We asked experts from around the world to highlight the leadership qualities needed in a complex and ever-changing world of work. Can you recognise yourself in any (or all) of these personas?
Diane Morgan, associate dean, Imperial College Business School, UK
“As leaders, let’s use data, facts and our hearts to move from positions to discussions”
We’ve become comfortable with ‘disruption’ in relation to business but are less comfortable with it in regards to politics. But the change in political landscape doesn’t change the importance of knowing what you value and having a clear and well-articulated vision to guide your organisation.
Getting down to basics will be paramount and leaders should be asking themselves: what do we value? What do our customers value? What do we need to clear through the morass of information and emotion to make good business decisions, stay true to our values and be opportunistic?
More importantly, as an individual, what can I influence? What do I need to do to bring others along with me in order to have positive impact? As leaders, let’s use data, facts and our hearts to move from positions to discussions. Insightful leaders take advantage of the opportunity to truly listen.
Martin Day, managing director, corporate and professional qualifications, London Institute of Banking and Finance, UK
“Long-term value can only be achieved where businesses embrace and embed ethical values”
Leaders play a key role in driving business practice, with ethical leadership becoming increasingly important. Ethics is a core component of the qualification framework at the London Institute of Banking and Finance, as we recognise that long-term value can only be achieved where businesses embrace and embed ethical values.
Effective leadership requires leaders not only to instil ethical values and behaviours in their staff, but to role model them.
Successful leaders understand that doing the right thing for the business means doing the right thing for customers, staff and the environment and engendering a culture of ethical behaviour. Without transparent and inspiring leadership underpinning these values, the organisation is unlikely to adapt and thrive.
Jeremy Ghez, professor of economics and international affairs and academic director of the Centre for Geopolitics, HEC Paris, France
“By being predictable and rational all the time, we may be missing out on key opportunities”
Don’t embrace uncertainty. Generate it. ‘Impossible’ and ‘improbable’ are not interchangeable. Leaders were quick to write off the likelihood of a vote for Brexit or for Donald Trump as US president, rendering them vulnerable to these surprises.
Leaders are trained to be predictable and are appreciated by their followers because of this. But by being predictable and rational all the time, we may be limiting our range of options and missing out on key opportunities to make a difference.
Modern leaders are able to surprise people and to take them along paths they never imagined exploring. That is the type of creativity we need when stagnation is at the door.
Karl Moore, associate professor of strategy and organisation, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Canada
“Leaders must remember that the ability to adjust swiftly, and even substantially rethink what is needed”
My colleague Henry Mintzberg’s idea of emergent strategy seems to be the best strategy for today’s industries and firms. It focuses on being flexible, reacting rapidly, being innovative and seeking input from diverse sources about the turbulent environment our firms operate in. The ponderous, deliberate strategy approaches and analysis done by expensive outside consultants is less appropriate in today’s crazy world.
Leaders and their strategies must be grounded in a deep understanding of what’s happening in the rapidly moving world of our customers, suppliers, competitors, key government influencers, disruptive businesses encroaching on traditional ground, new competitors and sometimes-hard-to-fathom younger generations.
This is not true for all industries, but I am hard-pressed to think of an industry where things are staying largely the same. Leaders must remember that the ability to adjust swiftly, and even substantially rethink, in relatively short order, what is needed.
Martin Binks, professor of entrepreneurial development, Nottingham University Business School, UK
“Quick thinking is far from the only true gauge of problem-solving prowess”
“Act in haste, repent at leisure” is a much-quoted maxim, but one in which there is apparently little faith. Acting in haste isn’t just a norm in leadership, it’s championed.
But quick thinking is far from the only true gauge of problem-solving prowess. Future leaders would do well to appreciate the difference between dynamism and a rush to judgement.
There’s a tendency to default to decision-making processes founded on the belief that choices are made with reference to a neat list of pre-prepared, fully formed options. This is a dangerous misconception. The advantages of an approach that’s more comprehensive, rigorous, perhaps even ingenious, need recognition. Above all, remember that the best ideas aren’t chosen, they’re conceived.
Instead of perpetuating a regret-driven culture of “what if we had done this?” leaders must nurture a prescient culture of “what if we were to do this?” That means thinking loosely, imaginatively, long term. Hindsight is wonderful– but foresight is superior.
With politicians in disarray, business leaders must fill the gap as leaders of society as well as their enterprises.
Mark Smith, dean of faculty, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France
“Authentic leadership requires honesty with oneself and one’s public and has been linked to improved levels of trust, wellbeing and engagement"
It certainly feels as if the world is in turmoil. Previous assumptions seem to have been turned on their heads. Yet the fundamentals of leadership have not changed. Teams and organisations, even countries, still need leaders, but the context means that effective leaders will need authenticity and to inspire trust.
