Leadership 5.0 Explained

In this audiogram, Leadium Director, Sharon Longridge, summarises Leadership 5.0 and the attributes leaders must embody to shape the human-centric, resilient and sustainable workplaces of 'Industry 5.0'.   

This is an excerpt from her two-part interview with Michelle Viret, Sustainability lead from Meta5 Group, for The Workplace Podcast. They examine the complexities of leadership, including recalibrating jobs alongside smart machines and the rise of the era of empathy. 

•  The complex demands leaders currently face
•  Rise of digitisation and the connection between AI (Artificial Intelligence) and HI (Human Intelligence)
•  The importance of human-centred leaders with skills inc. inclusive listening, prospection, and rapid rapport

You can listen to their complete conversation here.

"We need to rehumanise the workforce. That requires our leaders to have deeper conversations.. to do inclusive listening... build rapport rapidly and create psychologically safe teams who feel seen and heard, and therefore, are engaged."

Further reading 

The economic potential of generative AI: the next productivity frontier, June 2023

 “Generative AI has the potential to change the anatomy of work, augmenting the capabilities of individual workers by automating some of their individual activities. Current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today. In contrast, we previously estimated that technology has the potential to automate half of the time employees spend working.4 

Transcription of audiogram

Right now we are witnessing several evolutionary leaps and some firms are still catching up with the idea of industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution.

This is where we are seeing this rapid shift towards digitization. In the deployment of robotics, the use of massive amounts of data to inform decision-making and automation really are impacting the strategies across every sector.

Right now, according to Deloitte, all workers will need new skills as they are working alongside sophisticated machines. So the rise and rise of AI is an incredibly topical conversation and it really asks us to reflect on the, the big question, what happens to the human intelligence, the AI within this emergent collaboration?

With technology, and you know what many of the experts are saying and, and just what feels kind of intuitively right, is that our species of humans have a natural advantage in interpersonal relationships.

We have a natural advantage in the nuance of connection and what we're seeing and what the kind of deep thinkers are talking about is that we are entering this era of empathy and it's a time now. Possibly paradoxically, we need to rehumanise the workforce. So that requires our leaders to have deeper conversations.

It requires them to do inclusive listening. It requires them to build rapport rapidly and create psychologically safe teams who feel seen and heard, and therefore, are engaged. This is a very human essay at a time when we are grappling with high technology. So while some companies are still kind of getting their head around what industry for looks like for them, we have another parallel revolution, and that's what's now coined  Industry 5.0.

And this is a phrase that's quite a new concept that, the European Union are propagating and it elevates the vision of industry beyond efficiency, productivity, and shareholder return. It frames a broader remit where organisations are contributing consciously to society, the wellness of workers, and also the health of the planet.

So there are three pillars that they talk about around sustainability, human-centricity and resilience. Now, you know, you and I know these aren't new concepts and we've been moving in this direction around corporate social responsibility, but the shift here is the move to centre stage as opposed to a call, more of a peripheral activity. And when we look back to leaders, these are massive. And fabulous challenges. So we need leaders who can skilfully re-engage and rehumanise the workplace.

To transcend business as usual takes clarity of mind. That mental bandwidth to think laterally and creatively, and then rationally take intentional action and bring your people along. And when we are feeling depleted, which again is extraordinarily common, we don't have access to that higher-order thinking, the courage and the creativity that we know leaders need now to shape this new epoch.