Why we need a ‘new normal’ when we talk about leadership skills, and how apprenticeships can help. Rosi Lister, Chief Executive Officer of Leeds-based training provider and not-for-profit IVE, explores how leadership skills must be re-evaluated in our changing times. As we emerge wide-eyed and blinking into a post Coronavirus world it is time to think about what our companies need in order to get back in the saddle and be ready to ride the next storm. Because like it or not, we now live in a world of uncertainty. Business leaders across the world now talk openly about the need for ‘future skills’ and about the merits of being adaptive rather than role specific in the
way we work. They talk about the importance of recruiting staff with the right attitude rather than a more limited aptitude in a certain career discipline. Future skills are those that allow you to think on your feet and pro-actively adapt to changing circumstances, they are about being resilient if things don’t go right the first time and they are about knowing how to find solutions to problems not yet imagined. In short, future skills are about being creative; the number one skill that LinkedIn have determined most companies need most. LinkedIn’s findings go on to say that “there is no stretch to say creativity is the single-
most important skill in the world for all business professionals today to master”. LinkedIn aren’t the only ones to proffer these ideas, similar findings have come from the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs’ study and IBM’s global survey of 1500 CEO’s asking what they thought was the most crucial factor for future business success in recent years. This represents a paradigm shift in business management and leadership, and how better to begin that process than by up-skilling our future business leaders? Higher level
