We must all become leaders now!
In a VUCA, BANI, and RUPT world, great leadership skills are no longer optional — they are survival skills.
The world we now navigate is neither linear nor forgiving:
- VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) exposes us to constant destabilization.
- BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) adds a human dimension — eroding our emotional resilience and coherence.
- RUPT (Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical, Tangled) means our reality is being remixed at speeds our nervous systems didn’t evolve for.
In this stormy ocean, we are all surfers whether we like it or not.
And here’s the hard truth:
You either learn to self-lead or you drift, carried by forces you can neither anticipate nor control. Without intentional leadership of yourself:
- You will land where the waves decide, not where you choose.
- You will be at the mercy of tides, winds, and currents driven by others’ values, decisions, and algorithms.
- You will crash onto jagged rocks or coral, ill-prepared, depleted, and possibly broken.
Self-leadership is your surfboard.
It’s what allows you to paddle out intentionally, pick your waves wisely, and ride them with presence and grace — not by brute force, but by being attuned, adaptable, and aware.
The skills of great leaders — once considered a luxury or reserved for those at the top — are now baseline capabilities:
- Emotional intelligence to regulate yourself in moments of chaos and fear.
- Narrative coherence to make sense of tangled realities and shape your direction.
- Vision and foresight to see beyond the immediate wave and align your choices with long-term meaning.
- Empathy and presence to stay connected with others as social fragmentation deepens.
- Courage and decisiveness to act when action is called for, and yield when yielding is wise.
In short:
If you don’t lead yourself, something else will.
And that something — market forces, others’ ambitions, or automated systems — will rarely care for your well-being, your values, or your dreams.
So, in the RUPT/BANI/VUCA world:
Leadership is no longer positional.
Leadership is no longer optional.
Leadership is personal and existential.
Your future self, battered or balanced, will reflect whether you picked up the mantle of self-leadership — or were tossed onto the rocks while waiting for someone else to steer.