First of all, it’s a question of what do you even mean by leadership? A guy who’s much more eloquent than I am on this subject is a guy that I taught with at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a great guy named Ron Hyfetz, and he distinguishes leadership from authority. Typically, traditionally, when we thought of leadership, we thought of you have this authority figure, somebody the organization who has bested with power, who has a high-ranking position. We look to this person to paint a compelling vision of some future to pursue and to motivate us and help us to get there. And that traditional way of thinking of leadership worked pretty well when the world wasn’t so complex. When things are less complex, you can look up to your authority figures for answers. But as things become more complex, you can’t. There is leaders above or more reliant on leaders and people below to figure out what the problems are and figure out what the solutions are. So there you have the rise in complexity, which then requires people to not only look up, but to look to themselves and to look to each other for leadership.
By leadership, I mean the ability to identify problems and opportunities, and then to connect and mobilize with other people to address those problems and opportunities. And that’s something you do within your authority, like with your own team, people that report into you and people report into them. But also beyond your authority, up the organization, across the organization, outside the organization, organization. And then as organizations have become flatter, and we need interdependent thinking, meaning collaboration across silos, to solve complex business problems, then you can’t have this antiquated notion of leadership. That leadership is only something delivered from on high by our authority figures. It’s something that everyone needs to see as their responsibility, and that it is almost like a God-given right as well. That leadership is everyone’s right and responsibility. We all have a responsibility for identifying problems and opportunities to make things better, and then talk to each other about them So people do something about these things. And again, that’s something that people need to exercise within and beyond their authority, up, down, across, and outside of the organizations. So that’s probably the big shift from leaders to leadership. And it’s something that anyone can do, regardless of the level of hierarchy, regardless of their role.
