Leadership in the 21st century

The world doesn’t need another leadership theory. On Amazon, there are 480,881 books on the subject. We are bombarded with articles, research, TED talks and more on what it takes to be a great leader. And yet, the evidence is that we are still far from getting it right. So what’s the issue?

A quick look at recent research from Bersin at Deloitte, indicating that 86% of organisations surveyed saw leadership shortfalls as a ‘top-3’ issue and Gallup showing low levels of employee engagement worldwide, demonstrating that there is much work to do.

Of course, there are many issues - not just related to management theory - that impact on the effectiveness of our leaders. However, we believe that much of the leadership theory relied on in workplaces today is just not fit for purpose in today’s world of work. Most leaders are navigating a complex and turbulent world, with competing priorities, and increasing demands from customers and stakeholders. Pinning down what is required and finding a way of expressing this in one of the neat ‘2 x 2’ models so beloved of management theorists is difficult to say the least. And increasingly there are dissenting voices challenging these models. So we believe the important questions to pave the way to a new way of thinking are:

• What are the leadership attributes that make a genuine difference in the workplace today, rather than what we think ought to?
• What will work for today’s empowered leadership learner, to provide development at point of need and in a way that fits with our everyday working lives?
• How do we move from ‘concept to reality’ in our leadership thinking, to provide learning that is hard-wired into the real challenges we face?

When we work with organisations we often use the phrase ‘what got us here, won’t necessarily get us there’. And by applying this to leadership now, we believe we have an opportunity to generate a new way of thinking about how we identify, develop and nurture our leaders.

Julie Blunt