The leadership frameworks of the 21st century have shaped a new era. Concepts like servant leadership and agile management have defined how executives lead. These are still critical moving forward, but they’re no longer enough.
More is needed from individuals leading in a world rife with cultural unrest, global challenges, aggressive tariffs and AI disruption. Leaders who want their organizations, their teams and themselves to thrive have to broaden their skill set. In the words of Jessica Kriegel, they need to learn how to SHIFT.
Here is Kriegel’s new blueprint for effective leadership in the modern era — along with some additional thoughts from leading voices on the need for more adaptability, transparency and alignment from leaders thinking of the future.
1. SHIFT: Moving from old models to a new blueprint
Dr. Jessica Kriegel is the Chief Strategy Officer of Workforce and Labor at Culture Partners. She has developed her SHIFT framework in response to the acceleration of change in the business world in recent years. This functions as a way for leaders to proactively adapt and prepare to lead in a rapidly modernizing (and consequently more volatile) workplace. Here’s what the acronym stands for:
- Surrender: Focus only on what you can control. Delegate or release everything else.
- Help: Don’t be afraid to ask your team, “What can I do to make your job easier this week?” Then act on it.
- Inspire: Go beyond the “what.” Empower your team with the “why” behind decisions that impact them.
- Free Yourself from Fear: Cut micromanagement habits. Trust your team to deliver. Give them the tools and authority to execute on their own.
- Take Care of Yourself: Protect your downtime. Address anxiety. Stressed and burned-out leaders can’t inspire anyone.
Surrender,
Help,
Inspire,
Free yourself from fear,
Take care of yourself. These components build on the agility and servanthood of existing leadership while providing a springboard for future impact.
If you want to remain relevant in your leadership, models like SHIFT are becoming essential. From hybrid offices to multigenerational teams to women-inspired strategies, leadership is changing. These five guiding principles allow a leader to survive and thrive in an exciting but unknown new normal.
2. Adaptability is the new non-negotiable
Kriegel’s SHIFT management style is a culture shock to workspaces. It goes beyond the practical and turns leaders into
emotionally intelligent managers playing the long game. This new framework puts a fresh emphasis on the need not just for agile decision-making, but for adaptability as a leader. Full stop.
Modern leaders must learn to act with whatever information, skill sets and resources they have available at any given moment. They can’t always wait for a procedure or delay until they have complete information. McKinsey points out that making good, fast decisions in a crisis is challenging but essential. And yet, they add, “waiting to decide is a decision in itself.”
If you want to lead in 2025 and beyond, you have to embrace adaptability. Stop waiting for perfect data. Start making the best decision you can with what you know. Act with confidence. Then, empower your team members to do the same.
At the same time, build in flexibility. Replace rigid “five-year plans” with more agile roadmaps. Make room for pivots every year — or even every quarter. Practice “next right action” thinking. Move one step forward, then reassess. In short, infuse everything with a sense of adaptability.
3. Free yourself from fear
Before we end, let’s focus on one element of Kriegel’s SHIFT framework that is particularly relevant at the moment: fear. Change brings inconsistency. It’s uncomfortable. It pushes people back to procedure and predictability — even if those are outdated or ineffective.
Leaders who are willing to SHIFT their approach must free themselves
and their teams from the fear of change and the failure that decisions in a new environment can bring. They must adopt cultures where it is okay to fail, learn from those experiences and then reset and move forward.
The key is not to fail
everywhere. You need to identify critical areas of operations where best practices must be preserved. Once those are known, a leader can encourage innovation and creativity (which naturally lead to failure) in other areas.
This requires a high degree of psychological safety within a team.
Harvard’s Amy Edmondson developed the concept and has shown that a psychologically safe environment creates the freedom to experiment and point out mistakes. It treats failure not as a one-way ticket out of a company but as a tool for resilience.
If you want to SHIFT your leadership, you need to fight fear in the workplace. Build psychologically safe environments by setting clear expectations that empower team members. Hold weekly “failure forums” where your team shares what went wrong. Give opportunities to express what people have learned from failure.
SHIFT-ing leadership
Leadership is always evolving. A quarter into the 21st century, there is no shortage of challenges and curveballs that leaders need to have on their radar. The SHIFT framework expands on previous leadership concepts focused on resilience and empowerment. It lays the groundwork for modern leaders to make the most of opportunities while guarding against the unknowns as they guide their organizations, their teams and themselves into the future.
