command attention in any room is empowerment. Effective leadership when dealing with external stakeholders or a leadership team, that’s empowerment.

I also expect that, because of the unique way that we're expecting to immerse our participants in these special topics, that our participants can go back to their organizations and become teachers themselves on these topics because, in many ways, part of leadership development training is to make sure that those who engage in it are also willing to disseminate that knowledge to others that effectively lead to a change in organizational behavior. Effective leaders that in turn provide leadership coaching for a team member, improving team effectiveness. In short, we’ve designed our Executive Development Program: Leading Into the Future to provide the general management skills, the strategic leadership skills, and the leadership abilities needed to lead into the future.

Dan Wang is the co-faculty director of the Executive Development Program: Leading Into the Future. Learn more on how this program fosters innovation and strategic growth, empowering leaders to navigate the evolving business landscape: