Whitepaper Collaboration – future foHRward & Vanessa

Topic

The Complete Leader of Today

What is required from leaders in today’s world?

Overall Flow

• Introduction including context and market conditions shaping leadership (Naomi/All)
• Core leadership capabilities (Vanessa/All) 
• Shifts to rethink leadership (Vanessa/All) 
• CHRO playbook (Mark/All)

Market conditions shaping leadership (Naomi/All)

We’re leading in a time defined by paradox - record acceleration, yet widespread fatigue; powerful technology, yet growing disconnection; more data than ever, yet less clarity on what truly drives human performance.

Our latest research^[a] identified six macro trends shaping the way we work and lead today. Their intersection is reshaping not just business models, but people themselves - how they think, feel, and show up at work. To meet this moment, HR and leadership strategies must evolve: helping people adapt, recharge, and expand into their next frontier of potential.

Supercharging human performance doesn’t come from one initiative or program. It emerges when the work, the person, and the environment come into alignment - when culture, leadership, and systems all reinforce the same message: that human energy is the most renewable source of competitive advantage.

When these forces work in tandem, they create the conditions for people to thrive - transforming fatigue into focus, stress into growth, and uncertainty into possibility. This is the heart of human performance in the age of complexity.

In this white paper, we will dive deep into one of these “superchargers”: The Complete Leader of Today. Expectations are increasingly high around well-being, flexibility, AI and leading with purpose. All eyes are on leaders to enable their teams in this complex, ever evolving world of work.

• Pull a quote from here from the foHRsight podcast with Ron Tite (episode 138):

• “The leadership paradox” from Ron’s book “The Purpose of Purpose”: Executives and Managers want to do the right thing… they just don’t know what the right thing is. Their intentions are pure but there’s just four billion things they could do… it’s really difficult being a leader now. It used to be we were just responsible for the bottom line… now we need to be people’s therapists, and we need to be pursuing human rights and equality and we need to be champions of the environment… and that is a very frazzling existence.”

Capabilities need to evolve and we need to help our leaders prioritize and adapt.

But how can we identify, define, develop and measure “good” leadership within our modern context?

Feedback from HR executives in our foHRsight+ community reveals a clear message: leadership needs to evolve - not through more models, but through more meaning.

Three principles are guiding this shift:

• Modernize - Leadership frameworks must reflect the world we live in now: faster, more fluid, and deeply human. The era of rigid competency checklists is giving way to living models that evolve with context and culture.

• Simplify - What truly drives performance isn’t a long list of skills; it’s a small set of visible behaviors anchored in values. Simplicity sharpens focus - it helps leaders act with intention.

• Balance - Today’s leaders need enough clarity to stay aligned, and enough flexibility to adapt as conditions change.

With these principles in mind, we turn to the core capabilities, inner shifts, and practical interventions that define the Complete Leader of Today — the kind of leader who can create clarity amid complexity and unlock the full potential of their people.

Core leadership capabilities (Vanessa/All) 

Leadership today unfolds in an era of expanding intelligence and relentless acceleration.

Technology can analyze, automate, and amplify almost everything - but human leadership brings the depth, intuition, and connection that give work its meaning.

The complete leader of today is the one who stays grounded amid constant motion, leading with awareness, adaptability, and energy discipline. Through their presence, they create calm in complexity and inspire purposeful action.

The complete leader of today is defined by consciousness in motion -  someone who brings both clarity and humanity to every challenge.

1. Presence and Self-Awareness^[b] - The Differentiator

Presence has become a form of intelligence. In a world full of distraction, leaders who can quiet the mental noise and tune into themselves and others unlock clarity and connection.

Presence is about the quality of attention a leader brings into a room. It sets the emotional tone for a team, influences the pace of dialogue, and shapes decisions that ripple through the organization.

Neuroscience shows that mindfulness and conscious awareness reduce amygdala reactivity while strengthening the prefrontal cortex - the region of the brain linked to empathy, reasoning, and self-regulation.

