I think for me the conversation of leadership has been such a difficult space to put out. A lot of times I do ask myself, who am I to talk about leadership? Or even working through skepticism in the disconnect between the types of theoretical leaders in literature, and the reality of the types of leaders we have in power today. But in the context of this piece being part of an online course from Courseera on Leadership in 21st Century Organisations. I hope this could be a tiny building block for myself, and maybe for larger systems on the types of leaders we need to be looking for and rewarding in our organisations and communities today.
Leadership in the 21st Century faces a set of very different dimensions, in contrast to what was needed in the 20th Century. As the pace of change in the world is accelerating, leaders are currently facing a myriad of new challenges. From the complexity of global challenges today, to emerging disruptions of the current structural systems, with an increasingly urgent timelines for transformation. This new need of leadership is reflected both in the diverse needs of society today and how organisations and even countries are struggling to respond to the future. With the current context of COVID-19 and other emerging threats to the order of globalisation, I believe leaders of the 21st Century needs to develop a new set of skillsets and beliefs to be able to lead their organisations and nations. For me there are three main concepts that a 21st Century leader would need in order to respond to the context of today.
The first concept is the ability for Strategic Foresight in navigating an unknown future. Strategic Foresight’s aim is not to predict the exact future, but rather to build the capacity to imagine multiple future options that enable us to better sense, shape, and adapt to future needs. As according to Peter Scoblic in his article on HBR, he notes that “Strategic Foresight doesn’t help us figure out what to think about the future. It helps us figure out how to think about it”. As the pace of change in the world accelerates, I feel that leaders need the capabilities to process and make sense of multiple signals, and build capabilities for the organisation to innovate and respond in multiple directions at the same time.
Strategic Foresight would be a contrast to the 20th Century concepts that relied on prediction that mapped out a 10 year plan for the organisation. This would design for a long direct pathway for the transformation of the company, however it would lack the ability to change course along the way and stick to a single future outlook. Leaders of the 21st Century would need a culture of responsiveness and agility that is constantly testing and learning from emerging signals. One of these leadership examples in this course for me is seen in this course with Emily Pilloton’s TED talk on Studio H. The strategic foresight here is to engage high schoolers and grow their capabilities and creative capital. This is important to not teach them the content they need, but to actually offer an educational framework that grows their capabilities and gives them the tools for the uncertain future.
This would give organisations the capacity to better anticipate future situations which requires monitoring closely on signals that has little evidence but could have far-reaching implications. This can be in form of an agile management team that they can rely on to be the first disruptors towards their own organisation, or a panel trusted mentors and advisors that can give you perspective and insight when their organisation might be overwhelmed by crisis. A leaders job is in identifying forces that will shape future trends and imagine a variety of plausible futures to devise strategies that prepare organisations. I believe Strategic Foresight gives a great framework to meet the rapidly disrupting trends of the 21st Century.
The second leadership concept that is needed for the 21st Century is the space of self-mastery. Self-mastery is self development from the inside out, leading to understanding our behaviour patterns that are both good and bad, and the causes them. Self-mastery as defined by Shayne Hughes is our “ability in any given moment — particularly in moments of stress — to show up and respond with our best selves, with our most creative and flexible capacity and strengths”. To me this gives leaders in the 21st Century clarity in their purpose of serving the organisations and communities. As introduced by Simon Sinek in his book Start with Why, he notes that “very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief — WHY does your company exist? And WHY should anyone care?”. Especially now that leaders are called upon to lead in times of global disruptions, it has opened up the need to navigate new directions of morality, equality and ethics which needs to have a solid intention behind the direction forward.
“very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief — WHY does your company exist? And WHY should anyone care?” — Simon Sinek
A company that I feel has their leaders practice constant self-mastery is Bridgewater Associates. They ensure that their leaders are in positions of “constructive destabilisation”, which are situations that place leaders in a constant amount of sustainable stress to ensure continued growth 5. They then build rituals and spaces such as check-ins with mentors, for these leaders to introspect and reflect on their own learnings. The focus is that through adversity, it enables their leaders to better understand themselves and gaps they need to fill when adversity comes. They believe that the growth of self-mastery will promote a culture of understanding, ownership and learning from failures.
