SupplyChainTalk: From experience to impact – Guiding tomorrow’s supply chain leaders  

Views on news 
Today leadership is about learning faster. Human leadership is more important to the success of supply chains than ever. Accordingly, the qualities that businesses value most are emotional and social intelligence, resilience, adaptability and the ability to grow others. These are the findings of the 2026 Global Leadership Study by Harvard Business. There are plenty of use cases now for incorporating AI into recruiting, training and development and for designing roles for individuals. Leaders’ understanding of how AI can create value and support the human workforce has also improved considerably in the past three years.  

 

Mentoring as a mutually beneficial learning process 

Assigning young colleagues challenging tasks where they can shine and providing them with constructive feedback are important aspects of talent management. If the mentor encourages the trainee to improve their own thought processes rather than just providing them with the good answer, the trainees will soon have enough confidence to make decisions independently. Rising stars will be happy to step up to the plate when encountering challenges and they will also be proactive in managing their own career paths. Traditional promotions may not work in today’s workplace. To inspire talent, it’s a good idea to create roles for them where they can thrive – and then you can continuously expand the role as the individual grows.

 

Exposure to cross-functional projects is also key to development and it’s also important that leaders talk openly about their failures and what they’ve learnt from them to make the training more personal and memorable. As a mentor, you must give clear feedback at early stages of your programme and not just once but repeating the core message several times, including informal comments in real time as well as longer, formal reviewing sessions. Mentors can benefit from the activity too through reverse mentoring by learning techniques and attitudes from their mentees.  

  

The panel’s advice 

• It’s good decisions, staying calm and the ability to influence people that make a good supply chain leader.   
• When given constructively, feedback can be a gift.  
• Feedback must be an integral part of day-to-day routine.  
• You can train yourself how to elicit, give and receive feedback.