the brand new face
of leadership
COLUMN - What's Next?
Fortune Magazine came out with its second annual “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” list in 2015 with some great stories that stretch your thinking around leadership in the future. As I shaped this article I asked the question “What top 3 things make a great leader?” through my social media networks and received over 30 replies in less than 24 hours.
In their leadership preferences, friends, family, colleagues and clients summarised Fortune Magazine’s findings – leadership is all about followership. But what does that really mean, and what would it take for you to follow a leader?
The difference between being a leader and creating followers is you need to create them without clear authority. Followers don’t need to be told or paid to follow – rather, it is something they want to do and are inspired to contribute.
The Fortune top 50 are a mix of traditional business, political and religious leaders. To make
the list, it was not enough to be brilliant, admirable, or even supremely powerful. Fortune searched and found individual leaders with a vision that moved others to act, and who brought their followers with them on a shared quest. They looked for effectiveness and commitment and for the courage to pioneer; they found many more, but selected 50 living legends to leadership in 2015.
Fortune discovered that although there are some enduring qualities in leadership over the centuries, there are also some fast changing differences in our modern times. The most striking change is that leaders are losing control. Whether they are leading a company, nation, sports team, congregation or any type of group, their success increasingly depends on their ability to influence without the control of money or force. You can no longer just tell people what to do.
Josh Bersin, thought leader and analyst on human capital strategies at Bersin by Deloitte, someone I met at a recent conference in the United States, quotes: “As an employer, you used to look at the workforce as ‘your workforce’ — they belonged to you. Now, because of changes in employee values, you have to think of your workforce as a bunch of volunteers. The best ones, especially among millennials, want to work for organizations pursuing a worthy mission. It’s no use trying to push them around.”
In short, today’s leadership is going to transform corporate culture and hierarchical relationships.
Some of my favorites from Fortune’s list and why:
#1 Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: Along with Fortune’s writers and leadership experts, Fortune also sought the opinion of last year’s top 50, asking them to nominate who they thought should make the 2015 list. Tim Cook got the most nominations from all the research sources. Fortune quotes: “There is no true preparation for replacing a legend, but that’s what Tim Cook had to do
-and-a-half years ago following the death of Steve Jobs”. Stepping into the shoes of Steve Jobs must have been a daunting task – Tim Cook did it with humble determination.
#10 Joshua Wong: Perhaps the best example of what Fortune is predicting on followership, Joshua Wong is the 17 year old who started the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong armed only with a cell phone, bringing the city to a standstill for three months. Whether you agree with his principles or not, it shows the power of leadership in today’s hectic and volatile world.
Even though the essence of leadership is shifting, human nature means people still want to be led, but in more of a style like Mike Duggan and Tri Rishaharini, Mayors of troubled cities, Detroit and Surabaya, and #20 and #24 on the list, respectively. Their “I see the way to a better future, follow me” leadership style inspired the cities to change.
Whether you respond to insights shared by my friends and colleagues from around the world, or get inspired by one Fortune’s 50 Greatest Leaders, the world of leadership is shifting for sure. Command and control will no longer cut it, and let’s be honest, that can be a dominant preference in corporate hierarchies, especially in the Middle East.
Are you going to be a leader of the present and the future….or the past?
50 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST Q3 2015