The following paper summarises research that aims to contribute insights into this area by examining data on competencies and traits from hiring senior executives and comparing this to surveys on future competencies in the C-Suite in Kenya. 

• Significant differences were found in relation to skills and behaviours which contribute to versatile and adaptable leadership styles and approaches. Specifically, the increased need for Situational Adaptability and Nimble Learning. On the other hand, senior executives in the future are less likely to focus on operational skills including ensuring accountability and aligning execution, highlighting the importance of managing tensions and trade-offs of performance in future. 
• Significant differences were also found in relation to competencies that focus more on the leader themselves, and on people, and less on results. Specifically, the increasing need for competencies of Engages and Inspires and Develops Talent. Additionally, senior executives are more likely to require skills and behaviours to Cultivate Innovation. 
• When looking at data on traits of Kenyan executives from selection assessments, leaders had significantly low scores for traits related to energy and specifically Need for Achievement, Persistence and Assertiveness. These have a direct implication to their preparedness and capacity for leadership ascendance despite obstacles and challenges. 
• The reprioritized competencies provide an early recognition of the changing nature of leadership, and the unpreparedness of executives who operate on outdated models of skills and behaviours. 
  
  

Introduction

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked - Warren Buffet.

The Covid-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves through the Kenyan economy, catapulting forward and fast-tracking trends such as automation, digitisation, and innovation. In responding to this new inflection point of the rapid transformation of the workplace, prolonged recession, and high levels of structural unemployment, business leaders are being called to navigate well outside of their comfort zone. 

As they begin to look at the future, there is a strong temptation to focus on processes, structures and technology to create a sense of certainty. In this paper we seek to go beyond that to explore the emergence of a set of behaviours and skills that will potentially define their future work, and by comparing this with existing data on senior executives, attempt to understand implications for their preparedness and development. 

This research provides an early insight into the potential shifts in business needs and skills as people learn how to work disparately and with far less oversight, as corporate culture shifts to focus on empathy, control gives way to trust, and people adapt to working in a more agile way. 

At this historical point in time, we need leader who take the opportunity given by the pandemic (if opportunity is the right word) to help engage in a major reset. Beyond surviving the dramatic downturn, leadership teams will need to have the courage and conviction to make fundamental changes, realising that culture and talent management is going to be more important than ever. We need to seize the opportunity to make the fundamental changes - upskill capabilities, and proactively equipping teams with the mindsets, behaviours and values that will be critical in ensuring future success.

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Background to the Research

Over the years, Career Connections has collected data on what clients look for when hiring senior executives. This provides an opportunity to analyse the data on an ongoing basis in order to generate insights on what behaviours are on demand at a given time.

By understanding the client’s competency requirements for executive roles, we can consistently predict the set of behaviours that are in demand. On the other hand, we by analysing assessment data on candidates we are able to provide additional perspectives on the relationship between the current skillset and the organisational needs. 

These differences have always existed, but we were interested in mapping how the current disruption has shifted the leadership perspective in terms of the leadership competencies. The behavioural data that we have collected and analysed is in form of competencies and traits as presented in this research. 

Competencies represent what people can do, that is observable skills and behaviours required for success at work. 

They provide a snapshot of a person’s level of proficiency on work-related skills, revealing what the person can do now. We have explored anticipated competencies for the future amongst senior executives. 

In addition, the present research seeks to establish how the personality traits for the Senior Executive link to the shifting competencies for the future. Traits are a person’s natural tendencies and abilities, including personality and intellectual capacity. 

They reflect stable aspects of “who you are”. Understanding the competencies and the traits for senior executives may provide insights on the direction to take in the unfolding future. 

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Methodology

This research drew on 36 C-Suite position profiles that had been filled in as part of assessing the candidates fit to the senior roles in the past few years. The past C-Suite profiles have been used to assess 132 executives (including 47 CEO’s). We therefore scrutinized the actual candidate data at depths to reveal their performance on the competencies and traits. 

In July 2020, while in the middle of the first wave of COVID-19 in Kenya, we undertook a survey of 33 executives including Non-Executive Directors, Chief Executive Directors, and Human Resource Directors to gain their perspective on the anticipated competencies for the unfolding future. 

