As the economy moves into recovery, your leadership muscles will be taxed in ways they never have been before, says Ed Hess. Here are nine skills you’d better start honing now.

Over the next decade several advancing and converging technologies are going to completely transform how we live and how we work and in large part, determine who will work.

Covid19 has been and remains a major adaptive challenge for every person and organization. It has illuminated how hard it is for us to adapt our routines, our ways of being and our ways of working – emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally. 

Soft skills will become even more important as automation increases. Learn what top workplace soft skills organizations will need and how to enable training.

Everyone knows that jobs have been automated over the last 20 years. But the number of those automated jobs will be a small number compared to what is coming over the next 10 years.

To date, many of us have achieved success by being “smarter” than other people as measured by grades and test scores, beginning from our early days in school. The smart people were those that received the highest scores by making the fewest mistakes.

In the digital age, leaders must excel at managing their ego, thinking and emotions, their emotional intelligence and their otherness — the ability to connect, engage and relate emotionally with others in positive ways. Women may be more naturally positioned to do so.

The Digital Age, with the convergence of several advancing technologies, will fundamentally change how we live and how we work. Automation will significantly reduce the number of human employees, because human beings will be needed only to do the tasks that technology can’t do well.

We’ve just been through a stressful year of disruption, trauma, fear, and loss. No company will ever be quite the same as it was before COVID-19. Neither will any employee. What that means is no leader can lead the same way they led in February of 2020, either.

In the very near future, robots and machines will do many of the jobs currently performed by humans. Therefore, your future success will depend on your ability to connect with and relate to others in a way robots cannot.

I introduced the 4 Es Model of Leadership (Engage, Embrace, Excel and Enable) as the leadership principles that would facilitate the highest levels of human performance in the Smart Machine Age (SMA). In the SMA, human beings will be needed to do those tasks that technology won’t be able to do well.

COVID19 is a health crisis; an economic crisis; a social crisis; a political crisis; and a geopolitical crisis. It is a crisis dominated by unknowns and huge downsides. It is an existential crisis — life or death. It generates personal fears, insecurities, and stress, all of which can inhibit high-quality thinking, decision making, and effective collaboration, which is mission-critical in such times.

Whether we’re leaders or not, most of us have some less-than-ideal traits and habits. Maybe we steamroll over others. Or we intimidate them with angry outbursts. Or we gossip. Or show off. Or get defensive when someone questions us…

In the last decade, technology has made it cheaper and easier to start new businesses, finance them, realize operational efficiencies and scale geographically. It has also empowered customers and employees through…

Over the next 10 years, advancing and converging technologies will be capable of transforming us, Homo Sapiens, into Techno-Homo Sapiens. We will be able to imbed technology inside of us that materially extends our brain power and biologically extends our life. Over time, we could split into two races — those who choose or have the opportunity to become Techno-Homo Sapiens and those who remain…

Adapting to the SMA will require all organisations in society, including public education systems, to transform into technology-enabled, high performance, adaptive learning organisations.

The old way of working is dead. Its death throes began decades ago, and the COVID shake-up has slammed the lid on the coffin. In a world of flux, we all have to be 24/7 learners, innovators, and collaborators.

As our familiar world crumbles around us (thanks, COVID-19!)—and technology continues snapping up more and more of the tasks humans have always done—we’ll need a whole new set of skills. If we want to stay employed and viable, we must reinvent ourselves. Leaders. Employees. Everyone.

While some people feel lonely working at home, many are worried about job cuts if the economy falters. Anxiousness coupled with stress and fear is playing with the minds of many employees who are working remotely.