Leadership and management are the two sides of the same coin. The future of these roles can be predicted by current trends in the global workforce. While leadership without management can lead to employee disengagement, management without leadership can create an unmotivated workforce. Hence, constant improvement with training and boot camps on the importance of both these aspects in senior management roles is important. In parallel to these developments, the technological wave that is storming in the workforce and its patterns contribute to the future of management and leadership. In this article, we will discuss the possibilities of the future of management and leadership roles based on current and emerging technology, socio-economic, and working trends.
7 Leadership and Management Trends in the Future
1. A democratic organisational structure
While the hierarchical system had its success in the past, the future workforce is expected to be more democratic. Education plays a major role in the work patterns and leadership expectations in the industry. In previous centuries, a large chunk of the workforce was largely uneducated and depended on higher authorities for refinements in their work patterns, industrialisation, and roles. While industrialisation and globalisation had changed this narrative, the current workforce is highly educated and a thinking population. More often than not, the small teams in an organisation are fast learners with a flair for innovative mindsets. This puts them way ahead of R&D teams because they use their equipment, and software firsthand every day and can enhance these tools to their liking. With a well-organised feedback loop, the process of refinement of the tools becomes faster and highly efficient.
The same can be said about management and leadership roles. Modern teams are highly productive, informed, and educated. These teams work well with democratic management structures. Here, management can get away with minimal intervention in the teams' day-to-day tasks. Micromanaging is not only despised but also leads to resentment between the team and the management. Cutting the pandemic, highly adaptive companies were resorting to a delegative management style. The rest of the companies are expected to follow this lead in the future. The recent remote working has been a catalyst in this trend. Hence, the future workforce will be less bureaucratic and more of a cluster of high-functioning teams looking after themselves (Source: Springer Open).
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2. Personal and team development
If you can be sure of one thing in the future, it is change. Especially in the technological field, every breakthrough is changing the fate of the future workforce. Adapting to change will decide your survivability in the future workforce. As was seen in recent decades, the older workforce has to cope harder to adapt to the technological integration in the workspace. If you were a senior professional, you had to adjust your work patterns with computers and the internment. You had to learn basic computer skills like typing and setting up emails to learn advanced and complex software solutions in the workplace. While the younger workforce has it easy because the technological integration was gradual and started from their youth, the transformation was a challenge for senior professionals across the world.
As a result, personal development has taken the front seat for both employees and companies. For those in leadership and management roles, personal development is a crucial element not only for themselves but also for their teammates. Future management must be vigilant and prepared to include personal development programs in their workplaces. You must have better policies, training, educational, and skill development programs to attract and retain high-performing employees (Source: SNATIKA). Especially, the growth-oriented Gen Z employees look beyond the salary packages and benefits and towards meaningful work and personal development. The fact is exposed in several recent surveys where the modern workforce is less likely to stay in the same company for years as the older generations did. Hence, future managers must not only be concerned about their own development but also their teammates.
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3. The Talent Cliff
The popular propaganda that the world is going to be overcrowded someday has been refuted by a recent survey. The widespread use of contraception, sterilisation, and government policies have resulted in decreased birth rates across developed countries. Indeed, most developed countries now rely on migrants to maintain their population rather than raising their own population. The global birth rate will fall below the replacement fertility rate by 2070. This is because the rates are already below 2.1 births per woman in most developed countries. To look at the larger picture, the global population will reach 10 billion and start to fall dramatically within this century (Source: Our Works in Data). This can create a crisis in the workforce. The future workforce will have to source its human capital from across the world or with the aid of technological resources just like what the European countries are doing now (Source: The Conversation).
The large-scale technological integration into the workforce will force humanity to take up creative roles and management positions over artificial intelligence. This requires a highly talented, educated, and experienced workforce for the industry. It must have management and leadership qualities that no other generation had. Hence, these skills will be in short supply in industrialised countries and a globally sourced employee base is expected to manage the change. While globalisation, immigration policies, and the population void will fuel the change, only time will tell the socio-economic outcomes of the Talent rush of the future.
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4. Emphasis on soft skills
As we have already discussed, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will make many jobs extinct. Just like automation has killed repetitive jobs and industrialisation has killed unnecessary manual labour, AI will become sophisticated enough to manage several jobs and make quicker decisions through machine learning. There are already AI apps for photo enhancements that provide us with amazing results. AI cameras, writing assistants, photo enhancers, painters, and players are all becoming smarter every day. The future is full of technology.
