Future CEO: Top 9 Main CEO Skills You'll Need to Succeed in 2022

CEO skills are difficult to name unique or in some way particular: mostly, they just represent common sense and constant development. What is challenging here is staying set on the constantly changing environment and catching the slightest changing of the leadership trends that work. 

A good CEO of the future knows how to work with data, understands his subordinates and does not drive them into the frames. Read in the article what skills you will still need after five years.

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As time goes on, the labor market is changing and typical office employees are not at all what they were 10 years ago. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are developing, so the responsibilities of the same specialist are being transformed, the leader's functions are changing. Professions disappear, new ones come in their place.

Already now you need to master the skills that come in handy to become an effective chief executive officer in the next 5 years.

Skill 1. Understanding Technology

Fundamental shifts that are caused by the tech boom, change the nature of labor. Technology comes to the fore. The leader of the future is not just an administrator and manager, but also a specialist with “computational thinking”. He must be able to work with large amounts of data, analyze them. Technologies will create additional problems related to data management, privacy, conflicts. The manager should be able to solve them. It is impossible to do these without a clear understanding of the work of technologies.

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Skill 2. Decentralized Leadership

The chief executive officer ordered everyone so you should listen and perform. Such kind of system is already dead. The leadership skills you need today are different. For instance, leading global corporations already use the approach of "management without bosses" or "team management." In a couple of years, the main backbone of workers will be representatives of generation Z, who do not accept pressure. Most issues, excluding strategic decisions, will be addressed collectively. The key skill of the leader is to learn how to work with the team, distribute tasks, and take the initiative of other employees. 

Skill 3. Collaboration

One-sided movement and decision-making are now risky and imprudent. Collaboration otherwise brings more perspectives and views to each situation. So working together with your colleagues (teams, C-level management, board of directors) helps in discovering new ideas and solutions for the project. Isolation steals the chance for moving forward, as if you listen to the team you gathered around you and now trust - your company will develop faster.

The CEO has three ways to foster an effective collaboration: will, plan, and manage. The first one is the result-driven approach, as where’s the will to achieve, there’s the openness to the other opinions and solutions, and even if the final goal didn’t seem achievable for everyone before, it becomes one. The second way - plan - relates to communication. The willingness to achieve, followed by the detailed plan of communication, firstly brings everyone to a better understanding of the current situation, and secondly - opens a room for clear evaluating and defining the solutions. And the last way is managing the outcomes. Collaboration brings both you and your partners and coworkers new results and information, which, having been analyzed and relevantly coped with, can give you all room for significant improvement and growth.

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Skill 4. Work On The Result, Salary For Effectiveness

Managers need to control staff with different schedules, freelance and full-time employees. The percentage of remote employees is increasing every year. Managers will need to evaluate work, regardless of the number of hours spent in the office, to approve the system of labor efficiency. Essential leadership skills now include 

thinking less about the process and more about the result.

Skill 5. Flexibility And Work In The Face Of Contradictions

By 2025, a situation will arise that will have to work with entirely different generations of workers: young Zetas and Millennials. They have different values and approaches to work, so managers will need to find a common language with everyone. Various cultures, ages, demographics and social characteristics can create conflict situations. Leaders must learn to work with people and understand their backgrounds.

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Skill 6. Growth mindset

Do you, as a CEO, only focus on your team performing tasks and getting the previously set results, or do you challenge your team and give them a place for learning more and achieving better results after? You might have already heard of two mindsets: fixed and growth. While the fixed mindset senior leaders focus on the outcomes and numbers, the growth-set senior leaders focus on the process and ongoing exceeding the previously set goals. No way you leave your numbers not watched, of course, but tending to a growth mindset helps you create a team of responsible and fearless explorers, who finally exceed the expected numbers, as they are ready to learn, develop and identify opportunities. This is one of the key skills of CEO who is eager to multiply their team’s potential.

Skill 7. Openness

On the one hand, the senior leader must do everything to protect the company's confidentiality. On the other, to maintain a market trend for transparency and openness. Companies are required to have up-to-date information about the business, maximum interaction with employees, communications with partners and customers in instant messengers and social networks. As a result, managers do not know which side to take: openness or protection. You need to learn to look for a middle ground: not to keep information secret from the team and protect employees' personal data.

Skill 8. Employee Development

The best competitive advantage of any CEO is the level of employee development. To make any strategy work, you need to have a great team equipped with the right competencies and skills. You have a multiple-choice in providing your team with new knowledge, but the best one is ongoing learning, which is opposite to traditional limited-in-time courses. This kind of training approach implies constant learning and immediate practice by implementing new skills into the process right away. At all levels of leadership, you have people with different backgrounds and views, which also can be a great source of experience and a gem for knowledge sharing. Just take a closer look and you’ll see that you can cherish and nourish your human resources, even with your existing human resources, via listening to your staff carefully and defining the talents. 

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Skill 9. Advanced level of “Soft Skills”

Skills needed to be a CEO include sociability, teamwork, learning new things, creativity, time management skills, erudition and strong communication skills. To hunt the most talented employees in the coming years, you will drastically need these skills for both yourself and everyone on your team. The ability to quickly navigate, readjust, be flexible and friendly, and understand technologies is a successful CEO’s skill and prior knowledge in 2022. You need to master them now. In the next 5 years, success will be achieved by those who are not afraid of difficulties and changes.