Leadership Acumen: Issue 5, December, 2002
Banff Executive Leadership Inc.

Why Is Leadership So Important to Develop Anyway?

If ever there was a year that exposed the need for leadership development, 2002 was one in particular.

We have seen many of our traditional role models exposed for simple 'What's In It For Me' (WIIFM) practices and attitudes. The community has spoken - good leadership requires more.

Role Models Are Changing
Our past role model/hero images built around conquest, power, growth achievement, accumulation of stuff, elite perspective - the dedicated and committed warrior - are now starting to be openly questioned. In a world which has become more populated and closely connected, this kind of behavior is unsustainable and perhaps even destabilizing.

Leadership heroes of the future are likely to show attributes such as: sustained achievement, balancing of power and stewardship for enhanced common benefit, adaptability and ability to let go of status quo, facilitation of inter-connectedness and consensus. Courage in the future context will be courage of conviction and ethics, courage to engage with complexity and paradox, and courage to successfully bring together those of different cultural backgrounds.

The incoming generation of senior leaders - in business, government and the 3rd sector - have had very mixed levels of preparation for leadership. Many have had relatively narrow and/or technically based career tracks. As a result they have not necessarily developed the broad perspective, strategic, and HR/team skills. Others have fast-tracked up the outgoing system of the previous generation.

Over the past 10+ years, the outgoing cadre of senior leaders seemed to lose the time honored art of mentoring. Organizations downplayed the value of apprenticeship and the taking-on of young acolytes, while many of the cornerstone values of our society and organizations were assumed rather than explicitly discussed.

So today, and over the next very few years, it is going to be important to nurture, support, guide, encourage, and foster new leadership understanding at a significant pace.

The New Generation of Leaders Require both New and Old Attributes
As noted before, true leadership is not the same as an ability to command towards narrow success.

These are challenging times in society -

• The interests of individualism have surpassed the understanding of the need for a healthy community in balance.
• The power and financial resources of the elite are largely caught-up in sustaining the status quo of consumption, waste generating, and polarizing practices.
• Revolutionizing, or perhaps better put - Renaissance - promoters/leaders are often not accepted, perhaps actively marginalized, and sometimes 'stomped out' by those for whom the status quo is a benefit.

New, adaptive leaders, must risk these elements and give voice to new approaches at the fringe. And they must facilitate the meaningful conversations required to advance beyond the status quo.
Today's leaders are also called upon to deal with paradox. We look to our future leaders to:

• be both decisive and yet also facilitative,
• deliver local results, and see the big picture
• maximize efficiency and maximize productivity
• enhance progressive profitability and distinguish through added customer value
• work effectively with Board and Community, and be a visionary, charismatic, exemplary initiative-taker,
• amass great knowledge and develop broad perspective, but learn this through short bursts and e-learning approaches that last less than a day.

This is why new network-leadership capacities need to be nurtured, and why the outgoing generation of leaders need to commit to longer-term pattern-base expansion and development for the acolytes coming along behind.

2002 - A Lesson in what NOT to do
2002 has exposed greed, cultural intolerance, arrogance, double standards, plus self-interest above the interest of the community being served and led. As a result, Leaders and Leadership has fallen from grace. We have broken trusts. Corporate executives, religious clerics, politicians and senior bureaucrats, charitable organization heads, have all been in the news reminding us that the enemy of good leadership is power and greed.

2003 and beyond will serve-up significant challenges, including:

• greenhouse gas emission reduction and waste reduction amid an insane and superficial global credit exchange system
• stabilization of safety and security amid terrorism and intolerance
• return to profitability of businesses within a "replacement" market reality
• separation of religious leadership from state leadership in some countries
• enhancement of democracy, jurisprudence and transparency practices
• reduction of poverty and disadvantage
• inspiration of new innovations to achieve the above
• enhanced respect for diversity and engagement of all our human potential
• practical, local solutions respecting more complex regional and global pressures

Who will lead us through these challenges? Lord Baden Powell lived in somewhat simpler times, but his adage for leadership is no less relevant today: "Be Prepared!"

What it takes to be prepared today however is a little more complex and demanding than a couple of decades ago.

Still, we need leaders that can embrace these new competencies. We need existing systems and leaders to nurture these abilities as their final act in "passing on the torch" of responsibility. And, we need to encourage people to step forward to engage themselves in a new era of leadership demands.

This is why it is so important to invest in leadership development today!

Banff Executive Leadership Inc. offers public and customized programming to improve Board Governance and Executive Leadership Practices. We also provide coaching and consulting services to Boards and Executives to help enhance their leadership practices. Please contact us if we can be of further assistance.

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