How Has Leadership Changed in the Last Generation?

Three fundamental changes.

Scholars, and people generally, look at leadership in a very different way than they did a generation ago. Leadership was seen as something that was straightforward, done “by the book,” and could be easily learned. Leadership today is a lot more complicated.

Here are 3 important ways that leadership has changed.

1. A Greater Focus on the Follower. The successful leader is able to engage and motivate followers. There is shared, or at least consultative, decision making with followers empowered to take on responsibility and act independently. In transformational leadership, for example, the leader’s goal is to develop followers’ leadership capacity — eventually turning followers into leaders. Moreover, effective leaders recognize the individual strengths and needs of followers in order to allow each follower to maximize potential.

2. Decentralized Decision Making/Empowered Followers. Often speed of action is critical, so followers need to be empowered to act without direction from the leader. In today’s knowledge-based world, a leader cannot hope to lead alone. In all likelihood, followers have more accumulated knowledge about the team’s or organization’s purpose than does the leader, so it makes sense to share the responsibility.

1. Recognition of the Complexity of Leadership. The increasingly interconnected and international world of the 21st century, the ever-evolving technology and social media, and the constantly changing environment, means that this is not your father’s or mother’s world. Management (note that we now routinely call it “Leadership”) was a straightforward endeavor — simply analyze the situation and move forward. Today’s world is fantastically complex and requires all of a leader’s capacity, and the shared capacity of the team, to stay competitive and effective. Leaders must constantly engage followers, analyze complex situations, communicate virtually, delegate, monitor, and motivate. It’s a difficult job, but staying competitive requires this new form of leadership.

For Development: If you ever need motivation to continue to develop as a leader — through courses, workshops (or reading this book) — it is the increased difficulty of leading in the modern world. Try to do something each day to learn a bit more about leading and leadership.