Popularist leadership may appear to give people, or certain groups, what they want – but it doesn’t necessarily deliver what is required.
Short term, this popularist approach is powerful and hard to tackle, but in the medium to long term it has limited sustainability. Once promises are broken, the outcome is increased public scepticism. ‘Post-truth’ communication will inevitably lead to disappointment.
As a result, leaders will be required to work hard to (re)gain trust while demonstrating their trustworthiness. Authentic leadership requires honesty with oneself and one’s public and has been linked to improved levels of trust, wellbeing and engagement.
We can be sure that change, internally and externally, will occur and effective leaders will be required to provide an honest pathway forward.
Stephen Bungay, director, Ashridge Strategic Management Centre, UK
“With politics in disarray, business leaders must fill the gap as leaders of society as well as of their enterprises”
In recent years, global trends towards increasing free trade and free movement, inclusiveness and diversity, and a broader sharing of power and wealth, which were espoused as universal benefits, have been denounced for benefiting only a small global elite.
The enlightened values behind those trends have been challenged. The non-elite, whose lives have become increasingly precarious and who see only hypocrisy and corruption among those in power, have uttered howls of rage.
With the credibility of politicians hitting new lows, the demagogues have stepped into the breach and replaced spin with brazen lies, political correctness with insults and intellectualising with the celebration of ignorance.
The democratic institutions which held out against fascism and communism in the 20th century have been hollowed out, the centre is barely holding and social media, far from connecting everyone, has created enclaves of the likeminded who confirm each other’s prejudices and push them towards ever greater extremes.
With politicians in disarray, business leaders must fill the gap as leaders of society as well as of their enterprises. They must acknowledge the anger of large swathes of the population, expand their notions of inclusiveness and diversity to cover the dispossessed and the fearful, take visible action to address inequality and articulate the benefits of wealth creation to address the emotions and values of the many. They must deploy technology to solve social problems, not to create new ones.
Enlightenment often begins with shock and pain. If we can recover from that to find new moral and intellectual honesty, we can usher in a new enlightenment and reinvigorate the values of the old one. We all have a role to play.
Roland Siegers, executive director, CEMS the Global Alliance in Management Education
“Co-operation, and the ability to strike a fair compromise across all political, cultural and technological divides, will be the winning strategy”
This is a unique period in history, which requires exceptional leaders who can overcome major political, economic and environmental challenges.
Technological and digital advancement – artificial intelligence, automation, Big Data and the influence of social media – are the biggest challenges facing 21st century leaders. When you combine these with the emergence of new political and economic powers, plus environmental threats such as global warming, it’s clear that the global business community faces uncertainty.
In addition, while everyone in the modern world is connected virtually, everyday life is still affected by local politics, languages, culture, laws and geography. This presents another challenge for the next generation of business leaders, who must be globally minded, while sensitive enough to know when it is appropriate to act ‘locally’.
However, it presents a great opportunity for visionary leaders. These leaders will be globally mobile, understand the rapid rate of technological, economic and political change and, importantly, look beyond profit towards creating long-term value for society.
The best way to ensure that our leaders are globally minded and have the skills to tackle these considerable challenges is to invest in the international education of future generations. This will ensure they can thrive in an age of conflicting dynamism versus disruption.
Aspiring leaders will need to move out of their comfort zones, living and studying for a few months in a foreign environment at an early stage in their career, learning more than one language fluently and becoming immersed in different cultures. They will need to experience the limitations of their own world views and acknowledge what they learn from other people and places – becoming more resourceful as a result.
What our resourceful future leaders will need to recognise is that co-operation, and the ability to strike a fair compromise across all political, cultural and technological divides, will be the winning strategy.
Bernd Vogel, director, Henley centre for engaging leadership, Henley Business School, UK
“In future, managers will succeed when they orchestrate leadership with, and through, others”
The context of leadership has become more ambiguous (and will probably become even more so). We finally accept that, in previous decades, managers, when faced with challenges that were less than clear cut, were reliant on a few outstanding leaders.
In future, managers will succeed when they orchestrate leadership with, and through, others. This does not mean that people at the top become less relevant, but they take on a new importance in co-developing an environment of culture, structure and process that allows engaging leadership to happen.
Second, many managers will have to acknowledge that leadership will come from various others in the organisation. Being challenged by others, in search of shared purpose, will create more mature and sustained relationships, not fewer.
Third, the senior managers of the future may focus on creating and shaping leadership capacity across entire organisations and not only in a few individuals; multi-directional leadership capacity that combines downwards, upwards and sideways leadership capability engages and energises organisations.
Finally, we are not even at the beginning of understanding what this means for new practices of engaging leadership development. To stay meaningful and responsible, a key skill will be developing, refreshing, adjusting and reflecting on individual leadership capacity. Senior managers will engage in transformative learning throughout their careers.