VUCA skills & management levels
As I recently reported in “VUCA skills are on the rise,” the VUCA skills of managers and leaders have gradually improved since we started measuring them in 2009. In this article, I’m taking a closer look.
I first published VUCA outcomes in late 2018 in the article, “Leader Decisions Part 1: How Good are Leaders’ VUCA Skills?” Things have changed a bit since that article was published.
What are VUCA skills?
VUCA skills are required for decision-making under complexity. They include skills related to collaborative capacity, perspective coordination, contextual thinking, and decision-making process.
Collaborative capacity includes skills for self-regulation, perspective seeking and taking, and communication.
Perspective coordination includes skills for identifying perspectives, supporting productive interactions, and integrating perspectives.
Contextual thinking includes skills for understanding the immediate situation, understanding the larger context, and identifying constraints and affordances.
Decision-making process includes skills for decision framing, setting goals, gathering information, identifying solutions, deciding, and implementing.
My colleagues and I use a set of rubrics to measure the skill with which leaders employ these VUCA skills in their written responses to prompts in the Lectical Leadership Decision-Making Assessment (LDMA). Rubric scores run from 0 (no demonstration of skill) to 100 (virtuoso).
Leaders’ VUCA skills: 2019–2024
The chart at the top of this page shows evidence that the VUCA scores of more senior leaders are higher on average than those of less senior leaders. That’s as it should be. The issues, conflicts, and decisions faced by leaders become more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous as they move from one layer to the next in the management hierarchy.
Unfortunately, as the “VUCA Ideal” averages on the far right of this figure illustrate, these scores aren’t yet high enough to be a good match for the average task demands of leaders’ roles. In an ideal world, senior leaders would perform near 85, mid-level managers would perform near 70, and entry-level managers would perform near 55.
Management level as a predictor of VUCA scores
As the figure below illustrates, the differences between management-level averages for VUCA skills are growing over time Yes, they still aren’t what we’d like them to be, but this doesn’t mean there have been no meaningful gains. For example, in 2009–2013, there was no difference between the average VUCA scores of mid and senior managers. In the 2019–2024 group, the difference is clear.
The predictive power of Management level over time can be quantified. From 2009 to 2013, the predictive power of management level was only 3.0%. This increased to 4.5% during 2014–2018 and to 13.1% during 2019–2024. Since 2019, when our certified consultants, coaches, and educators (aka Lappies) began helping leaders build micro-VCoLing and skill mapping skills, the predictive power of management level has almost tripled. This means that our certified Lappies are helping leaders build VUCA skills that are increasingly commensurate with the task demands of their roles.
A note on the differences between growth rates at different management levels
You may have noticed that growth in VUCA skills at the senior level has been faster than growth at the lower levels. Why are senior leaders growing faster than lower-level leaders? I think this is primarily because organizations tend to do more to support the development of senior leaders than they do to support the development of lower-level leaders and other employees.
At Lectica, we’re encouraging organizations to invest more in the growth of lower-level employees, specifically by ensuring that all employees have an opportunity to build the micro-VCoLing skills they need to develop optimally—and have the opportunity to practice these skills in an environment that supports the development of VUCA skills. If we started building these skills earlier, future leaders would be more likely to develop skills in the ideal range. Supporting the development of VCoLing and VUCA skills at lower levels of an organization is also a great way to evolve a true learning culture.
I haven’t reported statistical significance in this article because the sample is so large that all of the numbers reported here are statistically significant.
Call to action
We live in a VUCA world. Humanity is desperate for leaders (and other humans) with VUCA skills. With Lectica’s learning tools, coaches, consultants, and educators are successfully supporting the development of these skills. If you’d like to join us, we invite you to certify or learn to build micro-VCoLing skills of your own.
