Leadership - Leadership That’s Going Forward. Not!

For a future business to succeed it will need leadership. ‘Leadership’ has always been and will remain the stand out characteristic in every business success story.

From experience we see leadership as deeply valuable at every level of every organisation and a quality that ideally would be present in every individual.

The challenge is many organisations don’t encourage it. Worse they signal that they encourage it — through the fashionable suggestion that they are empowering everyone — and then ignore it and deny people’s initiative.

Leadership does not imply a level of superiority. The definition has been badly undermined by high profile leaders. It’s so serious that it’s not easy to identify good leaders anymore in any walk of life. Leadership is earned and it’s definitely not bestowed on someone by title.

Leadership comes in many forms. Leadership shows up in many ways. Business needs leadership more than ever and it needs it in different areas these days. The perceived wisdom of leadership and the control and command versions of it from the past has lost all of its relevance today.

Those with a lot of years experience aren’t necessarily the ones to lead us into a very different future. It’s a simple truth that the experienced leaders of the past are 100% not the leaders we need for this new world. The competencies required are wholly different now. A definition we like of today’s notional hierarchical leader —

“The man/woman at the top has and holds the vision and they are present, when asked, to remove all barriers to the achievement of it…”

Many of our current leaders have run their course. They’ve led their organisations to the point where they’re struggling to survive in a brave new world, where the idea of doing anything significantly different is simply alien to them. Today’s leaders carry new responsibilities which in turn is going to call for different skills and mindsets.

In Summary — Redefining Leadership

Having a clear vision, then being able to articulate that vision and bring others on what is likely to be a journey filled with uncertainty have become table stakes for any leader. Leaders don’t have to be those at the top — in the most senior positions.

Leadership can be a very short term thing, completely disconnected from the organization hierarchy. It may come from the people who can inspire and build followers, from those who simply see possibility and have the courage and ability to follow up on that.

People unafraid to try and fail — and who create environments for others to adopt that mindset.