Leaders who build intentional pauses into their day - three mindful breaths before a meeting, a moment to sense the energy of a room, or a brief reflection before closing the laptop - show up more deliberately and lead with greater resonance.

AI can process information; humans can transmit energy.

Self-awareness gives that energy direction. It helps leaders see how tone, words, and gestures shape the experience of others. When they pair feedback from colleagues with private reflection, they strengthen their capacity to choose responses that align with their intentions. Conscious presence is not only a gift to others; it’s also a source of steadiness for the leader themselves.

2. Adaptive Leadership - Thriving in Constant Change

Change is the environment we live in.

Adaptive leadership is the capacity to stay curious, experiment early, and evolve thinking as new information appears. It’s a mindset that transforms uncertainty from a threat into a teacher.

The latest CEO Response 2025^[c] study by Egon Zehnder found that more than 90% of global CEOs identify adaptability, curiosity, and learning agility as the most critical leadership qualities for the decade ahead [Egon Zehnder, The CEO Response 2025].

Adaptive leaders don’t wait for perfect clarity; they build it as they go. They create safety for experimentation and turn learning into motion.

A key element is polarity thinking - seeing apparent opposites such as legacy and innovation, empathy and efficiency, or well-being and performance as partners rather than rivals. Integrating both allows leaders to navigate complexity without losing balance. It’s an ability to hold tension long enough for creative insight to emerge.

Real agility lives in the space between curiosity and conviction.

3. AI Fluency and Augmentation -  Leading with Technology, Anchored in Humanity

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how decisions are made, how work flows, and how value is created. For leaders, fluency means asking sharper questions and recognizing where machines can amplify human judgment.

AI-fluent leaders design human-machine partnerships that expand creativity and decision quality.  Studies show, and our Q2 2025 research in collaboration with Disco confirms, that the most valuable human capabilities now center on creativity, complex problem-solving, and empathy - skills that complement rather than compete with AI.

When leaders model a thoughtful approach to AI, embracing it as a collaborator instead of a disruptor, they reduce fear and inspire curiosity across their organizations. Fluency builds confidence and helps cultures evolve with purpose rather than caution.

4. Resilience and Energy Management - Sustaining the Long Game

High performance is also energetic.

Neuroscience research shows that fatigue diminishes attention, working memory, and higher-order cognitive processing - core capacities that underpin sound leadership judgment and performance. McKinsey research^[d] highlights that fatigue erodes emotional intelligence, interpersonal awareness, and a leader’s ability to manage complexity - competencies directly tied to performance and influence.

Energy management has become an essential leadership discipline.Resilient leaders pace themselves. They integrate micro-renewal habits throughout the day - stretching between calls, stepping outside for fresh air, connecting with loved ones, or taking five minutes of silence after intense meetings.

They see recovery as part of performance, not a reward for it.

By designing structures that sustain their own energy - rather than relying on motivation or willpower - they ensure that clarity and empathy remain consistent, even under pressure.

“Energy management is not self-care; it’s strategic stewardship.”

The Four Essentials

| Presence & Self-Awareness | Adaptive Leadership | AI Fluency & Augmentation | Resilience & Energy Management | CONSIDER A VISUAL - Tabs

Together, these capabilities form the architecture of human leadership today. They allow leaders to anchor themselves amid uncertainty, inspire trust, and create environments where people and technology thrive side by side.

Key INNER Shifts Required from Leaders

From Capability to Consciousness

Developing these capabilities calls for more than new skills - it calls for new awareness.

Becoming a complete leader is an inner evolution: a shift in how we think, perceive, and relate to the world. These subtle but powerful movements determine how leaders make decisions, sustain energy, and connect with others. They turn competence into consciousness - the foundation of modern leadership.

1. Embracing Both/And Thinking

Complexity demands integrative thinking. Modern leadership is full of tensions - performance and well-being, innovation and stability, empathy and efficiency. Leaders who hold space for both perspectives create more sustainable outcomes.

Polarity thinking allows leaders to stay centered amid competing demands. One CEO put it beautifully: “When I stopped choosing sides and started integrating perspectives, decisions became both faster and wiser.”

