5 In-Demand Technical Skills Every Aspiring Leader Needs In 2024
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If you're aspiring to a more senior role within leadership or management in the coming year, it's important to remember that you need a strong balance of hard, technical skills, and soft skills, to be outstanding in your position. Successful leaders thrive because they possess the so-called "soft skills" that include interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, communication, and empathy, and knowing how to inspire and motivate, influence, and negotiate. But these leaders also possess a core set of solid technical skills relevant to their industry and domain.
Whether you consider yourself to be a "techie" or not, having at least a working knowledge and basic understanding of these technical aspects of your domain will enable you to be more efficient, and maintain stronger oversight over the success of your teams, departments, and/or projects.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is an important technical skill for leaders to have because you will be involved in making critical decisions and strategic planning all the time. To plan effectively and with confidence requires you to make decisions that are informed by data. Data can give you invaluable insights into your target market, emerging trends, shifts in consumer attitudes, and competitor activities. Decisions backed by data strengthen others' confidence in you because you can justify your decisions and actions with the evidence.
Chris Estrada, founder and CEO of Nationwide United Auto Transport, suggests that "to understand and interpret data to make effective decisions, familiarity with data visualization tools can be incredibly helpful."
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity remains a key concern for business leaders, with the victim count of data breaches in 2022 reaching over 422 million, up 128 million in 2021. Failure to ensure appropriate measures are in place to protect confidential information and key customer data can put you at costly risk, with global average costs of a data breach standing at $4.5 million, according to IBM research. But it's more than just monetary costs that are involved; cybersecurity breaches can impact your reputation and personal branding as a leader, making it difficult for you to be entrusted with more career opportunities.
As Oleg Segal, entrepreneur and founder of DealA puts it, "The importance of cybersecurity knowledge can't be overstated. With frequent data breaches, a basic understanding of safeguarding information is necessary to protect both the business and client data."
AI And Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence is a must for emerging leaders. Most organizations are actually AI-averse even though they claim that they are open to embracing it because senior business leaders do not have a full understanding of what artificial intelligence is and how it can impact business operations positively or negatively. They are worried about organizational security, and the possibility of AI potentially exposing company data to unauthorized eyes. However, as we enter 2024, it seems that their employees have a strong appetite for using AI as part of their daily work, especially millennials. They desire to be trained in its usage and fully incorporate it into their workflow, instead of using outdated systems. So leaders and managers need to adapt to this training demand and train themselves first so they can understand how it relates to their organization.
"Basic understanding of AI and machine learning is crucial," advises Segal. "You don't need to be able to code an AI program, but you need to understand its capabilities and limitations. This aids in strategic planning and setting realistic expectations. For instance, we use AI to classify and rank our coupons based on their relevance to individual users."
Remote Work Software
One of the emerging work trends of 2024 is the hybrid work model, in which organizations globally are increasingly leaning towards remote/hybrid patterns to retain in-person employee engagement while encouraging flexibility in working from home. Since this is set to be the new normal of work, it's essential that as a manager or leader, you familiarize yourself with collaborative work software that can maximize engagement from both remote and in-person employees, so that neither group feels distanced, and disengaged, or lacks motivation.
Collaborative remote work software ensures that everyone is on the same page and reduces misunderstandings that come through a lack of communication. Many project management tools have this software enabled, using AI to power collaboration.
Tech-Adaptive Mindset
Estrada advises leaders, "With the rapid pace of technological change, a willingness and capacity to adapt to new software and systems is critical." Indeed, what has transpired over the past year since ChatGPT was released has taught us a valuable lesson in adapting to change. It has shown us that technology can transform in a flip second, rapidly evolve, and be adopted globally, impacting millions of people, businesses, and the markets we operate. To be ready for the changes that 2024 and beyond pose to you, you need to be adaptable to change and embrace it; keeping your head in the sand will leave you behind and render you irrelevant as an aspiring leader.
With a tech-adaptive mindset, utilizing remote work tools, understanding the principles of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and having a strong eye for analyzing and visualizing sets of data, you can position yourself as a forward-thinking leader in your organization and industry, and gain the trust of stakeholders while maintaining a robust skill-set.