I believe that this concept of self-mastery would also enable leaders to stay out of their own ego and pride and are able to stay the course for effective governance. Self-mastery also for me ties back to the course material on Authentic and Servant Leadership frameworks in the course. As these leaders understand their individual limits of knowledge and skills, and are able to assess and tune into the abilities and passions of their talent. Finally I feel that with the constant pace of change today, another benefit of self-mastery is to ensure that the process of leadership is sustainable for the long term. It gives them the ability to manage themselves, be in tune with their capacity to serve the organisation and to stay balanced in both their health and mind for the long term.
The final concept that I would like to offer as essential for 21st Century leaders is on the ability to be vulnerable and build trust. On this concept, I draw inspiration and reference from Brene Brown’s ideas of vulnerability in leadership, “I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential”. I feel that vulnerable leadership has the ability to strengthen the connections between teams, and build a culture of better communication and teamwork overall. To me a culture of trust and safety empowers the team to take risks and own mistakes, this ensures that team members are building up the organisation, rather than spending energy hiding mistakes.
“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential” — Brene Brown
Another case study is with Decurion Corporation has developed a communication framework that allow employees to speak authentically and transparently about the personal dimensions of the issues. They practice a “fishbowl discussion” which allows for reduced stakes in the conversation as managers sit on the side lines tuning into the conversation in the centre. This is in contrast with the 20th Century image of leaders that needed to be strong and domineering to demand obedience in following their directions.
As noted by Simon Sinek, the role of a leader is not to solely produce all the great ideas, more importantly they need to create an environment in which great ideas can happen. Especially in the context of today where things change from all levels of the organisation, there needs to be a culture that is proactive in building forward in a shared mission. A leader needs to be able to have a culture that functions larger than the sum of its parts when managing talent, and by involving everyone in decision making and problem solving process, it will give ownership to them. Collaboration and trust is also seen in the example of the Boeing Moonshine Shop, to me the case study shows how they promoted leading collaboration by recruiting a team of the best leaders to transform how they have always operated in their production. They focused on building of trust and involving the entire team by practicing extreme transparency and the safety to fail. I believe that through the concept of vulnerability and trust in leaders, they are able to fully enhance the individual talents of the organisation and enable it to adapt to the complex challenges of the 21st Century
With the complexity of global challenges, increasing disruptions, and ever urgent timelines, these are the defining needs of our 21st Century. I believe we need a very different set of leaders to navigate our systems and respond to these challenges. My proposition here is with the concepts of strategic foresight, which enables flexibility and agility in an organisations response. Self-mastery which ensures the clarity and longevity of an organisations direction. And finally vulnerability and trust in leadership which empowers an organisation to unlock all of its talents. These concepts will enable a leader to build the capabilities and access the resources needed for organisations to respond to our 21st century needs.
References
- Learning from the Future — https://hbr.org/2020/07/emerging-from-the-crisis?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_weekly&utm_campaign=weeklyhotlist_not_activesubs&deliveryName=DM87022
- Emily Pilloton — Teaching design for change — https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_pilloton_teaching_design_for_change/transcript?language=en
- Want to Be a Great Leader? Here’s Why Personal Mastery Is the Single Best Place to Start — https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310795
- Start With Why — Simon Sinek
- Making Business Personal — https://hbr.org/2014/04/making-business-personal
- Authentic Leadership (Wikipedia entry): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentic_leadership
- Dare to Lead — Brene Brown
- Lean Manufacturing Mindset Means Continuous Innovation at Boeing — https://www.industryweek.com/innovation/process-improvement/article/21958191/lean-manufacturing-mindset-means-continuous-innovation-at-boeing