This ability to hold dual truths is a mark of maturity — a move from reacting to balancing, from splitting to synthesizing

2. Elevating Questions Over Answers

In a world where information is abundant, it’s the quality of questions - not the quantity of answers - that defines leadership.

Great leaders cultivate curiosity as a discipline. They ask: “What might we be missing?” “Who sees this differently?” “Which assumption no longer holds?”

These questions open space for collective intelligence to emerge. By modeling inquiry, leaders signal that learning is strength, not uncertainty. Curiosity keeps organizations alive - and aliveness is the new measure of performance.

3. Inner Pace - The New Edge

https://www.perspectiveinanutshell.com/p/inner-pace-is-the-new-edge 

The world is accelerating, yet effective leadership depends on knowing when to slow down.

Inner pace is the art of moving with clarity - choosing when to accelerate, when to pause, and how to stay centered amid motion.

Research shows that reflective practices such as conscious breathing, journaling, or moments of stillness restore physiological balance, enhancing creativity and decision-making.

Leaders who master their inner rhythm project calm that stabilizes teams.

Clarity, more than speed, is what creates momentum - because when your inner world is aligned, your outer impact multiplies.

4. Energy as Strategy

Energy has become the ultimate strategic resource.

According to The Energy Project, aligning leadership rhythms with natural energy cycles correlates with significantly higher engagement and trust.

Time management governs output; energy management governs quality.

Strategic leaders plan their weeks around energy peaks and renewal moments. They protect creative hours, design restorative rituals, and treat recovery as part of performance.

This mindset transforms well-being from a personal preference into a shared cultural practice -  positioning vitality as an organizational asset that fuels insight, empathy, and sustained performance.

https://theenergyproject.com/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22717416404&gbraid=0AAAAAqe2yaXayWDGAtvQiAKSX0sbTXCxg&gclid=Cj0KCQiAq7HIBhDoARIsAOATDxC0uU0p01MirLlP1oY5L1zM41MHZWTUEfX-iaQ-WeurSOTCXnK8IaUaAnn_EALw_wcB 

The complete leader of today represents an evolution in consciousness - someone who understands that the complexity of the outer world can only be met by the clarity of the inner one.

When awareness, adaptability, AI fluency, and energy mastery converge, leaders shape the future from a grounded, human place of presence.

CHRO playbook (Mark/All)

CHRO playbook (Mark/All)

Bringing Leadership to Life

The accountability for developing the complete leaders of today sits with HR leaders – and while yes collaboration across the business is critical, it’s important that they take the lead in this work.

In this section we provide a playbook for HR leaders to follow. This has been built using insight from our foHRsight+ community of senior HR leaders during a series of sessions held in 2025 on the topic of leadership development.

Step 1 - Scope the Work

The first step is to scope the work. HR work can often feel like consuming a proverbial elephant and leadership development definitely falls into that category, so bite size chunks are the order of the day.

Start by collecting some simple data:

1.        How many leaders do we have in our organization?

2.        What are their different levels? Functions?

3.        What are their demographics? Tenure?

4.        How is retention?

5.        How is internal mobility?

6.        What data do you have on engagement?

You can then build your business case by reviewing some broader, more philosophical questions. It will be important to get input from others on this work.

1.        What does leadership mean to our organization?

2.        How important is leadership in delivering performance?

3.        Where do people see the priorities?

Step 2 – Define The Complete Leader

We’ve provided our perspectives on the characteristics of the complete leader, but it will be important to determine what it exactly means for your own organization.

This is a critical step and, based on the feedback from our community members, the most divisive in terms of approach.

Let’s start by thinking about what the objective is here.

Essentially what you are looking for is a clear definition of what “good” leadership looks like for your organization. This helps for a bunch of reasons.

Enables consistency in leadership expectations

They provide a shared language and standard for what great leadership looks like across the organization—critical for driving consistency in how leaders are selected, developed, and held accountable. REMOVE THE DETAIL - ADD DIAGRAM

Allows you to link leadership to strategy

By tying competencies to the specific capabilities your organization needs to compete and grow, they ensure leadership development efforts are not generic, but laser-focused on what drives business value.

