We conclude our series on The Top Emerging Competencies for 2021 with a deep dive into a competency called In-the-Moment Feedforward. Because many employees will remain working remotely for the foreseeable future, developing the skills to provide In-the-Moment Feedforward is going to be a critical area to focus on moving into 2021.

Defining In-the-Moment Feedforward

The third hot competency is the continuing evolution of providing feedback. In the emerging remote workplace, where you don’t have the opportunity to sit down face-to-face to have a dialogue with another human being, giving In-the-Moment Feedforward is going to be more important than ever.

Part 3 of 4 - The Top Emerging Competencies for 2021

In Part 1 of our series, we started a discussion on the potential top competencies needed in the new year as businesses and business leaders continue to adapt to the new realities of the post-pandemic world. Part 2 took a further look at one of the most critical competencies of Developing a Strategic Mindset. Today, in Part 3, we introduce a discussion on Defining Integrative Thinking.

Part 3 - Defining Integrative Thinking

Traditional leadership development best practices suggest that if you want to be like the great successful business leaders of our time, all you must do to emulate them is read their biographies, learn about what they did and the decisions they made, and then duplicate and replicate them. You want to create the next “Apple,” read the Steve Jobs biography and be like Steve. You want to be the next Jack Welch and create a General Electric, go the Jack Welch school.

Part 2 - The Top Emerging Competencies for 2021

We recently introduced the Top Emerging Competencies for 2021 and today we will take a deeper dive into the topic of Developing a Strategic Mindset, which will be one of the “hottest” and most important competencies in 2021.

Defining the Strategic Mindset

One of the most important characteristics of highly successful strategic leaders is their ability to see and understand the big picture. They have a global view and can interpret the data and metrics they see using the insights to shape the future through problem solving and taking the right business risks.

Specifically, a strategic mindset is an approach to problem solving and decision making that focuses on the big picture and uses Business Acumen and analysis to understand the impacts of decision in both the short-term and the long term. To develop a strategic mindset, it’s important to identify, understand, and use skills of strategic thinking and financial acumen.

It is that time of the year to start looking forward to trends and predictions for the upcoming year. 2021 is going to another very different environment as businesses and business leaders continue to adapt to the new realities of the post-pandemic world.

For those living in the Talent Development world, one of the more interesting things we are following is the emergence of the competencies needed to thrive and survive in our “new normal.”

During the holiday break, our research team spent time reviewing our own research including surveys and observations of working with thousands of leaders during the year. In addition, we reviewed more than 100 articles, blogs, and white papers from leadership development experts to understand the hot topics and trends. The result of this work is a 4-part blog series that starts with the introduction of all the key competencies and then a focus on the top 3 competencies in practical and usable detail.

My holiday break has already been a great success as a result of an excellent book I just read called, “The Curious Advantage” by authors Paul Ashcroft, Simon Brown, and Garrick Jones.

As a learning professional specializing in developing leadership competencies through the use of experiential digital business simulations, I found this book to be extremely satisfying because it provides thoughtful ideas, insights, and solutions to Talent Development pain points our clients have been experiencing for the past several years.

Curious about Curiosity

In the world of leadership development, everything revolves around competencies. A competency is the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. For example,

• having a strategic mindset to make the best business decisions
• possessing an integrative thinking capacity to understand the systems of business
• giving in-the-moment feedback to people you are working with, so they can execute their jobs and tasks flawlessly

Many experts in the field of Leadership Development believe that “being curious” is a behavior or trait, rather than a specific, refined skill. In the world of sports, some believe it’s impossible to teach speed. That is incorrect. You can teach people to be faster by providing frameworks, context, and specific techniques. In the world of leadership development, some believe that it is impossible to teach the competency of curiosity. This entire book successfully counters that belief through very practical tools and examples. The book makes a strong case that one of the most important things leaders can do to develop talent to reach their business goals and objectives is to create a culture of curiosity where employees are encouraged to seek out new ideas and experiment as part of a learning process strategy.