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UX Blog

UX Blog is a resource for user experiences novices and experts in the UX design, research, and strategy community .

UX Blog is a resource for user experiences novices and experts in the UX design, research, and strategy community.

[chickasawallison]

21st Century Leadership: The Old Curmudgeon

I had a lot of opportunity to contemplate how we talk about leadership the last few months:

-I read Seth Godin’s Tribes and listened to him talk about it on TED Talks.

-I attended a management session led by a futurist to talk about millennials in the work place.

-I have been searching out blogs and books about entrepreneurs in the digital age.

Something did not feel quite right and the #UsGuys #USblog challenge to write about 21st Century Leadership gave me a chance to work through it. Welcome to my therapy!

I like things in threes, so here we go:

1. Who comes to my mind when I think Leader:

Alexander the Great

Napoleon

Abraham Lincoln

Churchill

Martin Luther King JR

 Gandhi

Yeah, I saw the problem, too!  These are all crisis/war leaders. Okay, it is a little one sided.

2. What about the great positive things in history that define us, as explored by his awesomeness, Thomas Cahill? Sure there were leaders that led the Irish effort to copy most of literature in the dark ages, thereby saving western civilization as we know it. But you got a name? Na, me neither. 

3. So I talked to my 74 year old Dad about how he sees the new definitions of leadership.  Dad pretty much wrote it all off as self-help, flavor-of-the-week hogwash. He said things like, leaders are needed to steer the ship, set the direction and keep things on track. He used the analogy of a symphony conductor.

We talked about the “Everyone is a leader” message (or what my husband calls “Leaders of the small”) you hear talked about.  His response: Those are not leaders, they just get things done.

We also talked about

Business leaders now earn 10+ times what the regular employee makes.  That creates a huge void between senior staff and the frontlines that was not there in the 60’s.  I agree with him that it creates a new socio-economic void in the work place.

His generation extolled the values of responsibility and humility, particularly in leadership.  I am not sure we even know what to do with the kind of humility our grandparents held as common courtesy. We have so much emphasis on self-esteem and self-realization today that a person with this kind of humility looks like someone in need of therapy to us.

Encouraging everyone to aspire to leadership feels like a misuse of the word leader. Are we really asking for more leaders or rather for more innovators?

If you watched the James Burke series Connections, you might agree that the history of significant innovation has more to do with incremental progress over time and insane luck than with actual leaders. If you buy that (which I do), leadership and innovation are not as tightly linked as we might hope.

So do I want a new kind of leader? After talking with Dad, no. I want more of the same kind of great leaders we have had: visionary, inspirational, courageous, humble, responsible.  The most important thing about 21st century leadership? We have a better chance for more great leaders, merit based leaders, because we can more readily pull from all races, genders, ages and classes.

I do believe great leaders are preparing for the future, today, by figuring out how to create a culture of innovation. That is what is needed now, what the digital age enables. But I want to fry your brain with a fact that fascinates me: The fact that the Maori tribe of New Zealand has a 1,000 year plan. I would love to see it! What do you as a leader think about when you look out 1,000 years? Rapid innovation is critical now, but in 2 generations at the latest, we will need something else and great leaders will rise to the occasion then, too!