Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries, workforce expectations are evolving faster than many organisations can adapt, and business models that appeared stable just a few years ago are being challenged by new technologies, shifting customer behaviour, and changing economic realities.
For leaders, the response often feels instinctive: Learn more. Attend another leadership programme. Earn another certification. Adopt another framework. Add another tool to the management toolkit.
But in today’s BANI environment — one characterised by conditions that are brittle, anxious, non-linear, and often incomprehensible — addition alone may no longer be enough.
The challenge facing modern leaders is not simply acquiring new knowledge. Increasingly, it is learning how to let go of assumptions, habits, and mental models that no longer serve them.
In other words, the future of leadership may depend as much on unlearning as it does on learning.
Highlights
Why Learning More Is No Longer Enough
For decades, professional success was built on accumulation.
More experience. More qualifications. More expertise.
That formula remains valuable, but it is becoming less sufficient in a world where information is abundant, and AI can generate, analyse, and retrieve knowledge at unprecedented speed.
What often distinguishes effective leaders today is not how much they know, but how quickly they can adapt when what they know becomes outdated.
Imelda Sutisna, APAC Talent Development Manager at MKS and a leadership development practitioner with more than two decades of experience across Asia-Pacific, believes one of the biggest misconceptions about unlearning is that people view it as a loss.
In reality, she argues, it should be viewed as a system upgrade.
One of the deepest internal barriers to growth is the fear that letting go of old assumptions means losing part of one’s identity. Yet unlearning is not about erasing the past. Rather, it is about removing outdated assumptions so previous experiences can remain relevant and useful in a changing environment.
This distinction matters because leaders often resist change not because they lack capability, but because they perceive change as a threat to expertise, status, or self-worth.
By reframing unlearning as making space for better knowledge, more relevant skills, and new perspectives, organisations can reduce the psychological resistance that often accompanies transformation.
When Success Becomes a Blind Spot
If learning is generally celebrated, unlearning is often uncomfortable.
The reason is simple: success creates attachment.
Strategies that worked before become trusted formulas. Leadership styles that delivered results become personal trademarks. Expertise that helped professionals rise through the ranks can gradually become part of their identity.
Dr Koh Cheng Boon, Academic Director for Entrepreneurship Development Programmes and Senior Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University, argues that a growth mindset is increasingly important for navigating career transitions and operating effectively in a BANI environment.
One of the biggest obstacles, he notes, is the fear attached to uncertainty and past success.
Many leaders are not held back by a lack of capability. Instead, they are constrained by assumptions that once helped them succeed but may no longer fit today’s realities.
The challenge is recognising those assumptions in the first place.
Dr Koh has consistently highlighted the importance of self-awareness in leadership development. Leaders who understand their own biases, fears, and blind spots are often better positioned to respond constructively to change rather than react defensively to it.
Before leaders can unlearn, they must first recognise what they are holding onto.
That process requires humility, reflection, and a willingness to question long-held beliefs.
Why Asia’s Achievement Culture Makes Unlearning Harder
The challenge becomes even more pronounced in many Asian professional environments, where achievement is often measured through accumulation.
Degrees, certifications, titles, and credentials remain important signals of competence and commitment. However, an unintended consequence is the assumption that growth always comes from adding more.
Imelda observes that younger professionals today are surrounded by an endless stream of courses, micro-credentials, online programmes, and AI-powered learning platforms. The default advice is often to keep accumulating.
Yet information overload presents its own risks.
Simply stacking more skills can create diminishing returns if individuals never stop to evaluate which capabilities remain relevant and which assumptions have become obsolete.
The more valuable leadership capability over the coming decade may not be accumulation, but discernment.
Knowing what to ignore.
Knowing what to stop doing.
Knowing which habits, processes, and assumptions should be retired.
In a world where AI can continuously add information faster than any human, the competitive advantage increasingly shifts toward judgment.
As Imelda puts it, the future belongs not necessarily to the most credentialed individuals, but to those who are adaptable, agile, and willing to shed outdated baggage to remain effective.
