Leading in a Non-Linear World

CONCLUSION

In the coming decades, the automation of work and life will continue to demand that we ask what our purpose is. Unforeseen consequences of technological progress, combined with the vast challenges of climate change and the global competition for scarce resources, point to an even greater need for the most precious of human qualities to be nurtured and amplified as sources of value creation and wellbeing. This entails that our education and adult development place as much regard on cognitive skills such as critical thinking as on a wider palette of intellectual virtues such as moral reasoning, empathy, and creativity. Without such a broadening of our understanding of intelligence, we will continue to confuse the accrual of more knowledge with the means to grow healthier and wiser as a species.

Antonio Damasio, the neuroscientist, suggests that whilst our rationality enables us to generate options, it's our emotions that drive us to action. Our capacity to counteract polarising feelings and narratives comes from improving our metacognitive and empathic capacities. Creative problem-solving is intensified when we enlist divergent thinking. Emotional granularity allows us to interpret situations and relationships with greater insight and increases our sense of agency. The moral dilemmas that we face can't be outsourced to machines, so our growing dependence on co-bots and other forms of augmented intelligence demand that we increase our focus on moral reasoning. In a ...