Here’s a painful reality to the C suite executive search: your following KPI may not be what you have achieved, but how quickly you can undo what led to your success in the first place.
We are seeing something extraordinary in the boardrooms of the world. Top managers who have built their careers on specific leadership strengths are finding that those strengths have become their weaknesses.
The consensus-builder beloved by all today no longer has the strategy to navigate disruptions.
The Skills You Mastered Are Expiring
Research shows that at least 50% of the skills leaders need today are skills they currently lack. Half of what made you indispensable yesterday is irrelevant today. Executives globally are being expected to learn new leadership skills, including tech, remote ecosystems, ESG & whatnot.
The Skills That Matter Now
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Analytical and Creative Thinking: This is at the top of every skills list. It is the power to combine data understanding and human intuition to perceive trends that others cannot.
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Digital Collaboration: It is the skill of leading distributed teams, using AI as a cognitive collaborator, and ensuring that technology enhances human abilities rather than substituting for them.
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Emotional Intelligence (with a twist): EI today includes cultural Intelligence, the ability to navigate hybrid work dynamics, and what we call "learning empathy".
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Adaptive Leadership: The capacity to hold steady in uncertainty while remaining open to rapid pivots.
Also Read : Empathy in the workplace
Why Unlearning Is Your Hardest Leadership Challenge?
Unlearning does not mean adding more tools; it means completely changing the toolbox. To the executives who have spent decades perfecting control, delegation, and the ability to hold the correct answers, a confession of not knowing is professional suicide.
However, those leaders who were not afraid to admit they did not know what they were doing in times of crisis could guide their organizations with much greater trust and credibility.
When Executives Become Students Again
It has become a requirement of outstanding leadership to let go of the reflex to hold on to control and to learn to be curious and constantly learn. It is not about a new piece of paper to add to your LinkedIn profile. It's about fundamental behavioral change - swapping certainty for curiosity, control for co-creation, answers for questions.
At The Taplow Group, we've observed a pattern among successful leadership transformations. The executives who thrive aren't necessarily the most intelligent or most experienced; they're the most willing to become beginners again.
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What Must Go, What Must Grow
Begin with the assumption that everything has to be clear to you. Another derailment that often befalls leaders is the need to appear to have the correct answers all the time, which prevents information-sharing.
Unlearn solo execution. The myth of the solitary genius leader is gone, and that is good. One of the executives has learned that turning down help costs him more time and effort than it should, and that you cannot scale impact when you do not seek help to do so.
You should replace these outdated habits with adaptive thinking & cross-functional collaboration. Emotional Intelligence that does not confuse weakness with vulnerability. Leaders need to learn to unlearn what they have learnt before, based on shared experience, while remaining flexible to adjust to the new environment.
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The Transformation Imperative
The lack of the right skills is now a major driver of lost productivity, potentially costing organizations millions annually.
At The Taplow Group, we guide executives through this uncomfortable but essential transformation. Our leadership advisory services approach doesn't believe in adding new competencies; instead, we help executives identify what they must consciously unlearn to become more relevant & practical.
You would be surprised, but your competitors aren't just learning faster, they're unlearning faster. So, your next leadership breakthrough will come from having the courage to let go of those skills that no longer serve you.