Given the future forces
of the next decade…

Where do you stack up in terms of your current leadership skills?

Are you ready to lead in
a future that will be volatile, uncertain, complex,
and ambiguous?

How could you improve
your own readiness?

Here, we invite you to reflect on where you are now and how prepared you are
to face the forces of the coming decade.

Leadership Questions
to Ask Yourself

You now have an opportunity to assess your own readiness for the future. Use the questions below to spark your own thinking about leadership and how you might like to develop yourself as a leader in the future. It’s up to you to decide what kind of leader you want to be, but looking ahead to future challenges can bring out more of your own innate leadership gifts. There will be many new skills for future leaders to learn – are you ready?

Answer the questions below as candidly as you can. The questions are grouped around the ten future leadership skills. They are intended to help you personalize these skills and point to how they might apply to your own leadership development.

These are personal questions, as you will see. Leadership begins from the inside, from your own values and point of view. Leaders have the power to make a better world, but it will take an inner balance and discipline.

Please ponder these questions and think about them personally. They are designed to be discerning, but you need to decide what they mean for you.

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Adapted from Leaders Make The Future by Bob Johansen,
Distinguished Fellow, and former President of Institute for the Future

What do you think about this?

We’d love to know. Invite us in for a conversation to learn how Alexsa Consulting can help you and your leadership team lead your organization into a future that matters!

Cheryl Esposito

+1.415.341.1013 office
+1.415.632.8392 mobile

1 /	When you were a child, think back to the ways in which you played in sand or the dirt. What kinds of things did you make? What did you enjoy the most? How has this experience contributed to your leadership style as you have matured?
2 /	How would you describe your interests as an adult in how things work, beyond just what gets produced as output? How does this interest translate into your own leadership style and skills?
3 /	How do you express your own do-it-yourself urges to cook, sew, knit, work with wood, design, write, or do other tasks where you are either making or remaking? How do these instincts contribute to your role as a leader? Are there ways you could bring these skills to work more often?

1 /	Think back to a recent meeting in which you had trouble getting your point across. What were the characteristics of that situation? How did you respond as you tried to be clear? Would the people you lead describe your leadership as clear?
2 /	How often have you been complimented about your clarity in expression in any medium? Think of some specific examples. How do you express clarity in purpose through your leadership? Is your intent clear to those you lead?
3 /	How would you express your own personal leadership legacy in a single compelling sentence? What leadership skills will be most important in order for your legacy to be successful?
4 /	How would you express your organization’s Strategic Intent or Winning Proposition in a single compelling sentence? How do your leadership skills contribute to that winning proposition?

1 /	Think about a specific dilemma you have faced in your recent experience. When you could not solve it, how did that make you feel? How did you respond? How did you explore ways to flip the dilemma around so that it could become an opportunity?
2 /	Do you get energized when you are in the midst of doing a puzzle, before you solve it, or even if you cannot solve it? How do you apply that energy to explore ways to flip dilemmas into opportunities as part of your leadership?
3 /	Are you willing to decide and move ahead when a decision needs to be made, even when you don’t have a solution? Think of a decision you’ve had to make where there was no apparent solution.
4 /	Think of a case where you were able to flip a dilemma into something positive. What leadership skills did you demonstrate in doing this? Where might you be able to improve?

1 /	Do you seek out new experiences from which you could learnespecially situations that make you feel uncomfortable? Think of a recent example and how that experience has contributed to your leadership
2 /	Have you recently immersed yourself in a different world in order to learn? What did you learn? How did that learning get expressed in your leadership?
3 /	How have you participated in games or simulations in your organization? Would you be willing to do so if someone else suggested it? Do you encourage the use of gaming and simulation as a learning medium?

1 /	As you were growing up, did you live in or frequently visit outdoor spaces like forests, oceans, farms, ponds, or parks? How did you play outside in nature? How does this experience contribute to your leadership today?
2 /	Do you have an emotional need to be in natural settings frequently and learn from the experiences you have in nature? How do you satisfy that need? How does this emotional connection to nature contribute to your leadership?
3 /	When you were in school, were you attracted to biology, life sciences, zoology, geography, anthropology, or other similar courses? Do you think of yourself as an amateur or professional life scientist, biologist, geographer, or natural scientist?
4 /	How do you look to nature for insight about challenges you have in your life? How do these life lessons get translated into your leadership style and skill set?

About

Given the future forces of the next decade…

Leadership Questions to Ask Yourself

Do you have a maker instict?

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Do you communicate with clarity?

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Can you flip dilemmas?

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Do you have an immersive learning ability?

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Do you have bio-empathy?

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Can you constructively depolarize a situation?

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Do you have quiet transparency?

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Can you do smart mob organizing?

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Can you do rapid prototyping?

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Can you do commons creating?

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What do you think about this?

Cheryl Esposito

We look forward to partnering with you!

Given the future forces
of the next decade…

Leadership Questions
to Ask Yourself