Why Our concept of leadership needs to change

Leadership theory is confused right now. E 'at a crossroads. Being a leader used to indicate the way forward, but this idea has been declining in popularity. Why? Because the world is changing:

Ø The boss no longer has all the answers, the world is too complex.

Knowledge workers or want to have their say, we can not say what to do.

o The power of position and respect for authority are retreating.

or we are in an era of partnership in which hierarchy is minimized.

Loyalty or went. Ordering people around only moves them to leave.

Two ways to respond to the crisis of leadership

1. We can say that leadership is no longer about the way forward. Instead facilitates, empowers, develops, nurtures and inspires others to find their own directions. The new leader is a coach or supporter of others, not someone who calls the shots.

2. We can hold onto the idea that leadership really does point to new directions, but to say that leadership can be both bottom-up, as top-down. This means that the bosses are doing something different when they support others. Dare we call this simply good management?

Pros and cons of these two ways of looking at leadership

The first option has the advantage of preserving the idea that people are responsible for leading groups. They just behave differently. The disadvantage is that such a small adjustment of the status quo does not do justice to an uncomfortable fact:

The power to move an organization is moving in new directions by the position and strength of personality to the power of ideas. Due to innovative companies, today is a war of ideas.

This fact suggests that leadership is increasingly divorced from the position that anyone who has a good idea for a better product or a service that promotes success for the organization-at-large is showing leadership. The second option accounts for our inconvenient truth much better. So, we have to say that leadership promotes new directions, while management focuses on doing things.

To make it credible point of view, however, we need to improve management. Instead of seeing the mechanistic management control function, we need to see how an inspiring, liberating, acts as a facilitator and support. This is closer to reality. Facilitation is the only facility. Not somehow mysteriously become leadership just because someone at the head of a group is doing.

If you have people reporting to you, show leadership means promoting a new and better way of doing things. When you draw solutions out of your team, develop, train and support them, you wear a hat management. In short, leadership sells the tickets for travel, management drives the bus to the destination. It is not so simple, however. During the great change, leadership will be needed on an ongoing basis to continue to sell the benefits of the trip. But management is also needed - good ability to motivate and coordinate the various inputs of a wide range of stakeholders.

Why is it important?

Managers of large organizations or groups are overloaded with too large a share of ownership for organizational success. All the rest is up to them too. Empowerment was a small step in the direction of share ownership. If we want to engage and retain the best talent and knowledge to win the war of innovation, we need to go further and recognize that leadership is not about managing a team, but a question of promoting new ways to thrive in the fierce war of ideas, regardless of who is doing it.

Implications

If you think these ideas are simple, check out some of their implications:

- Leadership has nothing to do with things done or people management. This is a management function.

- Leadership is not a role, it is only the management, so there are no such things as formal positions of leadership.

- Leadership can come from outside the organization, as well as bottom-up. Anyone, inside or outside the organization that defends a new road is showing leadership if the organization follows.

- It 's more important for management to be emotionally intelligent than it is for leadership. Front line knowledge workers that promote new products so insensitive may still show leadership if they can make a case strong enough for their ideas.

Conclusion

We must revolutionize our way of thinking about leadership for a digital world where no one can monopolize simply because nobody has a monopoly on good ideas .......