Improves talent decisions

From succession planning to promotions, a clear framework helps remove bias and guesswork, enabling more objective, transparent, and fair decisions.

Accelerates development

A well-crafted framework gives leaders a roadmap for growth, helping them understand what’s expected now—and what’s needed next. This supports more targeted learning, mentoring, and feedback.

Strengthens the culture and performance

When leadership behaviours are clearly defined and reinforced, they help shape culture and reinforce performance expectations—creating a more aligned, high-performing organization.

But there is no single road to this destination of clarity and consistency. While there appears to be a shift towards more simplicity, many organizations are still using traditional competency frameworks while others are focusing on more agile frameworks using values and behaviours. It’s all about getting clarity and flexibility and finding what’s right for your organization.

“The debate rages on over terminology — values, behaviors, skills, aptitudes and capabilities — but the consensus is that clarity beats precision in naming.”

foHRsight+ member, 2025

CALL OUT BOX

What is the difference between values, behaviours, competencies^[e] and skills?

And how do they connect …

Values influence behaviours

Behaviours + skills combine in to competencies

Regardless of whether your creating competencies or defining behaviours, the approach you take provides the opportunity for engagement and buy-in across the organization.

Our favourite example (check with Karin) was TMX who took a top-down and bottom-up approach to building their leadership framework.

XXX – get clarity from Karin on the approach - FINANCIA SERVICES INDUSTRY

Step 3 – Develop Your Leaders

Once you’ve defined what “good” leadership looks like to your organization, it’s time to start to build capability in your leaders.

Before we talk about the many different approaches to leadership development, there are a number of important considerations:

·      It’s an obvious statement, but let’s not forget that all of your leaders are different. They have different values, different experiences and different levels of self-awareness. Your approach needs to take this into consideration.

·      It’s unlikely you want all of your leaders to behave as robots so we recommend taking a strength based approach.

·      It’s critical that people see this as a development opportunity not a performance management technique. The road to effective leadership is never ending as we adapt to an ever-changing workplace so a continuous learning, growth mindset is important.

For any development intervention to be impactful, it must start with leaders building self-awareness.

QUOTE FROM PODCAST – Vanessa

Our community identified a number of techniques that can be used to build self-awareness.

SHOW IN DIAGRAM

·      Identify core values

·      Feedback including 360

·      Psychometrics

·      Personal reflection

·      Measuring your impact

Once a leader has a sense of their starting point, you’re ready to develop them and there are a number of techniques available.

SHOW IN DIAGRAM

●     Personal Development Plans (PDPs)

●     Micro-learning for personalized growth

●     Coaching (both internal and external)

●     Voluntary “power skills” programs (focused on empathy, communication, adaptability)

●     Learning on the job

●      Transformational leadership programs

COULD THINK ABOUT VERTICAL & HORIZONTAL DEVELOPMENT - 2 by 2?

Step 4 – Measure Success

One of the fundamental challenges of any development intervention is being able to measure the impact. Identifying the ROI of leadership development is no exception and something that our HR leader community acknowledge is a challenge.

Complex approaches measuring variable factors are becoming less popular and instead organizations are choosing to set clear, straightforward expectations and using the traditional performance management process including 360 feedback to track progress.

Regardless of the approach you take, we recommend looking at a diverse set of metrics including team engagement, team turnover and performance metrics and seeing how they correlate to objective data on the leader’s impact.

The Elephant in the Room

So back to elephants. It would be naive to complete this section without acknowledging the impact of AI on the HR leader who is looking to develop the complete leader for today.

The impact is significant but based on this whitepaper we consider the following questions:

1.        How will AI impact the role of the leader?

2.        How can our leaders leverage AI?

3.        How can HR leverage AI to develop our leaders?

These questions justify more detail that will be covered in future whitepapers, but are considered below.

ORIGINAL NOTES

Impact of AI

●      AI is emerging as a practical learning partner — for feedback practice, coaching simulations, and leadership scenario training.

