Leadership is still influenced by ideas from the industrial era. It’s time to leave them in the past
Many of our ideas about what leadership entails are hangovers from the industrial era. Qualities we associate with leadership include decisiveness, calmness in a crisis, influencing skills, communication skills, the ability to motivate others and having vision. When machine-like efficiency was the key to profitability, this worked fine. The factory workers got job security, a regular wage and the opportunity to rise up the ranks with promotions and pay rises. The factory bosses got a predictable and largely compliant workforce.
But we aren’t in the industrial age anymore. Our expectations of work have changed: people expect to be more than cogs in the machine.
They want to partner, co-create and collaborate. They want a sense of meaning and purpose in exchange for the hard work they put in. Since the pandemic, people are using a new metric – the ‘worth it’ metric – and asking themselves, “Is the sacrifice I’m expected to make for my work worth it?” Having tasted more flexibility and enjoyed a better balance between home and work, many people are answering that question with a “No.”
Meanwhile, the employer is asking people to go the extra mile: to take initiative, to take ownership, to embrace change, to take risks and to care about the customer, not just pack products into boxes and be grateful that they have a job for life. All this means we must move away from our outdated notions of leadership and the role leaders play.
In my new book, Punks in Suits, I present a new model of leadership based not on the authority that comes with a fancy job title and a high-up position in the organizational hierarchy, but on being an enabler of the talents of others. Punks in suits are leaders who may look conventional on the outside but, under the surface, are willing to challenge the status quo and be uniquely themselves. Instead of seeing themselves as the experts, the decision-makers and the authority figures in the business, leaders need to become curious, continually willing to learn from their junior colleagues, and create an organizational culture where everyone can come and do their best work in service of the customer or client.
Unpicking Victorian beliefs
The problem is that while we recognize that our expectations of our people have changed dramatically, and that their expectations of work have changed too, there is a tension between how we need to lead today and fundamental beliefs we still hold about people and how we treat them.
There are two Victorian era beliefs that still pervade our attitudes toward people in our organizations. We don’t openly discuss them but they are there nonetheless, informing our every decision. The first is that people are second rate machines. The Industrial Age was all about efficiency, predictability and productivity. People were cogs in the machine and we developed ever more sophisticated ‘tricks’ to get them to behave like machines. We created organizational hierarchies, teams, processes and systems. We dangled carrots and wielded sticks. We set out employee behaviors, clearly defined success metrics and even tracked employee engagement – after all, a happy employee is more efficient, predictable and productive. A human employee can never be as reliable as a machine, but we did our best to make them so – until they could be replaced by technology.
The second idea is that people are trying to get away with something. People are driven by emotion, personal agendas and selfish motives. They will steal from the stationery cupboard, and do less work but expect more money, if they think they can get away with it. So, we put in place checks and supervision (management), employee behaviors, systems and processes, accountabilities (such as signing off expenses and signing out company resources), we push decisions up the hierarchy, we withhold sensitive information from junior people, and we assume malintent when employees won’t ‘get on the bus’ or are resistant to change.
But of course people are second-rate machines. Humans are emotional by nature. When we treat them like machines we create dysfunctional cultures. People start to act out. They seek agency wherever they can find it, by developing workarounds, playing politics, angling for recognition for themselves, or simply working to rule. If we are going to treat them like a machine, they will give us what we asked for, and nothing more.
And when we treat all employees like bad apples, guess what? They start to game the system. We push them to lowest common denominator thinking. Why take ownership when your manager is going to overrule you anyway? How can you prove you can make good decisions when you’re never given all the information? When you take a risk, motivated by doing what’s best for the client, but it doesn’t pay off, you are assumed to be stupid, lazy, have poor judgment, or be a rogue employee who needs more supervision and more controls.