The data was collected using Korn Ferry’s Four-Dimensional Executive Assessment (KF4D). The measures in KF4D predict differences in performance, and are correlated with critical organisational outcomes, including engagement, commitment, retention, productivity, leadership effectiveness, and leadership potential. 

We then compared the ranking of the future competencies from the survey against the past competencies as captured in the previous C-Suite profiles. The competency ranking was then categorized into mission critical competencies, critical competencies, and least critical competencies. 

We also looked at how the executive’s trait scores aligned with the C-Suite position requirements. We plotted this assessment data to highlight the percentage of time the candidates met the traits as per the client’s expectations.

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Findings

Below are the results that compare the ranking of future competencies with the past competencies. 

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Competencies

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From the table above, some competencies are now highly ranked compared to the past. For example, Situational Adaptability and Cultivating Innovation. Some, such as Balancing Stakeholders, remain unchanged. However, Aligning Execution and Ensuring Accountability are no longer ranked as highly as they were in the past. 

Comparing the future competencies with the past competencies reveal the changing nature of expectations for the senior executive: Organisations are putting less emphasis on: 

• Situational Adaptability 
  

• Cultivating Innovation 
  

• Developing Talent 

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Traits

Below is the summary of the past candidate data, showing the percentage of how they met the client’s requirements. 

The data above reveals a high degree of Curiosity and Focus amongst Senior Executives. Senior Executives scored lowest in Sociability, Affiliation, Tolerance of Ambiguity, Persistence, and Need for Achievement.

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Implications

Adapting to a New Way of Leading

We need to see this crisis as a defining leadership moment in Kenyan organisations. The present pandemic could become the great catalyst to address leadership issues that we have been quite aware of but have preferred to ignore. And the results from this research indicate the tidal change that is upon us has already reprioritised the critical behaviours expected of leaders. 

Overall, these reprioritised competencies indicate a shift away from a focus on results (Ensures Accountability and Aligns Execution) toward factors that are self-focused (Manages Ambiguity and Situational Adaptability) and people focused (Engages and Inspires and Develops Talent). 

They also underpin the mantras we have heard in recent years at a global level: stay true to purpose, adopt an agile and continuous learning mindset, keep a pulse of the shifting needs and innovate, and resist the pressure to engage in short-term actions. 

In many ways the reprioritized competencies are unsurprising, as they align with the emergence of new ways of working and business environment. This is most obvious in the two key shifts around versatility: adopting a more enabling leadership (engages and inspires) and less forceful types (ensures accountability). Less operational focus (aligns execution) and more strategic leadership (Strategic Vision), highlights how control is giving way to trust and empathy. The case for versatile leadership, the ability to read and adjust to change with a wide repertoire of complementary behaviours, is supported further by the increased ranking of the Situational Adaptability competency, a key skill in helping leaders manage the tensions and trade-offs of performance. 

The data on traits of senior executives recently assessed provides insights into the preparedness of these executives, and the need for their accelerated development. Traits are personality characteristics that exert notable influence on behaviour and are key determinants for success depending on job roles and contexts. The overall low scores for traits centre around energy (need for achievement, persistence, and assertiveness) and have a direct implication around the capacity for tenacity and leadership ascendance despite obstacles and difficulties. 

As we explore these reprioritised competencies and provide recommendations with the aim to move learning from the fringes to the centrepiece of leadership, we are urging companies to use the opportunity afforded by this disruption to make progress toward the long-term upskilling and reskilling of their leadership teams.

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Recommendations

Preparing Leaders for the Emerging Future

The present pandemic has left everyone exposed, from leaders who have to navigate unchartered waters, to those responsible for building leadership capacity in organisations. The shift in the critical competencies identified in this research, provide an early recognition of the changing nature of leadership and the need to develop new capabilities. By examining these competencies, the rationale for their selection and their implications, we aim to provide some insights that will help leaders prepare for the emerging future. 

Engaging & Inspiring

In a moment of crises, everyone looks to their leader and in this global pandemic senior executives have never had a more intense spotlight trained on their behaviour and actions. Often, the default expectation is that businesses will hunker down and focus on bottom-line fundamentals. But in this crisis, fraught with anxiety and uncertainty, there is an opportunity for leaders to make an indelible mark with a different kind of leadership, by deliberately choosing how they show up. 

