Predicting the future is always difficult .

But then, human beings love to try

and peek into the future through a crystal ball, planetary positions, lines of
the palm, researching mega-trends and projecting the current available
knowledge about things for a future possibility.

What are some of the trends shaping our future, and what kind of
leadership behaviour will help us navigate through our future? What
leadership competencies will help us manage the trends that we see
today?
New form of Globalisation: East moving towards the West

The London Cab is as much an icon of the British capital as the Big Ben or
the Tower of London. Chinese car manufacturer Zhejiang Geely bought
black cab maker Manganese Bronze. Geely also bought Volvo in 2010 and
couple of years ago Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover, two of the
proudest names in the car industry.

Indians are now leading massive global organisations, and the likes of
Satya Nadella, Indra Nooyi, Shantanu Narayen, Rakesh Kapoor, Ajit Jain,
Anshu Jain, and Ajay Banga will increase in the coming years. In the
academic world, Prof. Rakesh Khurana, Sanjeev Kulkarni, Deepak Jain and
Nitin Nohria along with many others are heading prestigious universities
worldwide.

The new globalisation is east moving towards the west, while

professionals from the west continue landing in their homeland in the east
to do meaningful work. So the world is shrinking and the saying "such a
small world" is literally becoming true. This means that Indian leaders need
to be global leaders by 2020.

Can we turn the clock back?

Environmental challenges

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said in a shareholder meeting that Apple's
environmental efforts also made economic sense, but when challenged
by a conservative shareholder activist group that Apple wouldn't do
anything related to the environment that didn't follow a clear profit motive,
Cook firmly replied with anger in his voice that "we do a lot of things for
reasons besides profit motive," and recommended that anyone who had a
problem with that "should get out of the stock." "When we work on making
our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody
ROI [return on investment]."

The need for 'system' thinking rather than just ‘cause and effect'
thinking and 'long-term vision' yet focus on 'short-term sustainability' is
what will help the future leaders address the environmental and resource
challenges. We need leaders who will be socially responsible and focus
on a triple bottom line: Profits, People and the Planet.
The Return of Ayn Rand

"But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most
of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find
no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I
can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the
best is a matter of standards-and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I
stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of
one." Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

The new generation is not just bothered about where the next meal will
come from but they are also bothered about belonging, autonomy, self-
realisation, meaning and purpose. The good news is that the younger
generation understands the need for personal meaning and values, and
embrace Victor E. Frankl as much as they do Ayn Rand. "Everything can be
taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose
one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own
way," Frankl wrote in his book, Man's search for meaning. Employees need
work that suits their personal values and adds meaning to their lives.
Customers want products that are customised for individual tastes and
thus the time of Individualism and personal meaning is here! This means
that the 2020 leader needs to clearly articulate a meaning, a purpose
and manage organisations where individuals can have their freedom,
flexibility and still manage to work in a way that is meaningful to their
core values.

Keeping these trends in mind, we asked a number of senior leaders what

would be the competencies for a 2020 leader. Prof Robert Kegan,
Harvard University; Deepak Chopra; Dr. Santrupt Misra, CEO, Carbon
Black Business and Director, Group Human Resources of the Aditya
Birla Group; Prof Vidyanand Jha, Behavioural Sciences, IIM Calcutta;
Prof Rishikesha Krishnan, Director-IIM Indore; Rohit Thakur, HR Head
Microsoft India; S. Varadarajan, Chief Human Resource Officer, Tata SIA
Airlines; Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Global HR Head for Strategic
Initiatives and BPO, TCS; Makarand Khatavkar, Managing Director and
Head-Human Resources, Deutsche Bank AG; Prithvi Shergill, Chief
Human Resource Officer, HCL; Piyush Mehta, Senior VP, HR at Genpact;
and Krish Shankar, Head of HR for the Indian subcontinent at Philips,
shared their views on the 2020 competencies of a leader.

The pace of change that all of us experience nowadays, along with

environmental and sustainability challenges, growing concern for
individuality and meaning, and the fact that leaders now face more
adaptive problems than technical ones, demands a new mind-set and new
competencies from the 2020 leader.
According to Ronald Heifetz, Founder of the Center for Public Leadership
at Harvard Kennedy School, leaders are confronted by two types of
problems: 'technical' problems, which can be solved by expertise and
good management; and 'adaptive' problems like natural disasters, natural
resource supplies and economic problems - which require innovation and
continuous learning. While traditional management strategies are useful
in dealing with technical problems, Heifetz argues that only leaders
evolving many adaptive challenges.

Analjit Singh, founder and chairman of Max Healthcare and Max Bupa
Health Insurance Co Ltd and Executive-Chairman of Max Life Insurance,
while addressing a gathering recently, said we should move away from
blue-sky thinking to cloudy-sky thinking, keeping in mind the fast paced
changes we experience. Based on our work and interviews,

Here are the characteristics that describe a 2020 leader:

1.Mindfulness, authenticity, self-awareness, compassion and courage:

Focus was placed on developing the inner aspect, the 'being' aspect of a
leader. Courage is another important quality - having the courage to make
oneself vulnerable because the 2020 leader is not going to have all the
answers. S. Varadarajan termed this as humaneness, using both head and
heart. Adaptive challenges require leaders to move up into a higher level
of awareness and consciousness.

2.Systems Thinking, Strategic thinking, learning agility:

Ranjan from TCS also mentioned "eclectic thinking". Cause and effect
thinking will help us solve today's problems but create more problems for
tomorrow. The green revolution is a great example for this. While hybrid
seeds increased productivity initially, in the long term we realised that the
excessive use of pesticides and chemicals destroyed the fertility of the soil
and affected our health negatively. To deal with this, tomorrow's leaders
will need to think strategically and systemically.

3.Managing ambiguity, inclusion and diversity:

A collaborative mindset that allows a leader to influence people without
authority, as well as navigate through complexities, was required. This is
also the ability to hold multiple truths and develop acceptance of multiple
realities. Tomorrow’s leader needs to have an inclusive mindset. A senior
Indian leader was posted in the multinational company's London office. He
asked a reportee to prepare a presentation on his behalf for an upcoming
board meeting. On the day of the meeting, when he was going to the
boardroom he saw the lady who made the presentation also walking along
with him. When he asked her why she was accompanying him, she replied
that since she made the presentation, she would present it as well.
This was a shock to him as he was used to his team members preparing
presentations for him without actually presenting them. The point here is
that the Inclusion quotient of the 2020 leader needs to be high.

RISE OF ATHENA VALUES AND COMPETENCIES

Looking at all this data, I believe that the 2020 leader will demonstrate
more Athena characteristics than Ares characteristics.

Athena, the Greek Goddess, led the disciplined and strategic side of war, in
contrast to her brother Ares: the patron of violence, bloodlust and
slaughter - "the raw force of war". Athena is the goddess of knowledge,
purity, arts, crafts, learning, justice and wisdom. She represents
intelligence, humility, consciousness, cosmic knowledge, creativity,
education, enlightenment, the arts, eloquence and power.
To lead in the future, we need to be more evolved, compassionate,
socially responsible, system focused and accepting of diversity and