Creating Leaders in a VUCA World.

Badr Bouslama : Community Empowerment Manager and Leadership Consultant.

“Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly
makes a difference, can indeed change the world’’ – Jane Goo&dal.

In a time where positive change making is the noblest wish, hope, and dream, that everyone
living on this planet, are trying to achieve, Leadership is so far considered to be the most
efficient path to follow. It always helps creating the person who can assume the responsibility
and act to find the appropriate solutions for whatever problems the world is facing (war, health,
pollution…), besides creating followers and collaborators who are sharing the same vision and
becoming more active in promoting life’s circumstances within the community. From this
believe we came to attribute this mission to youth, because we’re all the time having the deep
faith and beliefs that they’re having within them all the necessary potential to achieve the
leadership mission, role and responsibility for the better world, they are energetic, smart and
open minded.

The others side of the coin shows us how that the system within which we grow, doesn’t give
us neither the environment nor the chance to go through the leadership creating process, thing
that is easily noticed within most youth’s wildest dream; to get a good job with a fine salary to
buy a car and pay rent for a fancy house, not just that, but they’re also willing to fight for it.

In Morocco, for example, each year more than 2000 students apply for PHD studies, and for
now more than 70000 students are PHD students, more than 80% of these students are
interested in having a job at in the public sector, due to many reasons, one of which is looking
for a strong comfort zone, only this job would ensure to them. In order to them to have this
dream job, though the government was clear that there are enough jobs in the public sector,
students go on manifestation on a monthly basis during all their PHD time frame. Up to 2 big
manifestations in front of the parliament are taking place each month.

Going through many questionnaires with these students, they’re looking for the comfort zone
due to the fact of huge lack of self-awareness, they’re smart enough to propose solutions to the
community and contribute to the development, they’re smart enough but they’re not aware
enough to work on that.
Recent studies shows that youth now are living in a VUCA World, a World of Volatility,
Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.

This dilemma of realities makes all our hopes and dreams for the bright future fade away in a
blink of an eye.

Now it’s time for the big questions, now that we know what’s happening. How can we provide
ensure creating true meaningful leaders in a VUCA World.

As a Leadership and Youth Empowerment Expert, I’d like to suggest a framework of youth
empowerment for a better leadership.

In this frame work I’ll be presenting 4 elements of youth empowerment built on a common
base, each of the elements would define and help building the leader personality and strengthen
her or him in best terms, through achieving a strong self-awareness of their own identity and
their capacity to make a positive change.

1- Knowledge : “Knowledge will bring you the opportunity to make a difference” Clair
Fagen.

Youth should have full access to knowledge, knowing about the realities and facts that world
is living in, knowing why the problems are happening, knowing how they can contribute to
achieve the change. Only in knowing the enemy we can define the best plan to fight it, this
enemy can be the problems that the world is facing besides the problems that we’re facing
within ourselves.

If a young leader want to fight for eliminating poverty, she or he should be first be able to talk
about poverty, what is it, what does it mean, what are the facts and numbers that support his
believe that we should fight poverty, the more we know about the message, the more
convincing we become when talking about it.

Sources of knowledge are many, now that we’re living the revolutionary industries of IT, youth
can have access to all type of information, in all fields of their interest.

We should our best to motivate youth to know more, read more, ask more about the problems
they want to face and the goals they want to achieve so that they can create a clear vision about
it and be able embrace everyone to be a part of their message.
 2- Skills : “You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills” Jim Rohn.

All actions requires necessary to have the appropriate set of skills, hard skills, soft skills and
life skills. For an emerging leader having these skills is mandatory, because people won’t listen
if you don’t know to communicate, won’t believe if you don’t know how convince, won’t work
if you don’t know how to motivate, won’t continue if you don’t know how to be resilient.

Skills are the proof that we are able and going to achieve our goals.

We should do our best to develop and implement a proper platform for youth for them to learn,
apply and amplify all the necessary skills of change making leadership, through workshops
with experts, mentoring, shadowing and conferences.

3- Values : “it’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are” Roy
Disney.

The journey of leadership is not a journey of happiness and colorful rainbows, is a struggle and
a strong fight that the leaders decide to go for and win, when they’re facing the world most of
the time and themselves every once and a while, during this journey leaders lost vision about
who they are and what they want to achieve or why want to. Having a strong values system
would be the only torch to enlighten the path.

We should do our best to enhance a system of values within the spirit of the future change
makers, give them everything they need to believe that Failure is normal and that they should
Fail Forward, that resilience is the main belief for them to keep working, the good intention to
embrace their people they way they are, and that all leaders went through sacrifice to achieve
their dreams.

4- Communities : “taking the time to build community, to get to know your people will
have long-lasting benefits” - Clifton Taulbert.

As the holders of a strong unique messages for the better future, the world is not always
welcoming these leaders, they’re most of time facing the actions with criticism and insult and
non-belief, this reaction can lead with one way or an other to the lack of faith of our change
makers within themselves. In this case and other possible scenarios communities will be the
prosper environment where the person doesn’t feel himself judged for who she or he is, but
welcomed and motivated all the time. This community are people who are less and are
motivating, people on the same level that are sharing and helping one an other and people who
are above and providing the necessary knowledge, inspiration for them to continue their
journey with the less reason to stop or quit.

5- The base – The context : “For me context is the key from that comes the understanding
of everything” Kenneth Noland.

There is one model of leadership, on which all the world can agree on, each part of the world
has its own way of defining and developing their leadership, being aware of that is being aware
of the context in which we’re living in, and that would definitely mean the identity, the cultural
legacy and the elements that would define our perspective of leadership.

Youth should be aware that they can’t live the American in Moroccan land, nor the Moroccan
culture in an American land, each part of the world has it’s own rules and aspect of leadership
that are to be respected for successful leadership building.

We should define the appropriate knowledge, develop the important skills, implement the
values and create the communities that are all at once obey to the rule of context, otherwise
we’ll be developing a dilemma of what leaders for what context.