“As leaders we are expected to be right and to know everything, how then can we be vulnerable especially with all that is happening … this is the biggest culture shift in leadership especially in the current environment. Previously, we were expected to know it all and not make mistakes. If you can show up to be vulnerable to your team, I think that is very empowering for a leader.”  Benson Wairegi, Former Group Managing Director, Britam.

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Beyond the “to do” list, now is the time for leaders to consider their “to be” list – what qualities they bring and show up with today, and to continue to bring in the future. It is times like this that senior executives not only have to be seen as the organisation’s rock, but also allow employees to see their leadership as vulnerable, empathetic and their decision making in accordance with their values. 

This competency is about thinking bigger and faster, and the new muscle to develop it is based on the recognition that the barriers to boldness and speed are less about technical limits, and more about adaptive issues. The mindsets toward what is possible and what people are willing to do. After all, leadership is about challenging beliefs and long-held assumptions to explicitly reset organisations. 

The global pandemic is not just an economic challenge of a lifetime, it also demands a moment of existential introspection: what defines a company and personal purpose. Our raison d’être. 

There is greater focus today on using purpose as a competitive advantage, leveraging it as a new tool of innovation and using it as way to touch the lives of many. But it must be genuine, infused into the organisation’s business model and leaders need to demonstrate this genuine commitment to social purpose through meaningful and authentic action. 

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Situational Adaptabilty

In a broad sense this competency underpins two evolving trends. On the one hand, the recognition that management models are in flux, with the emergence of a replacement in the form of more agile ways of working, and on the other, the need for a larger repertoire of skills, abilities and behaviour for leaders. 

Many companies are already experimenting with agile methodologies as means of dealing with the rising complexity and as a means of bringing together diversity of thought, harnessing collective intelligence through multi-disciplinary teams. At its heart, agile leadership is about alignment, empowerment, continuous learning, and a bias toward outcome-oriented teams. In essence, the situation is the working structure, and this has changed in two ways. Firstly, a higher degree of autonomy for people close to the edges of the organisation to make decisions, innovate and get things done with customers, partners and communities. And secondly, getting a high degree of alignment in cross-functional teams to empower them to set priorities, make fast decisions and implement to tackle an array of challenges. 

“As a team we are being called upon to be more adaptable than ever before; we are asked questions that have never been asked before. We have to make decisions on the spot and to change as necessary as opposed to relying on the policy playbook, which is not always applicable.” _{David Gated, Former Managing Director, Davis & Shirtliff.}

The great debate raging in leadership over the last few years about whether next breed of leaders should be narrow specialists or broader generalists, has reached an interesting juncture now. Adjusting to social distancing measures and collaborating over virtual platforms, leaders have had to solve practical, technical problems while also addressing peoples’ emotional needs and safety concerns. Recent international research by one of our partners, Kaiser Leadership Solutions, on 193 executives in 6 companies reveals that versatile leadership is a vital catalyst for teams to refocus, adjust to disruptive change and continue to deliver amid game-changing shock. Yet versatile leadership is still very rare with only 10% of leaders indicating true versatility. 

The emerging future calls for ambidextrous leadership that can manage the paradox of fast evolving business models. This kind of leadership is not a personality type, but a set of work experiences characterised by variety, intensity, and adversity as well as a willingness to step outside of a comfort zone. According to Kaiser Leadership Solutions, the formulae is simply versatility = career diversity x learning agility. 

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Cultivates Innovation

The value and importance of innovation has increased in the pandemic crises as organisations encounter disruption and understand that short-term solutions or product extensions will not build the economic foundation needed to ride out the bad times. The importance of this competency indicates a sea change 

coming in the approach to innovation. The practice of picking out a few volunteers to form an innovation team, locking them away to brainstorm, focusing on quick-fixes and developing rallying cries is no longer considered innovation. Beyond this naïve, superficial, and simplistic view, there is need for organisations to see innovation as deeper and more systematic. 

Senior executives need to work hard to instil a deep, companywide commitment to innovation, identify innovative people and put real innovation processes in place. In today’s context, innovation will increasingly be everyone’s job, and leaders need to create a safe space for others to challenge the status quo, allow ideas to be heard, encourage questioning, and demonstrate an authentic commitment to hearing and supporting others’ ideas. 

