Those moving into leadership right now have, by almost any definition, weathered an exceptional pace of change over their careers. From older millennials to young gen Xers, those in their mid 40 to mid 50s grew up (professionally) in the digital era. Many entered the job market between the dot com bust and the 2008 financial crisis, became middle managers during Brexit and Covid, and now prepare for senior leadership roles during a geopolitical climate that is testing the norms on every level.
One could argue that because humans adapt to their situation (let’s just agree they do), this next generation of leaders are already more comfortable with today’s pace of business decisions and new events. The question is, at what cost? Because today’s challenges are complex and fast. But they also require emotional capacity, and often that is built through relationships, and … time, frankly. Without it, the lack of capacity is often masked as insurmountable complexity.
In leadership, lived experience still separates the noise from the noteworthy.
The advantage of spending all (or most) of your entire career in the 21st century is the digitalised pace of change is the only pace you know. The internet democratised access to information and lowered barriers to entry. Uber and Airbnb didn’t just disrupt taxis and hotels; they reimagined the relationship between industry and individual. Entrepreneurship at scale made even the gig economy big business.
Add to that a political environment that has been defined by a kind of ideological whiplash and institutional fragility that now spans at least ten years. Britain cycled through four Prime Ministers in the last five years. It took the prior 15 years to repopulate 10 Downing four times. And in the nearly 30 before that – just three different PMs. It doesn’t just feel like time is speeding up. And America feels different but the same: in the thirty plus years from Reagan to Obama), the U.S. had a single one-term presidency. In the last twelve, the electorate has literally swung back and forth every term.
That matters. It matters in the formal way that administrations have different agendas, updated policies, and market reactions shake then settle. But also it means the people themselves are rapid cycling through their demands, not just as voters but as consumers of brands, as commentators on social media, as deciders of reputational risk, and so leaders must read the room. While it spins.
So next generation leaders won’t inherit stability and learn to protect it. They are citizens of chaos and learned to function within it. That’s a real form of capacity. Tolerance for ambiguity, comfort with incomplete information, the ability to keep moving when the ground is still shifting — those are real leadership qualities, and I have written about how vital adaptability is today.
Exposure isn’t experience. But growing up (professionally) in chaos and learning to lead through it are different things. There’s a version of chaos-tolerance that looks like capacity but is actually normalization. You’re not regulating your emotional response to the uncertainty, you’ve just stopped noticing it. That’s not the same as being able to hold a team steady inside turbulent times. That is actually sometimes better done by someone who knows what steady looks like. They experienced fewer job changes, and therefore have a deeper understanding of each institution, and longer relationships with mentors and managers. The chaos might dysregulate harder and be better tolerated.
What creates capacity is to be able to see and understand the speed, the unpredictability, the disruption and still manage the emotional response to it. For leaders especially, there is a nuance to recognising chaos without reflecting it. A 2017 study (so, four PMs, three US administrations, and a pandemic ago) said that resiliency is the key performance indicator for successful leadership.
Authenticity is not the same as reactivity. The next generation of leaders have really embraced – even demanded — bringing your whole self to work. So much of the public self and private experience has collapsed. And that has created a relatability that allows leaders to build trust at scale and hold global teams together via a shared experience.
But. Bringing your whole self to work and baring the most fragile version at full volume isn’t authenticity. It’s reactivity. Capacity, as explored throughout this series, is the ability to think clearly under pressure and regulate emotions. That bar cannot be lowered for leaders who value transparency. A leader can acknowledge vulnerability and uncertainty. But emotions without restraint become the environment. Teams feel the instability, and they spend energy managing it – or worse, matching it.
Artificial intelligence amplifies human (in)experience. The transition from individual contributor to people leader is the hardest pivot most professionals make. You are asked to stop doing the technical thing you were recognised and rewarded for – sales, finance, marketing — and start managing human relationships and company politics. That is exceptionally difficult to write into an AI prompt. Leadership decisions are uniquely human ones. A sales report is based on data. A company strategy is as much art as it is science, and requires compromise as much as comprehension.
Increasing capacity is entirely possible – but you have to know you need it.
Strong leadership – the very top of the organisation leadership — isn’t about having all the answers to all the problems. Rarely are CEOs making any day-to-day operational decisions. They are managing people and anticipating scenarios. Yes, that is complex but the antidote isn’t more data, it is more emotional capacity
Managing people isn’t complex the way a supply chain is complex. People are irrational, relational, contextual and resistant to optimisation. (I’m going to assume that’s not a surprise.) That’s pretty hard for AI to model out. The other complexity is even harder: people-based choices rarely fully land as right or wrong. Holding that ambiguity is exhausting. They are trade-offs, not solutions, made in conditions that keep shifting. The job is to make the best available call, hold it clearly enough that the team can move, and adjust when the ground changes. Which it will. That isn’t difficult to understand. But it’s tremendously hard to carry.
In terms of my background and expertise, I have spent my entire career working as a trusted advisor to senior leaders wanting to improve the effectiveness of themselves, their teams and their companies. Prior to starting my own consulting firm, I led the global executive assessment and development team for Cisco. Earlier in my career I held leadership roles with RHR International, PepsiCo, Ashridge Executive Education, Hult International Business School and the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
