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Events Future Skills im Leadership Courage, mindset, humanity

Published
May 27, 2025
Events Future Skills im Leadership - Courage, mindset, humanity
Exponentially advancing technologisation is fundamentally changing the demands placed on managers. Sustainable companies need personalities who actively shape change, enable innovation and consciously shape culture. Personalities with future skills. But what are future skills? How can we recognise, develop, strengthen and anchor them in organisations in the long term?

What are Future Skills – and why are they crucial?

At our Future Leadership Events “Future Skills – the Future is Human” with Dr. Arndt Pechstein and Dr. Martin Schwemmle from The Future Company, the invited CRHOs took time to focus on the future.

Technological development is advancing faster than ever – we are in the midst of an exponential change dynamic. Everything that can be delegated to technology will be. Therefore, what cannot be replaced by AI or machines becomes more significant: our human abilities and our future competencies, the Future Skills. These include courage for the future, fog competence, critical thinking, resilience, psychological safety, values and purpose orientation, as well as a spirit of experimentation and innovation.

Fog competence is one of the most important Future Skills.
Fog competence is one of the most important Future Skills.

Dr. Martin Schwemmle, economist, innovation researcher, and communication expert, and Dr. Arndt Pechstein, neuroscientist, biomimicry specialist, and transformation expert combine solid science with pragmatic implementation – and make Future Skills tangible. 

Dr. Martin Schwemmle, The Future Company (Picture: Bianca Gericke)
Dr. Martin Schwemmle, The Future Company (Picture: Bianca Gericke)

With their company The Future Company, they have dedicated themselves to this topic and have jointly developed the Future Skills Navigator – a tool that helps leaders and organizations recognize, develop, and deliberately promote future competencies.

Dr. Arndt Pechstein, The Future Company (Picture: Audi Urban Future Initiative)
Dr. Arndt Pechstein, The Future Company (Picture: Audi Urban Future Initiative)

In their keynote, Martin Schwemmle and Arndt Pechstein outlined which competencies are indispensable for the future and why it is essential for organisations that leaders bring these abilities, use them consciously, and continue to develop them. 

Subsequently, the participants reflected on their individual situations using targeted questions and thought experiments: How pronounced are my own Future Skills, those in my team, and in our organisation? Where do we stand – and what is blocking us?

Courage for the Future

It became clear that the topic of future competencies has only entered a few companies and changes are often slowed down by existing structures, low error tolerance, lack of courage, staying in familiar patterns, and the lack of possibility or willingness to invest time and money.

This is also reflected in Viavanta's experience in search projects.

Eveline Muhmenthaler, Partner at Viavanta
Eveline Muhmenthaler, Partner at Viavanta

"The requirement profiles in the search for leaders always align with what is currently needed. Rarely is there any reflection on what competencies will be necessary in the future. Future Skills are closely linked to a person's personality. However, this is hardly weighted in job profiles. Companies, in turn, need to know their own future capabilities and requirements to estimate which personalities and competencies really suit them," says Eveline Muhmenthaler of Viavanta. This is the only way organisations can become future-proof.

Future Competence as a Competitive Advantage

Whether an organisation is future-proof depends on the future competence of the people shaping it. And companies must know their own Future Skills to find and promote the right personalities. The plenary was unanimous: For CHROs, this results in a strategic key role because Future Skills are a tremendous competitive advantage and belong at the center of every Talent Management and recruitment effort. 

How can Future Skills be strategically developed and firmly anchored in Leadership development and cultural transformation? There is no simple answer. Together with our partners and clients and in collaboration with The Future Company, we are developing tools and methods to make Future Skills a real competitive advantage – for our clientele and ourselves.

We look forward to the upcoming events for board members and CEOs in June – and to the insights, turns, surprises, and encounters on the journey through the fog into the future.
 

Picture: von Sylvain Mauroux / Unsplash.com
Picture: von Sylvain Mauroux / Unsplash.com

Future Skills – the most interesting Takeaways from the two events summarised:

  • Future readiness begins with people
    Future Skills such as fog competence, resilience, or critical thinking are essential key competencies. They are not static attributes; they can and must be developed long-term. For this reason, uncompromising personnel selection and development regarding such Future Skills is crucial for success.
  • Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
    Reflecting on one's own attitude is central: Where do I or my organisation remain in a fixed mindset? What is the state of the growth mindset among individual leaders? Where is conscious rethinking needed? Only a growth mindset allows for continuous learning and adaptation and thus future readiness.
  • Orchestra or Jazz Band?
    Leadership in complex times requires both: structure and improvisation. Future competence means consciously steering both: structured collaboration with a conductor like in an orchestra on one hand and the improvisation and spontaneity of a jazz band on the other. 
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) vs. Human Intelligence (HI)
    Artificial intelligence does not replace the human element – it complements it. Future-ready organizations combine AI with HI. Especially in Executive Search, the interplay of AI-supported diagnostics and personal expertise is essential today. This is exactly what Viavanta and The Future Company combine: data-driven algorithms and tools with human expertise in recruiting and Future Skills processes.
  • HR as a strategic partner
    Future Skills also change the role of HR. This development reflects a fundamental cultural shift: away from the “IQ mode”, which emphasises individual performance, towards the “WeQ mode”, where collective intelligence, cooperative abilities, and communal thinking become the decisive success factor – WeQ – more than IQ.

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