The Leadership Assumptions That May No Longer Serve Organizations
For many senior executives, the hardest things to unlearn are often the very behaviours that helped them advance.
One example is the over-reliance on certainty and control.
According to Imelda, many leaders rise because they are decisive, confident, and highly capable of creating order. However, those same strengths can eventually become limitations if they evolve into rigid habits.
Leaders may assume they already have the answers. They may become less receptive to dissenting views. They may continue applying strategies that worked in the past, even when circumstances have fundamentally changed.
In a rapidly changing environment, certainty can become a liability.
Future readiness increasingly depends on adaptability rather than predictability.
Another assumption worth challenging is the belief that seniority automatically leads to better judgment.
The pace of technological change means expertise is becoming more distributed. Valuable insights can come from different generations, different functions, and different levels of the organisation.
Likewise, leaders may need to rethink the idea that adding more processes automatically improves performance.
Many organisations respond to uncertainty by introducing additional layers of governance, reporting structures, and procedures. Yet complexity often creates friction rather than agility.
Sometimes the most effective transformation initiative is not adding another process, but removing an unnecessary one.
Perhaps the most important assumption to challenge is the belief that past success guarantees future relevance.
As business conditions evolve, leaders who remain attached to yesterday’s formulas risk becoming disconnected from tomorrow’s realities.
The Power of “Emptying the Cup”
Sutisna often draws on the concept of “emptying the cup,” a metaphor rooted in Zen practice.
The principle is straightforward: if a cup is already full, nothing new can be poured into it.
For leaders, this does not mean discarding hard-earned wisdom or experience. It means creating space for curiosity, listening, experimentation, and reinvention.
This mindset becomes particularly important in an era shaped by AI, digital transformation, and changing workforce expectations.
No individual leader can keep pace with every technological development, emerging consumer trend, or workplace shift.
What leaders can do is remain open to learning from sources they may previously have overlooked.
One increasingly popular example is reverse mentoring.
In a reverse mentoring relationship, a senior executive intentionally learns from a younger or less senior colleague. Discussions may focus on emerging technologies, AI adoption habits, consumer behaviour, social media trends, or changing workplace expectations.
The value extends beyond knowledge transfer.
It requires leaders to step out of the role of expert and re-enter the role of learner.
That shift, according to Sutisna, lies at the heart of future readiness.
A Personal Illustration of Unlearning
I experienced a version of this challenge during my own transition from engineering into creative and marketing work.
Initially, I approached communication and storytelling using the same structured, logic-driven frameworks that had served me well in engineering. Over time, I realised that human-centred disciplines often require ambiguity, interpretation, and emotional nuance rather than fixed answers.
The obstacle was not a lack of knowledge.
It was the need to let go of a mindset that no longer fit the context.
That experience reinforced a lesson that extends far beyond career transitions. Whether in leadership, business, or organisational transformation, adaptation often requires releasing old assumptions before new capabilities can take root.
Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning
The conversation around future skills often focuses on learning faster.
Yet the leaders most likely to thrive in the coming decade may be those who can do three things equally well: learn, unlearn, and relearn.
As AI continues to reshape work and organisations navigate increasingly complex environments, the ability to question inherited assumptions will become a strategic advantage.
The future-ready leader is not necessarily the one who possesses the most knowledge or the longest list of credentials.
It is the leader who can recognise what no longer serves the organisation, what no longer reflects reality, and what must be rebuilt for a different future.
In a BANI world, leadership agility depends not only on learning faster—but on unlearning wisely.
Editor’s Note:
This article was contributed by NewInAsia editorial fellow Amos Lau, a Gen Z writer and creative with a passion for storytelling at the intersection of technology, careers, and purpose.
In this piece, he examines how the rise of AI, accelerating workplace transformation, and growing uncertainty are reshaping the skills leaders need to remain effective. As organisations navigate increasingly complex environments, he explores why the ability to question, release, and rethink outdated assumptions may be just as important as acquiring new knowledge.
To pitch your story or share reflections on the evolving world of work, creativity, leadership, or innovation in Asia, contact the NewInAsia editorial team.
Highlights
Read the Chinese article here.
