What leadership skills does Industry 5.0 require?
What leadership skills does Industry 5.0 require?
“It is often said that childhood and life experiences in early adulthood have a huge impact on an individual’s life outcomes. Specific circumstances produce specific results. This is certainly true when it comes to George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte.” Of course, context gives meaning to situations, and environment, history, and culture influence the attitude and competencies, but do they really determine the decisions made by leaders?
You are not born a leader, you become one.
According to A. Grant, an organizational psychologist, and D. Kern Goodwin, a historian who analyzes leadership styles of famous presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, everyone is born with potential, but also has certain limitations resulting from their place of origin or past experiences. However, there is no simple formula for outstanding leadership unless the person themselves decides that they want to become an outstanding leader. Usually, it’s a matter of individual decision based largely on one’s own values and followed by the development of one’s competencies and consistent efforts to achieve the intended results. In other words, there is a high personal ‘price to pay’. At the same time, we develop a number of internal psychological mechanisms early in life, which have a significant impact on the choices we make. The question is: which psychological mechanisms can leaders employ in their leadership style today, during Industry 5.0? What does no longer work or works “by force of habit” but is about to stop? What leadership skills does Industry 5.0 require?
The importance of communication and emotional intelligence will continue to grow
Whether we like it or not, artificial intelligence will significantly reduce our technical and hard skills. As a result, basic personal and social competencies will no longer be in demand, but rather, in the case of leaders, highly developed skills. What will continue to be valued is management based on emotional intelligence, focused on people and their development, and thus building the value of the organization.Consequently, the role of credentials and expertise will lose relevance without adequate, people-oriented communication techniques. Similarly, experience will not matter as much if it’s not up-to-date and does not contribute to the future development of the company.
According to T. Chamorro-Premuzic: “Today, most of us are less likely to lose our jobs because of artificial intelligence and more likely to overestimate the ways in which we should use AI in our roles, so as to add the greatest value to the organization in various ways”. This process requires communication skills that inspire people in the long term and enable us to get past their resistance. When managing a team, the key to making them want to work with us is to control our personal temperament, and to work with our own emotions as well as those of the team members.
Until a decade ago, all that mattered was knowing a lot and having the answers to all the questions.Nowadays, what has become essential is how effectively we manage the experts, who often possessgreater and more specialized knowledge than the leaders. Moreover, it is more crucial to ask the right questions rather than knowing the answers. As a result, leaders of the future will be judged and selected on the basis of effective communication, emotional intelligence, collaboration, the ability to motivate and inspire, and the value of being a “decent” and humane leader.
Author Anna Modrzewska