●      Seen as a safe environment to develop soft skills and tough conversation capabilities.

●      HR leaders are exploring how to integrate AI tools without depersonalizing leadership learning.

●      AI as a scaleable solution to build knowledge.

●      How can AI ensure learning is sustainable - holding people accountable to leaders … building momentum. Nudges, check-ins and data management.

●      Leaders feel overwhelmed by competing demands.

●      Virtual learning attention spans are shrinking.

●      There’s still confusion about how to measure the impact of leadership development effectively.

This is a summary from the Leadership Lab meetings we had with our members.

The role of the HR leader in bringing this to life - cycle of buying, building talent, continuous feedback loop

How does it differ due to AI?

Role of HR as a player and a shaper - HR leader need to lean into this work themselves and advocate across the organization.

Recognizing the outcome we want through the leadership journey … links to the broader people experience

Learning culture - HR leaders

How do we measure leadership effectiveness?

1. Core Themes from the Leadership Lab Discussions

Evolving Context for Leadership

• Leadership models are under review because many traditional competency frameworks feel outdated, bureaucratic, and overly complex.
• There’s a shift toward simplicity — focusing on values and behaviors rather than long lists of competencies.
• Leaders are grappling with balancing clarity and flexibility in defining what good leadership looks like.

Key Macro Trends Impacting Leadership

• AI’s rise: As AI takes over tactical tasks, leadership needs to emphasize cognitive, relational, and creative skills.
• Complexity and pace of change: Requires resilience, agility, and adaptability as standard leadership traits.
• Talent mobility and hybrid work: Reinforce the need for clarity in expectations and consistency in leadership culture across locations.

2. Insights About Leadership Models and Frameworks

Competency Frameworks

• Widespread skepticism about traditional competency models — seen as too rigid and outdated (“the 1990s called and want their model back”).
• Some still see value in competencies for:

• Creating a shared language of leadership.
• Linking leadership expectations to business strategy.
• Enabling consistent, fair talent decisions.
• Supporting targeted development and feedback.

Simplification and Clarity

• The group agreed on the need for simpler, behavior-based models that connect directly to organizational values.
• Debate continues over terminology — “values,” “behaviors,” “skills,” “aptitudes,” and “capabilities” — but the consensus is that clarity beats precision in naming.

3. Performance and Measurement Discussions

Simplifying Leadership Measurement

• Many organizations overcomplicate performance systems.
• Leaders prefer straightforward expectations — e.g., supporting teams, setting priorities, showing respect — rather than abstract metrics.
• Challenges remain in translating values like courage or trust into measurable indicators.

Performance Rating Systems

• Mixed results from dual or forced-curve rating systems (measuring “what” and “how” separately).
• These systems can clarify expectations but risk discouraging honest feedback or nuanced evaluation.
• The group agreed leadership performance should not be reduced to simple scores.

4. Leadership Development Approaches

What’s Working

• Personal Development Plans (PDPs) and micro-learning are gaining traction for personalized growth.
• Coaching (both internal and external) is increasingly valued over formal classroom training.
• Voluntary “power skills” programs (focused on empathy, communication, adaptability) are highly popular.
• Learning on the job and labeling experiences as learning help employees recognize development opportunities.
• Transformational leadership programs - go one level deeper - very in depth understanding shaping moments and triggers - how to deal with feedback - understanding limiting beliefs - mindset shifts - intensive human intervention

What’s Challenging

• Leaders feel overwhelmed by competing demands.
• Virtual learning attention spans are shrinking.
• There’s still confusion about how to measure the impact of leadership development effectively.

5. Role of AI in Leadership Development

• AI is emerging as a practical learning partner — for feedback practice, coaching simulations, and leadership scenario training.
• Seen as a safe environment to develop soft skills and tough conversation capabilities.
• HR leaders are exploring how to integrate AI tools without depersonalizing leadership learning.
• AI as a scaleable solution to build knowledge.
• How can AI ensure learning is sustainable - holding people accountable to leaders … building momentum. Nudges, check-ins and data management.