5 Leadership Trends Shaping 2024

2. Integrated Thinking

Today’s leaders are required to make data-driven analytical decisions based on the facts. In parallel they are also expected to have the emotional intelligence to flex their opinion, based on diverse perspectives and complex unintended consequences. Often this requires navigating competing dynamics – for example research shows 41% of HR leaders think innovation has worsened due to hybrid work, yet organisations that offer radical flexibility have 40% more high-performing employees compared to workplaces that don’t (Gartner, 2023).

Meanwhile organisations are looking to their leaders to be astute critical thinkers, while also expecting them to keep up with the times and develop creative capabilities such as design thinking. So which are more important – logical or emotional competencies? It is no longer an ‘either-or’ question. It has become an ‘and’ expectation. With modern leaders requiring the ability to integrate complex and at times competing thoughts – then communicate a clear and simple direction to their teams, without distorting the underlying meaning.

3. Systems Evolution

Ironically, change is nothing new. While navigating systemic change is a significant trend for the year ahead, the past few years have given many leaders a strong foundation to build on. The shift now is to reframe this change away from disruption and transformation, to a deeper more organic understanding of the nature of change. ‘Disruption’ implies change arrives unexpectedly, leaving the status quo in a state of chaos. While ‘transformation’ suggests that change has a natural endpoint.

This framing may make sense for earlier initiatives, however looking ahead a more systemic understanding of change will require broader leadership perspectives. For example research indicates that organisations with the highest returns from AI are nearly 200% more likely than others to utilise a variety of capability-building programs to develop their people (McKinsey, 2023). With a focus on developing people, not simply replacing them. This systems evolution isn’t led by industry disruption and workforce transformation – concepts that can create fear and unease, rather than understanding and application – but is better approached collaboratively as a people-led improvement of existing systems and processes.

4. Connected Wellbeing

In recent years, caring for workers’ wellbeing has evolved from a fringe initiative to a core leadership concern across many organisations. While in times past, workforces were viewed by many as an almost mechanistic component – a human resource – modern leaders understand that we are all part of a connected ecological system. With complex factors from information overload to global conflicts impacting on the wellbeing and resulting performance of their people.

As a new study suggests that over 80% of the current generation of corporate wellbeing initiatives may be having little to no effect (Industrial Relations Journal, 2024) a shift in approach is gradually taking place. Rather than being provided as additional offerings – dealing with the symptoms rather than the cause – a deeper understanding of wellbeing and the human condition is becoming more central to operating models. With supplementary offerings from stress management classes to mindfulness apps now being more fundamentally supported by the redesign of core working beliefs and practices.

5. Purposeful Unification

The nature of progress can be that some of humanity’s greatest challenges arise from some of our most impactful inventions. From the way we fuel our travel to the way we connect with each other, innovations designed to bring us closer together can also divide us. Add machine algorithms and distributed workforces into the mix, it’s not difficult to see why workplaces and the communities they serve are in many ways becoming more divided (World Economic Forum, 2024).

Organisations have a vital role to play in overcoming the negative effects of this division. With leaders requiring the adaptive intelligence to navigate the blurry line between embracing diversity and individuality, while unifying and aligning the collective effort of their teams. In a world of change, a clear inspiring purpose provides a unifying foundation. Connecting each individual with why their efforts matter – collectively and within the wider context of their own life. Looking to the future in a distributed environment, organisational purpose no longer lives centrally but needs to be individually mobilised within the hearts and minds across the organisation.