The Historic Year That Changes Everything in Leadership

Are You Ready for 2025 - The Historic Year That Changes Everything in Leadership?

By Kirsten Stendevad, Nordic bestselling author and leadership developer, for DK Business paper

Prepare yourself for an unprecedented paradigm shift. Deloitte's newly released "Tech Trends 2024" report reveals that 93% of leaders see AI as the most significant disruptor of their business models in the coming year. This is not just another gradual development - it's a fundamental rewriting of the rules that makes business as usual a direct path to obsolescence: As a leader, you can no longer just be a skilled administrator or strategic thinker.

McKinsey's recent analysis shows that companies are already experiencing fundamental changes in their business model driven by the convergence of AI, climate transition, and geopolitical shifts. What's revolutionary is not the individual trends - it's their simultaneous acceleration that creates momentum for change without historical precedent. Deloitte's latest survey shows that 87% of global leaders see developing expanded leadership capacity as critical for future success, while 89% acknowledge that traditional development methods are no longer sufficient.

Einstein aptly said: "We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them." This is evident in Deloitte's "2023 Global Human Capital Trends" report, which demonstrates how traditional forms of leadership are becoming increasingly ineffective in meeting today's complexity. Something new is needed. And it needs to happen fast. Deloitte's analysis of over 10,000 global leaders shows that only 23% of leaders and 18% of employees believe their organizations are ready to handle future challenges. This creates a critical need for a fundamental expansion of leadership capacity.

2025 becomes particularly crucial because the development requires more than just new skills - it requires a fundamental paradigm shift in leaders' way of thinking and operating. This is supported by Harvard researchers Kegan and Lahey's documentation of traditional leadership development's inadequacy - there is a need for a fundamental expansion of leaders' consciousness level and cognitive capacity. The pressure is high because the best employees increasingly opt out of organizations with outdated leadership. They actively seek leaders who can navigate complexity and create meaning through higher forms of consciousness and systems understanding.

For me, having worked with leadership development for 20 years, it's remarkable that what was previously considered exotic about my approach - for example, introducing brain training and advanced stress-reduction technologies known from the military, as well as teaching new leadership principles such as balance between analytical and intuitive intelligence - now becomes obviously necessary. Methods to activate both systemic thinking and collective intelligence, and tools to create from the future instead of just repairing the past, are no longer just for progressive first movers but fundamental for all who want to remain relevant.

Deloitte's Tech Trends 2024 identifies four critical development dimensions for future leaders:

•  The capacity to see and navigate systemic connections across traditional organizational boundaries
•  The ability to integrate technological insight with human development in a time of accelerating AI adoption
•  Skills in facilitating innovation and transformation in complex adaptive systems
•  Expanded consciousness to create meaning and direction in unprecedented complexity

Organizations that actively develop these capacities in their leaders are significantly better positioned to handle future challenges. This is supported by recent analyses showing how companies with "transformative" leaders systematically outperform their competitors in both innovation and value creation.

For leaders, 2025 therefore becomes the year where investment in personal development and expanded leadership capacity becomes crucial. The choice is no longer whether to develop - it's how and how quickly. Leaders who continue to operate from traditional consciousness levels will experience their ability to create value and results eroding at an accelerating pace.

Top management should recognize that the time for half-hearted development initiatives is over. 2025 will be the year where the consequences of not developing oneself and one's employees become brutally apparent. It will be the year where the divide between future pioneers and past maintainers manifests in both bottom line and market position.

In 12 months, you will either be among those who shaped the future or among those who fell behind because they thought transformation was optional. There is no middle ground, no possibility to wait and see. 2025 will be the year that defines your legacy as a leader. What do you choose?

Sources:

•  Deloitte (2024): "Tech Trends 2024"
•  Deloitte (2023): "Global Human Capital Trends", p. 7
•  Gartner (2024): "Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2024"
•  McKinsey (2023): "The State of AI in 2023"
•  Kegan & Lahey: "Immunity to Change", Harvard Business Press