Cultivating innovation requires leaders to carve out time to innovate – discovering challenges, listening to customers, developing, and testing solutions and redesigning business models. They need to lead properly organised innovation project teams focused on big goals where individual and team performance is visible. 

Ultimately, senior executives need to ingrain an innovation philosophy into the culture, whilst answering important questions: How do I expect leaders to innovate in their jobs? Is innovation an explicit part of the performance review? And how do I encourage smart risks and embrace failure as a vehicle for learning? 

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Strategic Vision

Amidst the pandemic crises, senior executives have been tested in their ability to maintain a broad vision of the future, to inspire and hold people accountable to achieving the vision. As many organisations trade long-term sustainability for short-term outcomes, they have struggled with the paradox of being morally responsible for achieving vision and leading by example in order to extend strategy beyond the problem at hand. 

There is an increasing awareness that the working world, after the pandemic, will be different and senior executives will need to adopt an ecosystem mindset. In whatever industry or role, the chances are that succeeding will require leaders to bring together diverse stakeholders who can work together, take bigger risks together, think of value-creation opportunities and establish much deeper bonds of trust. This is a network leadership challenge - to see and sense what reality looks like from the viewpoints of partners and stakeholders, whilst embracing data-rich technology platforms to help gather, interpret, and act on analytics. It also highlights the need to equip senior executives with the metaskill of vicarious learning - learning how to learn, adapt and change quickly. 

Strategic vision in the future shifts senior executives from leading a company to leading communities, from thinking in industry to playing in an arena, from inspiring others to inspiring change, from vision and purpose to connecting to purpose, productivity and impact, and from balancing expertise and emotional intelligence to real humanity, authenticity and heart. From anticipating and proactively managing disruption to seizing disruption as an opportunity for transformation.

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Develops Talent

It may seem counterintuitive to highlight the importance of developing talent, especially in the context of the old paradigm of scarcity of human talent, as unemployment rates climb globally. It is natural for organisations to want to abandon or postpone work devoted to talent management, but just as with other assets like technology and raw materials, this is fleeting, and real sustainable advantage is rooted in harnessing the passion, skills, capabilities, and creativity that people bring to work. Now is the time to answer killer questions of talent management around supply and demand. 

From a leadership perspective, the increasing importance of this competency highlights that talent should underpin every strategic choice and key business decision that senior executives are making right now. To capitalise on this opportunity senior executives need to take a critical stance to redefine talent processes, especially those that have been working less effectively. They need to ensure they have the right capabilities in their leadership by future building success profiles and measuring talent against these. 

Making important decisions on talent requires updating data. Under the extreme pressures of the current situation, leaders are being exposed in a new light, revealing things about them that were before not apparent. High potentials may prove disappointing, whilst others establish themselves as genuine successors. Using updated criteria to reassess leadership, we can make the most of this new information and build better teams for the future. 

As we move increasingly to working in a virtual environment it is vital that senior executives do not simply take the talent processes of the past and reinsert them into a different channel. To reengage and interact more effectively, they need to redesign processes including performance management, learning and development. And, as we have already begun to see in Kenya, leaders need to capitalise on global talent as they no longer need to relocate.

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Conclusion

Overall, this research into the changing nature of skills and competencies of senior executives in Kenya highlights how the current pandemic crises has accelerated trends that were already in play and triggered new ones. The future of work does not just require a different skill set but an entirely new way of working. 

The results are a stark reminder that competency models can quickly outlive their shelf-life in a fast-changing world. No one is certain what any organisation will look like in the future, and we are well aware that by the time they are articulated, agreed to by leaders and developed, the necessary skills may have changed. It therefore puts the emphasis on meta-competency: the underlying capacity and willingness to learn and adapt to enable leaders to acquire new competencies quickly. 

The shift in the demand of these leadership competencies provide an early indication and call to action. For individuals to remain credible, it will be critical for them to stay constantly up to date and redefine their core proposition, with emphasis on individual responsibility for maintaining relevant skills. Now more than ever senior executives need to have the courage to make evidence-based decisions and the humility to challenge their own views about their future preparedness.

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