This section answers the question of who the winning leader of the future is. The answer is built in three layers. Personal Ikigai is the why, attitudes are the how, and behaviors are the what.
The profile is a joint piece of work between IRG and Spencer Stuart, carrying both names on the copyright line.
Key findings
- The foundation is Ikigai, described simply as your reason for being. It sits at the center of the model rather than as an introduction to it.
- Seven attitudes describe how the leader thinks and feels: open, authentic, positive, impact-driven, future-focused, humble, and courageous.
- Six behaviors describe how outcomes actually get delivered: driving results, acting strategically, leading change, building talent, and collaborating and influencing.
- Every behavior is written in stakeholder terms. Driving results, for example, is defined by addressing the materiality and reciprocal value creation expectations of stakeholders.
- Ikigai is not treated as something a leader simply has. The deck names concrete routes people took to find it, including a career break, a team exercise, and a near-death experience.
Three layers, built up in order
The model is introduced one layer at a time. It starts with Ikigai alone as the why. Attitudes are added next as the how, described as how you think and feel. Behaviors complete it as the what, described as the way in which you deliver outcomes.
The ordering matters to the argument. Purpose comes first and observable behavior comes last, which places the personal layer underneath the professional one rather than beside it.
Getting to Ikigai
A deep-dive slide sets out different ways people arrive at their reason for being. The examples given are a career break, a structured team exercise, and a near-death experience, each attached to a named person or company.
The seven attitudes
The attitude ring holds seven qualities: open, authentic, positive, impact-driven, future-focused, humble, and courageous. They are the disposition layer, not the skill layer, and they surround Ikigai in the diagram rather than sitting above it.
The six behaviors, defined
Driving results is about performance defined by more than one audience. It covers materiality and reciprocal value creation expectations, transforming what the organization can achieve for stakeholders, and shared accountability measured through more holistic performance indicators.
Acting strategically is about what gets protected. It filters key decisions through an inspiring business purpose, ringfences resources for strategic initiatives and pushes their progress, and puts short-term challenges in the context of a long-term strategy across diverse stakeholders.
Leading change requires both a route and a coalition. The leader provides a clear vision and a change roadmap to a future-fit state, anticipates how stakeholders will respond, and drives systemic transformation through a cross-network coalition of change leaders.
Building talent is defined as a systematic approach to developing both talent and the organizational capability to understand stakeholder needs. It also means making sure key stakeholder perspectives are represented throughout the organization, and empowering whichever level is best placed to address a given need.
Collaborating and influencing is the behavior that deals with conflict most directly. It means engaging stakeholders to understand their needs and make the pie bigger, fostering partnerships that reach beyond a single company, and navigating perceived trade-offs between stakeholders with transparency and grace.
Scope and limitations
The file is marked as a draft section of a larger deck, and one slide is flagged as optional material with an open question left in its speaker notes. The profile describes what the model says a leader should be, without evidence in this document of how it was validated.
Source
This page summarises WHO: Profile of the winning leader of the future, by Institute for Real Growth, Spencer Stuart, 2023.