The future skills of the Interim Manager
The Interim Manager of tomorrow will continue above all to make the difference through the experience gained on each project. They will strengthen their reputation with each successful assignment. At the same time, however, he or she will need to continue to learn new skills. Some are now in their infancy, but they will undoubtedly count in the business world of the future.
Neuro-manager
It is no longer science fiction, but the reality of tomorrow. Beyond cognitive intelligence, emotional, relational or situational intelligence will be among the assets that will allow an Interim Manager to adapt his or her management mode to each employee, but also to the business leaders involving him or her in an assignment. The acquisition of these new skills will allow the Interim Manager, as part of a project, to evolve the thoughts, emotions and behaviors of managers as well as operational teams, in order to serve the company's assignments in the short and long term.
Neuro-managerial skills will be all the more useful in situations of change and uncertain context.
Pierre-Marie Lledo, research director at the French Pasteur Institute and CNRS, explains that any (Interim) manager can become "neuro-friendly". In other words, managers may be able to organize their and their team’s work in order to reduce stress and pressure, and prefer the encouragement and congratulations of employees in order to stimulate their creativity. The scientist advocates the importance of adapting the world of work to the brain rather than the other way around, and then understanding how motivation, commitment and recognition work. For the Interim Managers, it will be a matter of being particularly agile, because their action time will by definition be limited, but their impact will have to be sustainable for them to be truly effective.
AI, a key ally
This is now a no-brainer in the era of digitalization of the world of work: the Interim Manager of tomorrow who has effectively integrated digital transformation will be several steps ahead. This transformation is now being added to artificial intelligence (AI). This intelligence offers many complementary applications, such as analyzing and managing a very large amount of data to relieve humans of their workload and allow them to focus on other assignments. This form of intelligence will change entrepreneurial practices in many areas, undoubtedly revolutionizing business models, cost management, fostering new forms of work and generating new skills.
Managers will need to equip themselves with specific skills to interact with AI. In her book "It Will Be AI AND Me", Professor of Universities at Cnam and ESCP Business School in Paris", Cécile Dejoux insists on what she calls "the skills of centering", which are the source of our differentiation with the machine and symbol of our human specificity.
According to her, in the age of digital and AI, each of us will have to establish new professional balances by deciding or accepting the tasks to be done to AI and those it will take over, by building up skills to be "compatible AI" while developing the "centering skills", guarantor of its new humanity.
The independent entrepreneurs who will learn, will make themselves even more indispensable, their human qualities, their ability to contextualize, will allow them to become even better, with the help of digitalization.
Interim Managers, don't be afraid of change, embody it!