This thin line that separates humans from software is getting thinner every day. Thankfully, some jobs in sectors like management, and the creative industry seem better for humans. As a result, soft skills will be the heroes of the future. As you need to manage both men and machines, your familiarity with both will be critical for career success. Moreover, teams will become increasingly diverse as the technical processes and managers must work with employees from different industries across different technical backgrounds. Hence future management roles will be highly challenging, technologically demanding, and focused on soft skills. Critical skills like time management, adaptability, quick learning, and decision-making prowess will be high in demand.
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5. Gender balance
Historically, women have been on the backstage of everything. Except for some individuals and societies, women were largely left out of leadership roles from time immemorial. It was largely due to the nature of work being physically demanding and only men were able to make it through hunting, wars, and other manual work. Moreover, the threat of sexual assaults was ever-present during these activities which is why women rarely attained leadership roles. However, things have changed dramatically in the globalised, industrialised and technology-driven world. The role of physical strength has waned in popularity as well as in demand. As a result, raw talent and skills have taken the front row in leadership roles. This is how women have had a chance to lead, work, and have equal opportunities to make their careers forward.
For now, women comprise half of the workforce and this is a great stride forward (Source: ILO). This is good for women as well as for employers, economies, countries, and families. However, as we look at the corporate hierarchy, we can notice the shrinking number of women in each level of management roles. In 2021, only 41 women occupied CEO roles in Fortune 500 companies (Source: Quantic). Thankfully the trend is increasing. Still, women have a long way to go to reach equality in higher management roles. Women have several problems in reaching their true potential in the workforce because of gender bias, insecurities, safety issues, etc. However, with hard work and determination, anything is possible. The current set of female leaders is testimony to this.
In the future, leadership and management roles will be equally shared by males and females alike. The current gender bias will wear off as the new generations make it to the top of the workforce and have opportunities, mentorship, and knowledge which was previously unavailable to the current women leaders. Many female leaders have understood the importance of hard work and qualifications, and are working harder to make it their priority. In the future, highly educated, talented, and hardworking women will have sway over the happenings of the business world.
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6. Remote working
The working patterns of the generation have seen a massive transformation since the time of the pandemic. While remote work was and still is a hot favourite of freelancers around the world, the pandemic forced innovators, businesses, employees, governments, and companies to dive deeper into the remote working spectrum. Thanks to those efforts, nowadays, this pattern is hailed as the future of work. The flexibility factor, the aid of innovations in the fields of technology, and changing working patterns are driving this change. The upcoming technologies like 5G and virtual reality are promising for the remote workforce in making virtual office spaces a reality.
Already, companies and brands like Zoom, Asana, and Slang are making remote working a reality. The recent entry of silicon valley giants like the Meta into the virtual reality market will only improve the technology and make it highly reachable to the general public. On the government side, many countries have already rolled out 5G in several hundreds of cities making connectivity exponentially efficient with better data speeds (Source: Statista). Digital project management has taken the mainstream and is likely to continue to become the dominant way of management in the future. Moreover, startups that are resilient, innovative, and daring are already experimenting with remote team management and thus increasing efficiency. The future is likely to have a dominant remote workforce.
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7. Globalisation
Globalisation and remote working can have a major impact on future leadership and management roles. As the companies become global from local, the workforce gets increasingly diversified. The talent hunt and the nature of younger generational employees to change jobs and companies frequently will affect the team management structure of many companies. As the corporate world becomes more global, talents will be sourced globally. The leadership roles of the future will have to adapt to different employees from different cultures and languages across the world to make them work together.
For this, future management professionals must have the right vision and knowledge of different cultures. They must know what makes a team work together. The workplace cultures and management styles will have the final say in making a team stick together more than mere salaries and perks. The need for personal development will force companies to invest in training programs, certifications, and degree programs. All in all, the globalisation of the workforce will give a fresh set of challenges to the management professionals of the future.
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Conclusion
Finally, as you can see, the future of leadership and management roles will be deeply affected by technology and human nature in the workplace. While government policies and other external factors like the pandemic and wars do play a role in the workforce, management roles will always be held by humanity. Emerging technologies like 5G, AI, ML, and VR will deeply impact the management of the future. The workforce will get dependent on these solutions just like it is now dependent on the internet and computers.
The leadership roles will become highly democratic within the teams and self-management comes to the front row. Due to changing mindsets and globalisation, talents will be scarce and teams will be globally sourced. While the technologies are expected to fill the gaps where there are voids, only time will tell what will become of these. Soft skills and gender equality will open up newer perspectives and remote working models will get more employee base in the future. While this assessment is highly dependent on the current trends in management, the future is always as evading and imperceptible to the human mind as it ever was.
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