History is full of inspiring examples of leadership and reveals the circumstance that have shaped the world today. So when it comes to envisioning the leadership of the future, it helps to look both forward and back. At Ivey’s The Future We Symposium, a panel of experts on organizational leadership discussed the importance of both identifying what’s unfolding and building a future vision based on learning from the past.
The panel included Martha Maznevski, PhD ’94, a professor of Organizational Behaviour and Faculty Director for Executive Education at Ivey; Dr. Laurence Mussio, a historian, CEO of Signal Influence, and Chair of the Long Run Institute; and Sevaun Palvetzian, President and CEO of UNICEF Canada. The discussion, moderated by Dusya Vera, PhD ’02, a professor of Strategy and Executive Director of Ivey’s Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, focused on what leadership in Canada might look like by 2050 and how we will get there. Here are some takeaways.
History matters
Acknowledging that there will always be uncertainty about the future due to the law of unintended consequences, historian Laurence Mussio said the best way to lead through uncertainty is by having a clear understanding of the present situation and the past.
“The best histories give you a pattern recognition – a context about what’s unfolded and where it might continue or where we might actually break with the past. It pulls back the veil on complexity,” he said. “We do have a centuries-long dataset about Canadian leadership to compare against. The question is, can you detect a pattern throughout time and space about what makes an effective leader? And if you can, how can you emulate those qualities that we can identify as essential to leadership?”
Mussio said some personal qualities are already commonly associated with leadership, such as being well-spoken and having the courage to speak out against the consensus. Some important issues have also already been identified as being priorities for future leaders. These include Canada’s energy transition, the unity of the country, globalization, and the economy. Stating that Canada “is not in a happy place,” Mussio said future leaders must be prepared to speak with courage and clarity about the scale of these challenges.
“We need to return to a Canadian tradition of having a clear-eyed understanding of what the world is, not what we wish it to be, and to approach policy and decision-making based on the national interest,” he said.
Revive Renaissance thinking
Having worked in public, private, and non-profit sectors throughout her career, Sevaun Palvetzian of UNICEF has seen how leadership challenges can differ by sector. And noting that the world is entering an age of polycrisis, Palvetzian said future leaders will have to be adept at handling complexity. She said leadership development needs to move beyond a focus on specialized skills and knowledge and model itself after the Renaissance period when people were encouraged to learn about a range of subjects.
“Renaissance thinkers take different data points, consider different outputs, read different things, talk to different people, and have a wisdom of crowd that fuels how they think. They’re smarter. They may not be as technically sound in some areas, but they’re well-rounded. And that’s how you spot what’s coming,” she said. “Some of the best leaders I’ve seen in my 360-degree career are Renaissance thinkers.”
Palvetzian said leaders of the future need to be able to both zoom up to see what's ahead and connect down within the organization. She said leaders must understand both external factors, such as how the news making headlines affects their organizations, as well as internal factors, such as how a colleague down the hall is feeling. And that requires a broad range of knowledge and perspectives.
“When you’re building your team and thinking about professional development programming within your organization, consider whether you are honing expertise or encouraging people to be diverse,” she said. “Think about arts, science, literacy, literature. Go hard on Renaissance because something magical happened in that 300-year window and we are losing some of that.”
Commit to taking risks together
While collaboration has long been considered important in leadership, Ivey's Martha Maznevski warns that it can sometimes impede action.
“I work in a lot of contexts where people are driving so much to find that elusive wingman – to find the consensus – that they get paralyzed. We end up trying to get that perfect policy or that perfect plan that we end up not taking actions that we know will make things a little bit better,” she said. “Fear and even embarrassment of getting it wrong or of unintended consequences can lead to paralysis. And we need leaders that can take us forward.”
Instead, Maznevski said leaders should strive for consensus to take a risk together and that requires an openness to trust in each other’s intentions, and a willingness to take small steps of action and analyze the learnings from each step.
“I’m not saying get rid of the analysis and the planning, but let’s put it into learning stages,” she said. “We need leaders who can do those three things: develop trust among people in terms of intentions, have the capacity to take action, and be obsessed with learning.”
Developing future leaders
The panellists each shared a tip for developing the leaders of tomorrow. Ideas included:
Develop the character of leaders
“We need leaders who are willing to make unpopular decisions that are for the greater good."
– Laurence Mussio
Scenario planning with real-life examples
“We need to create situations based on real-life experiences so that people can learn."
– Martha Maznevski
Striving for diversity of thought
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with so consider the diversity of who you hire, how you construct your team, and who you hear from."
– Sevaun Palvetzian
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