Future Ready Leadership

Organisations and marketplaces are continuously changing. Which means the capabilities we need to lead are always evolving. In other words – leading for tomorrow, today.

Recently we undertook new research to discover the emerging leadership capabilities shaping the year ahead and beyond. Conversations with leaders across the region revealed critical shifts – spanning diverse sectors including technology, travel, energy, health, finance, retail, construction, agriculture and infrastructure.

We then combined these regional insights with global trend analysis to discover patterns of capability shifts. The result?

Four pivotal Future Ready leadership capabilities summarised above.

Some of the key insights these findings are founded on include:

Fast Change Happens Slowly

• A common pattern across all client conversations was the pace of change and associated leadership stresses. However the act of pausing to reflect on what was happening, highlighted that what seems on the surface to be fast-paced revolutionary changes are reassuringly also part of a more gradual evolution.

• This insight highlighted the increasing importance of a leader’s ability to reframe time. Clarifying direction and energising teams to make the most of the limited time and resources available. For example by reframing AI advances as a gradual knowledge evolution from spoken words, to printed pages, to digital websites, to mobile apps and now dynamically generated conversations.

Workforce Core Skills

• The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranks the top 26 core skills employers require of today’s workforces. Overlaying these with emerging leadership trends uncovered a pattern of four key themes: Clarify, Connect, Adapt and Energise.

• Further analysis of the top four skills – 1) Analytical thinking; 2) Resilience, flexibility and agility; 3) Leadership and social influence; 4) Creative thinking – highlighted a pivotal development. Leaders are now increasingly expected to flex between analytical and creative ways of working.

Dynamic Leadership

• The importance of navigating these shifting dynamics was captured by Melanie Perkins, Canva CEO and Co-founder, who recently shared with Founders Films:
  “If it doesn’t simultaneously move me, scare me, excite me and humble me, the goal probably isn’t big enough.”

• This critical energy dynamic was highlighted by Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, who explained to Y Combinator:
  “I always go to people who innately can drop into an ambiguous uncertain situation and bring clarity… the second thing I’m looking for is people who create energy… who can bring people together across the company, outside the company, create energy.”

Reshaped Skills

• Deeper exploration into the skill shifts required for the AI era, highlighted that it’s less about the technology and more about a leader’s ability to adapt as workplaces evolve – whatever the change might be. For example while Gen Y (29–44) commonly question AI like they use Google, Gen Z (13–28) more frequently use it conversationally like a life coach.

• Our research revealed that the current use of terminology like “digital workers” and “AI agents” induces fear in many and is likely to become dated. These terms reflect society’s convention of initially explaining innovations with existing language, before new words evolve – just as “cars” were initially described as “horseless carriages.”

• Conversations identified that it might be time for workplaces to move beyond the decades-old concept of T-shaped skills, with the ability to collaborate across people and technology suggesting possibilities like H-shaped skills. Brainstorming with AI then unlocked ideas like Z-shaped skills for agility, π-shaped skills for flow and ∞-shaped skills for continuous advancement.