Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

“We are in a time of accelerating disruptive change. In a VUCA world – one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity , and ambiguity – traditional leadership skills will not be enough.” Bob Johansen

Many nurse leaders tell me that the last two years have been the most challenging in their leadership careers. What is happening in health-care today is not unique to our industry. We are living in what Bob Johansen, an internationally known leadership futurist, describes as a VUCA world. This is a world that is characterized by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. In a compelling new book Leaders Make the Future, Johansen advises that the pace of change and level of uncertainty will not decrease over the next decade. He suggests that leading in a VUCA world will require 10 new leadership skills.

The 10 new leadership skills that current and future nurse leaders will need include:

1. The Maker Instinct

Leaders in the future need both a can do and can make spirit. The maker instinct is defined as the ability to exploit your inner drive to build and grow things, as well as to connect to others in the making. This maker instinct will be important for nurse leaders, because health-care reform will require innovation at a level not seen before. The ability to use one’s creativity to redesign care delivery systems or connect with others who are designing change will be a key skill for future nurse leaders. You may not always know the answer but makers work on their problems.

2. Clarity

Leaders need the ability to see through the messes and contradictions to a future that others cannot see. The vision of the leader needs to be clear to followers. Future nurse leaders will need to establish a viable yet flexible direction in the face of confusion. They also need to convey optimism. Johansen offers the excellent advice that future leaders should be “very clear about where you are going but very flexible in how you get there.”

3. Dilemma Flipping

Johansen defines a dilemma as a problem that cannot be solved and won’t go away. The End of Life treatment controversy and impact on the moral distress nurses feel about it is an example of a complex dilemma in nursing. Leaders should not oversimplify dilemmas. Dilemma flipping is defining unsolvable challenges as both a threat and an opportunity. There may be opportunities to provide end of life care in a different way with a different nursing mindset. Leaders will need to see the tension between opposing ideas, and not be forced into premature choices or resolution.

4. Immersive Learning Ability

Future nurse leaders will need to have the ability to immerse themselves in unfamiliar environments, to learn from them in a first-person way. The introduction of electronic health records is a good example of a significant change in health-care environments. Nurse leaders who are not digital natives needed to make the choice to immerse themselves in the technology rather than resist it. The pace of change will bring about many new such innovations in the future that will require the immersive learning ability skill.

5. Bio-empathy

Leaders need the ability to see things from nature’s point of view; to understand, respect and learn from its patterns. Johansen is convinced that the next big global economic driver will come from biology and the life sciences. This prediction is especially significant for the future of health-care where genetics and personalized medicine will drive treatment protocols.

6. Constructive Depolarizing

Johansen warns against leaders who maintain absolute certainty in their viewpoints. While this frame of mind can be tempting in a VUCA world, it can lead to bad outcomes. Future leaders will need the ability to calm tense situations where differences dominate and communication has broken down. The leader will need to be able to bring people from divergent cultures toward positive engagement. Constructive depolarization is about grace across barriers of any kind.

7. Quiet Transparency

In the future, nurse leaders are likely to be asked more questions about the “why” of their decisions. Leaders need to be humble and listen carefully. They must be willing to explain the thinking behind their actions. Future leaders will need to adopt a servant leader’s framework in their leadership practice.

8. Rapid Prototyping

Johansen describes rapid prototyping as quick cycles of try, learn, and try again. Future leaders will need to develop a learn as you go style with a willingness to accept failure as critical to success.

9. Smart-Mob Organizing

Smart-mob organizing is defined as the ability to bring together large groups for a common purpose, making savvy use of available media. Future leaders will need to learn these skills and develop their own online leadership presence. In-person leadership will not be enough to create change. PatientsLikeMe.com is an example in health-care where smart mobs have been organized to manage illness.

10. Commons Creating

The last of the ten skills discussed is the need for future leaders to be able to seed, nurture and grow assets that can benefit the common good. Health-care today is a competitive business. Despite this environment, current nurse leaders are unusually good at collaboration and mutual sharing with each other. Future leaders will need to be even more skilled at creating shared assets in the VUCA world.

Although the future cannot be predicted, Johansen offers useful insights from more than 40 years of futures forecasting. He urges that leaders become comfortable with being uncomfortable but not passive. Development of these ten skills, he proposes, will help leaders to lead more energetically, even if they feel uneasy.

Read to Lead

Johansen, B. (2012). Leaders make the future: Ten leadership skills for an uncertain world. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

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