Imagine that you will:

• Be able to act with confidence in times of uncertainty
• Lead or work in a team that’s grounded in trust, courage and unity
• Unleash potential, collective intelligence and creativity

Leadership and business as we know it is changing. In times of disruption and change, organizations need to tap into the collective intelligence of their employees and co-create with stakeholders to be able to stay relevant. The question is how we can make this possible, and how we can adjust our way of leading and operating for the future.

The most beneficial way to create the right conditions for this lies in participating in upskilling or reskilling leadership, team and organizational competence and knowledge that address and manage these issues.

What are we facing today?

Years of disruption, uncertainty, volatility and complexity – as well as the pandemic itself – have re-revealed various vulnerabilities that we can no longer ignore. How can companies, leaders and teams prepare themselves and stay high-performing and successful?

What we all agree on is that skills and prerequisites such as resilience, curiosity, we-mentality, psychological safety, and co-creation are all much needed fundamentals to be understood, developed and integrated. But why is that?

Technical or operational skills alone will no longer be sufficient in an increasingly complex world. We need to come together as employers, employees, leaders, teams, and other stakeholders to solve the challenges we face today and ahead, and we therefore need to shift the way we operate. And we need to shift our current mindset.

Leadership redefined

The time when one person or a leadership team could come up with all the answers or solutions is more and more a thing of the past. Let us look at how the leadership role is changing.

Today’s contemporary leadership is working its way out of titles, status or power over other people. Good leaders are those who take responsibility for seeing the potential of people and who are also able to develop that potential. By doing this, they also work on unleashing their own and others’ highest potential through training and coaching.

In disruptive times employees need to be empowered to act and therefore they need a mandate to make decisions. When decision making is delegated to the people in the front, to the ones with the knowledge of local markets and/or technology, for example, they will be able to quickly solve issues together with customers, colleagues and other stakeholders.

Studies show that when leaders move away from being the sole problem solvers and become co-creators, the organization and its stakeholders thrive. And the more people are empowered to take initiative to upskill themselves to greater knowledge, the greater the opportunity to overcome the challenges. Leaders, therefore, need to move from a position of controlling the space to holding the space for others.

The team as high-performing co-creators

Engagement is one of most important factors to get work done, but also one of the major challenges in organizations. Therefore, a new way to engage employees is to co-create. People who feel that they are part of something larger than themselves and what they are working with matters, will be more engaged.

Another important factor for a high-performing team is psychological safety. When there is psychological safety (e.g. openness and candor, etc.), the team flourishes. Studies show that when people are not punished if they question decisions, they are more inclined to perform well in working processes, among other things.

As more and more work in the future will be done in teams, they will need autonomous decision power. Teams also need to develop good team dynamics, and simultaneously get input and buy-in from external stakeholders.

We need the synergy from the collective, but we need to start by unveiling more of each person’s intelligence and creativity.