The headline of a CNBC online article immediately caught my attention: “The older model of leadership just doesn’t cut it anymore.” That headline nicely sums up much of our newly-released book, Essentials of Followership: Rethinking the Leadership Paradigm with Purpose. The CNBC article went on to quote a source at PwC (formerly known as Price Waterhouse Cooper) who explained that “people don't want to be managed in those autocratic models anymore.” Of course, the irony is that CEOs like Google’s Sundar Pichai and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have doubled down on their command and control leadership approach by demanding, among other things, that remote workers return to their corporate offices.
Could it be that leadership as corporate America has traditionally defined it no longer works effectively? Indeed, our changing culture, perhaps accelerated by the post-pandemic season in which we find ourselves, necessitates a fresh look at the role of the leader. As Mark and I pointed out in our new book, leaders accomplish very little without engaged followers. The days of glorifying the hero-leader probably are not yet over, but the focus has begun to shift to a more holistic approach to how organizations meet goals. Leadership actually encompasses a system, as we see it, and is comprised of: leader + follower + organizational context + common purpose (something we call purposeship). Only when those components are considered together can goals be most effectively met.
At a time when followers expect empowerment rather than micromanagement, leaders can no longer afford to wield iron fists. Followers are now simply choosing to head for the door in search of organizations that care about them, develop and empower them, and treat them as people instead of cogs in a machine. The leadership landscape is changing. Are you ready for it?
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