21st Century Ultimate Management Rendezvous August 17, 2010

Conventional leadership theories paint a distorted picture of leadership by focusing narrowly on people in positions of power. These theories are in crisis today because they face an unpalatable dilemma: either they have to say that CEOs no longer lead or they have to change the meaning of leadership. Changing markets, flatter organizations and new partnering arrangements have given 21st century leaders many roles, multiple stakeholders and an increasingly fragmented job where they continually face trade-offs in time, energy and focus. Their challenges include:

• matching their leadership style to a fast-moving, complex, technology enabled business


• holding multiple perspectives without being overloaded *working with others in virtual teams, often in other countries


• articulating a compelling future vision


• guiding disparate groups of people to deliver business goals


• cutting unnecessary overheads today while building for tomorrow.

This complex world demands new leadership beliefs and behaviors - not just from single CEO leaders, or even the whole top team - but from leaders distributed throughout the organization, leaders who can motivate, empower, articulate and innovate. Most leaders recognize today's challenges but do not know how to respond because they are unable to think differently about their role. Traditional leadership attitudes and behaviors have trapped them in an outdated meaning of leadership where their thoughts and actions are ineffective in dealing with 21st century complexity. A blended 21st century leadership style is emerging with a new set of leadership qualities such as, bringing new perspectives and confronts threats head on, seeks new solutions outside predictable areas, open-minded and curious about their environment, mobilizing their company to take advantage of new market opportunities, view business as a networks of communities and works across boundaries, use collaboration and partnerships to maximize sustainable growth.