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Tomorrow’s leaders, today“All kings and queens, presidents, Nobel laureates, chairmen and chairwomen, CEOs and world leaders have one thing in common: They want what they have achieved to be useful and to be handed over to a younger generation.”
Henry O. Dormann
How do we learn leadership lessons? We learn them by watching role models – positive and negative.
Most companies understand that in a global economy, much of their future growth will be in emerging markets. And because talent is not as portable as we once thought — there is growing evidence that an executive who is successful in one context may not be in another — companies need leaders who know, and who are from, those markets.
But emerging economies, by definition, do not yet have cadres of globally savvy executives. In places such as China and eastern Europe, capitalism is new. In South Africa, for decades the majority of the population was systematically shut out of the business arena.
Elsewhere, lack of education has prevented the emergence of a knowledgeable business class. The war for talent in these countries is fierce; the name of the game is finding individuals with leadership potential – sometimes in unconventional places – and preparing them for senior positions.
In a down economy, tomorrow’s leaders are born today. It takes vision, focus, and a hyper-connected sense of what customers are looking for and where.
If businesses want more and better leaders more quickly, the focus of leadership development will have to shift toward exposing future leaders to a diversity of experiences rather than proposing checklists of leadership competencies against which leadership talent is assessed.
This is why Leadership magazine began the Tomorrow’s Leaders Convention. Founded in 2008, this prestigious annual event showcases the top leaders from our country. South Africa’s top corporates choose four of their top candidates whom they regard as the leaders of tomorrow so they can listen and soak up the wisdom of the leaders of today.
The Tomorrow’s Leaders Convention took place on 31 March this year and one of the keynote speakers is our cover for this April edition – Clem Sunter. He first graced the cover of Leadership in 1986 and we are honoured to have him back again, 25 years later!
As Dormann said in the above quote, Sunter is one of those leaders who is handing over his wisdom to the younger generation – let us hope they take heed of his words (see page 14). It makes for some sobering reading.
