Essential Leadership Competencies Required for Success

Five leadership competencies are essential for success in today’s unpredictable world. And these competencies need to be embraced by leaders, role modeled, and instilled into teams and individuals across the organization.

A Leapfrogging Mindset

Leading disruptive innovation and change involves leapfrogging—creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward. People who possess an unyielding desire to create a breakthrough ensure that everything they do focuses on adding a whole new level of value to customers, the market, and the organization.

Boundary Pushing

Pushing boundaries is important on two levels. On the personal side, people who live abroad, work across multiple functions, and surround themselves with diverse team members continually broaden their mindsets and enhance creative problem-solving skills. From a strategic perspective, they push the limits of their colleagues, teams, organizations, and partners.

Data-Intuition Integration

Most leaders demand hard data when making critical decisions. In times of disruptive change, robust data rarely exist. Leaders must use any information they can obtain from any source inside and outside the company—but then complement that data by using their gut to round out the equation.

Adaptive Planning

Leading disruptive innovation requires managing unsurpassed levels of uncertainty. Adaptive planning involves taking action to drive results, learning from them, and then modifying assumptions and approaches accordingly. Whether these “results” are good or bad, they bring us closer to our breakthroughs since they result in new insights—just like Gatorade experienced. These new insights shape our future strategies, plans, and actions, which are better aligned with the needs of the market.

Savoring Surprise

Disruptive innovation and change is a process chock full of surprises—failures, successes, unexpected technological advancements, competitive moves, customer feedback, political and regulatory shifts, and other unforeseen events. Most leaders assume surprises always should be avoided. But those who realize that surprises are an inevitable part of the business (just like life) are best equipped to actually use surprise as a strategic tool—which makes them the most agile and fastest to respond to or capitalize on unforeseen events.