Leader Of The Future 2.0
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I recently read a book “Leader of the Future 2.0” in which some of the leading business leaders write about leadership and management issues facing the workforce of today. The book has 27 essays which cover a broad spectrum of leadership challenges. In this post I’d like to share some thoughts from the chapter “Leading New Age Professionals” by Marshall Goldsmith.
The author argues that things have changed radically over the last 10-15 years. The demands and expectations from professionals are much higher and the new age professionals are also quite different in their thinking and work style. As the Pakistan IT market continues to mature and we struggle to develop our reputation for quality work, there are lessons here for us.
Lets start with what are the changes driving all this. Marshall points out to Five Factors which have converged to create a new world of professional work:
- Increased differentiation in compensations
- Decreased job security
- Decreased healthcare and pension security
- Global competition
- New technology
What New Professional Want From Leaders?
Let’s reverse the pyramid and look at leadership from the perspective of the wants and needs of professionals as opposed to the perspective of the skills of the leader. Marshall makes the point that leaders will need to consider the human doing the work.
- Encourage their passion
- Enhance their ability
- Value their time
- Build their network
- Support their dreams
- Expand their contribution
Very often in Asian cultures we hesitate but I think that it is fair to clearly outline the expectations from leadership. I believe that if professionals can be convinced by leaders that they are in an organization which cares about them as well as the bottom line then motivation and productivity will increase.
The book is available from Amazon.
5:04 pm
Well i guess there are some more factors that can be added to the list of “What New Professional Want From Leaders?” And topping the list would be:
How ready is my leader for his/her own role of leadership?
Leadership readiness is an upcoming theory. One of the pioneers of this theory work being Wali Zahid – a professional trainer of trainers at British Council Karachi. I had the privilege of attending a course work with him on Leadership Readiness. Just go for a google search and you will find the results of his / our work on it.
The professional wants the leader to produce and ready his subordinates for the upcoming leadership roles, so that they are “ready” to fill in or stand up in his (leader’s shoes).
5:43 pm
Another thing I’d add with regards to ‘creating leaders from the team’ theme here: I think in that there is a part to play by the employee as well.
E.g. typically we put in a mentoring framework to identify leadership potential and then assign managers to mentor them over two quarters or so. However, in our experience we have found employees who dont have an interest in growing to learning from the special attention.
It is sad to see at the end, because you could increase their network or their visibility by introducing and highlighting them but they may actually end up offending the people you introduce them to with smugness and complacency.
Note: This is a VERY rare occurance though, because I have also had the priviledge of working highly ambitions people and it is always a treat.
See my posts on ambitious people (Click the “Professionalism” tag)