Lead the Change: Leading People

June 20, 2025 at ESP25

Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures.

For every business leader, the challenge is about making sense of today’s rapidly changing world, and understanding how to prepare for, and succeed, in tomorrow’s world.

We explore how businesses can survive and thrive, and move forwards to create a better future. How to reimagine business, to reinvent markets, to reengage people. We consider what it means to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.

We learn from the innovative strategies of incredible companies – Alibaba and ASML, Biontech and BlackRock, Canva and Collossal, NotCo and Netflix, Patagonia and PingAn, Spotify and Supercell, and many more. We also take a look at what this means for insurance, and some of the most innovative companies in the field.

Are you ready to seize the opportunities of a changing world? 

Module 5: Leading People

Thriving in a world of relentless change

In an age defined by disruption, volatility, and accelerated transformation, the nature of leadership is evolving rapidly. Gone are the days of the all-knowing, top-down executive. In today’s world—shaped by exponential technologies, geopolitical instability, societal shifts, and mounting climate challenges—leading people is not just about managing performance. It’s about inspiring trust, navigating ambiguity, designing adaptable systems, and mobilizing human potential at speed and scale.

Successful leadership in this context requires new mindsets, deeper emotional intelligence, and a reimagined approach to organizations, teams, and change. It is about creating cultures where people can thrive amid uncertainty and complexity—and delivering results while doing so.

The changing role of leaders

Traditional leadership was often rooted in control, command, and hierarchy. Leaders made decisions, others executed. But today’s environments demand collaborative, adaptive, and purpose-driven leadership. The modern leader is less a commander and more a coach, convener, and catalyst.

Instead of having all the answers, today’s leaders must:

  • Ask better questions

  • Facilitate learning across teams

  • Encourage experimentation

  • Lead with empathy and transparency

In this world, leadership is less about position and more about behavior. It requires emotional resilience, the ability to hold paradoxes (e.g., growth vs. sustainability, speed vs. stability), and an openness to continuous learning.

Designing human-centered organizations

Organizations built for scale and predictability are struggling in a world that rewards speed, innovation, and customer intimacy. As such, leaders must redesign their organizations to be networked, fluid, and people-first.

This involves shifting from:

  • Silicon-based systems to carbon-based capabilities: From focusing on processes and structures to unlocking human talent and creativity.

  • Functional silos to cross-functional squads: Teams organized around customer journeys, outcomes, or products.

  • Rigid hierarchies to flexible, decentralized models: Empowering decision-making at the edge, closer to the customer.

Companies like Spotify, Haier, and Unilever have experimented with new ways of organizing—ranging from autonomous micro-enterprises to cross-functional tribes and agile sprints. These approaches increase adaptability, engagement, and innovation.

Designing such organizations also requires rethinking performance systems, incentives, and roles—not just where people work, but how they work together.

Influencing stakeholders in complex ecosystems

Leadership no longer stops at the organizational boundary. Today’s leaders must influence a broader ecosystem: customers, regulators, suppliers, investors, communities, and even competitors. Influence is achieved not through power or control, but through trust, transparency, and shared value.

Stakeholder capitalism, ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) principles, and growing public scrutiny have redefined what it means to lead responsibly. Leaders must be:

  • Authentic communicators: Sharing not just what decisions are made, but why.

  • Systems thinkers: Understanding how different players and forces interact.

  • Bridge builders: Creating alliances and partnerships across boundaries.

Consider how companies like Patagonia or Microsoft engage with governments, NGOs, and communities to drive change that aligns business with broader social or environmental outcomes. Leading people now involves mobilizing others around a common purpose, not just executing an internal plan.

Managing teams for high performance

The team is the atomic unit of the modern organization. High-performing teams are diverse, self-directed, psychologically safe, and aligned to a clear mission. But building and managing such teams in a hybrid, global, and fast-changing environment is challenging.

Effective team leaders must master:

  • Psychological safety: Creating an environment where team members feel safe to speak up, fail, and challenge ideas.

  • Clarity and alignment: Ensuring that goals, roles, and responsibilities are well understood, even in fluid conditions.

  • Inclusion and diversity: Harnessing the full spectrum of talent by enabling everyone to contribute fully and authentically.

  • Coaching and development: Investing in each team member’s growth, not just their output.

Trust, accountability, and a shared sense of purpose are the glue that binds great teams. And they are cultivated through intentional leadership behaviors, not policies or tools.

Growth mindset

Coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, growth mindset is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, learning, and feedback. This mindset is foundational to leading in uncertainty.

Leaders with a growth mindset:

  • See challenges as opportunities

  • Encourage experimentation and learning

  • Celebrate effort and progress, not just outcomes

  • Model humility and curiosity

Organizations like Microsoft, under Satya Nadella’s leadership, embedded growth mindset into their culture to drive transformation—from internal silos to a learning-oriented, collaborative enterprise. The shift from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all” leaders is key to thriving in today’s world.

A growth mindset is also essential to talent development. Leaders must help their people see failure as feedback, and help build adaptive capabilities—so individuals and teams can continuously evolve.

Speed and agility

Perhaps the greatest challenge of leadership today is leading in real time. Markets shift in weeks, not years. Customers expect immediate responses. Competitors arise overnight. Crises emerge with little warning.

In such conditions, leaders must cultivate:

  • Strategic agility: The ability to pivot quickly while staying aligned to long-term goals.

  • Operational speed: Making faster decisions, eliminating bureaucracy, and empowering frontlines.

  • Situational awareness: Scanning for early signals, and being ready to act on imperfect information.

Speed without direction is chaos. Agility without discipline is waste. Great leaders combine fast action with strategic focus, and ensure that teams are clear about priorities even as conditions change.

Tools like agile management, OKRs (Objectives & Key Results), and digital dashboards can help. But true agility is cultural: it’s about how decisions are made, how failure is handled, and how rapidly learning is shared across the system.

Organisations as amazing as the people inside

Ultimately, the future of leadership is deeply human.

In a world where AI is automating tasks, and change is a constant, what matters most is what machines can’t do: empathy, ethics, vision, creativity, and human connection. Leaders must be emotionally intelligent, inclusive, and deeply grounded in values.

This includes:

  • Wellbeing and resilience: Supporting mental and emotional health in an always-on world.

  • Purpose and meaning: Helping people connect their work to something bigger.

  • Trust and transparency: Being honest, vulnerable, and credible—especially in difficult times.

The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced that leadership is not about heroic acts, but about presence, care, and adaptability. The best leaders don’t have all the answers—but they help people ask better questions, stay grounded in purpose, and move forward together.

Leading in a changing world

Leading people in today’s business world is not about maintaining control—it’s about unlocking potential. It’s about redesigning organizations for speed and collaboration, influencing across systems, managing diverse and distributed teams, and nurturing a culture of growth, trust, and resilience.

The leaders who thrive in the future will be those who embrace change not as a threat but as an opportunity to learn, evolve, and reimagine what’s possible—together.

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