Today’s leaders must possess a powerful set of skills to survive the rapidly changing global marketplace. To succeed, you must have a rigorous command of your analytical and strategic mind while also properly leveraging your intuition and interpersonal skills. To excel in business, you must become a Renaissance Leader.

Introducing the Renaissance Leader

The term Renaissance means rebirth, re-awakening or revival. It describes a period between the 14th and 16th centuries where there was a wide-ranging cultural rebirth in Europe. While most of us think of the Renaissance in terms of the flowering of the arts, it is also known for innovations in science, banking and technology. Figures like Galileo and Copernicus overthrew old dogmas, and explorers such as Cartier, Columbus, da Gama and Drake discovered distant new territories. Boundaries between fields became irrelevant, and innovators like da Vinci and Michelangelo made daily use of multiple intelligences.

Today, our changing world also demands explorers who question accepted truths, develop a wide range of skills and bring into reality what had seemed to be impossible. Today’s Renaissance Leaders use both their analytical faculties and their intuition. They are as comfortable and skilled at developing relationships as crunching numbers. They understand how to balance their head with their heart.

To navigate the seas of change, you must cultivate the whole mind and stay alert with all of your abilities. At times the waters may seem calm, but hidden obstacles like icebergs or sandbars can cause a wreck if you don’t watch for them, and storms or strong currents can pull you off course. You’ll drop an anchor from time to time to explore new lands and assess what’s needed in the next leg of the journey.

As a Renaissance leader, your own career and your company’s success are not destination points because you must always be charting a new course toward fresh horizons. Remaining in one place means you end up nowhere.

The qualities for a Renaissance Leader include:

Strategic and Intuitive Thinkers

A Renaissance Leader is adept at creating a shared vision across all areas of an organization. They view change as a developmental process that requires understanding not just where they want to take their company, but also their people, creating a holistic model for future success. Renaissance Leaders also take the process of strategy development a step further than usual and consider the ramifications of national and international developments in their thinking process, as today’s world truly is a global marketplace.

Vital Communicators

A Renaissance Leader recognizes the value of communication and can create dialogue throughout the organization at all levels. Renaissance Leaders constantly work on their ability to manage their relationships with employees and customers and strive to become skilled conversationalists, great listeners and adept storytellers who approach situations with an openness that allows others to influence them.

Talent Developers and Attractors

Renaissance Leaders value diversity in their organizations and recognize that people offer a wide range of competencies and skills. They approach succession planning as a continual process and proactively look for the next generation of leaders among their ranks.

Renaissance Leaders also place a high value on both education and coaching, and look at employee development as a vital responsibility.

Innovation Enablers

Renaissance Leaders are never satisfied with doing things as they’ve done them in the past. Instead, they encourage creativity and innovation at all times and at all levels. Renaissance Leaders also embrace change and allow themselves to take risks, using every situation as an opportunity for professional and organizational growth.

As more and more new technologies arrive in today’s marketplace, Renaissance Leaders especially look for those that allow for improved communications.

Ethical and Grounded Implementers

Renaissance Leaders are concerned with ethics and engage their companies with the utmost of reverence for diversity, inclusion and integrity.

Renaissance Leaders also remain grounded and engage in some form of personal reflection as part of their daily regimen.

Avid Collaborators

Renaissance Leaders emphasize building strong teams where people contribute and encourage high levels of employee involvement throughout their organizations.

Global Entrepreneurs

Renaissance Leaders realize the economy is the major engine for creating change throughout the world and devote their energies to improving the world around them.

In conclusion, developing the skills and abilities described here is actually a journey where you continually devote time to your own self-development while you chart a course for future success in their organizations.

Not paying attention to these qualities can result in getting lost at sea in terms of your own leadership journey. If you’re up to the challenge of creating success in the future, it’s time to consider finding support to help you navigate the seas of change.