Shifting from power to purpose
Technology like Generative AI means that, increasingly, the only differentiator our human employees can bring to our businesses is their humanity. AI will be able to do huge amounts of work that is currently done by human employees. This means that we must consider what human beings could contribute to our organizations if they were released from repetitive tasks that do not benefit from human emotion. In truth, we haven’t yet scratched the surface of how people could contribute to the success of our ventures if we really enabled their humanity to thrive.
For our organizations to survive in these fast-changing times where uncertainty and continual disruption are realities, and where we want and need people’s humanity to thrive, there are six fundamental shifts we, as leaders, need to make.
From trustworthy to willing to trust Being worthy of trust is still vital, of course. But even more important is a willingness to trust. Letting go of the belief that people are trying to get away with something and instead giving them insight into business information, supporting them as they wrestle with difficult decisions and empowering them to sit with the discomfort of those decisions demonstrates our willingness to trust. The extent to which we limit our trust of them is the extent to which they will limit their trust in us. And you can’t get anything done without trust.
Get tech to do what tech does best People are second-rate machines so wherever possible, get technology to do work that is best done by
a machine. Only work that benefits from emotion should be done by humans – which is still a lot! We have barely thought about how emotion could help our businesses. If we embraced humanity with all its unpredictability, strong feelings and curiosity, people could connect more deeply with the customer, each other, and themselves. They could wrangle with ethical issues, consider the long-term impacts of decisions, innovate and create. Liberated from their computers and their desks they could add value in ways we have not yet considered.
Dismantle hierarchical hardwiring Deference for seniority turns into politics, proximity to power and unwillingness to speak hard truths. Junior people are constantly managing their message to be palatable to the higher-ups – even if we say we want to hear their opinions. Leaders need to listen to what is hard to hear and then be willing to change their minds. Instead of influencing, motivating and convincing people to follow, leaders need to be willing to learn, to take on board new perspectives and push decision-making down to those who have to implement those decisions.
Seek out tensions Our organizations are riddled with workarounds. Systems and processes don’t really work on the ground, so people find ways to work around them. Teams battle for recognition and resources, so the focus becomes beating each other, rather than beating the external competition. Meetings are often ineffective, so real decisions happen in corridors and at the bar after work. Today’s leaders need to look for tensions and then move towards them, not work around them. They need to take out huge swathes of waste-of-time activity and processes, and create space for people to use their initiative. Instead of trying to find the answer, they need to ask better questions.
Invite emotion in, everywhere We’ve been terrified of emotion at work. We say we want passion, loyalty and resilience – but we don’t want anger, disappointment or disillusionment. The truth is people are emotional, not logical. We cannot dictate which emotions we want people to show and which we do not. It’s all or nothing. People have emotional reactions to everything, particularly change. Given that change is a constant, expect strong emotions to be a constant. Today’s leaders need to become highly attuned to their own emotions, willing to share that emotional journey, and adept at using the emotions they see around them as information. We can’t change anything if people aren’t emotionally ready for change. Get comfortable with feelings everywhere, all the time.
Purpose beats profit If the only motivation for changing how we lead and the culture we have in our business is short-term profit, we will fail. People are not stupid. Any sense that we are inauthentic when we say we want to empower, when we say we care or when we say we trust people, will not get the result we desire: people who are willing to bring their whole selves to work and do their very best in service of the business. That means our top priority isn’t profitability, shareholder return, or a good quarter. We must have a bigger purpose, both as a business and as individuals. If our primary motivation is a promotion and pay rise, don’t be surprised if that lowest common denominator is reflected in our people too. If our business says it cares about people but would willingly sacrifice their health and wellbeing (and livelihoods) for a quick buck, don’t be surprised if people don’t trust us. Business needs to become a force for good in the world to attract and retain great people, and to get the best from them – and to deserve the loyalty of customers and clients. We can’t fake it.
Enabling the talents of others
All this means the role of leader has to change. Instead of being the answers person, the expert, the superhero, leaders become the enablers of the talents of others. They remove whatever obstacles are getting in the way of people doing their best work. They are keepers of the organizational ethos and purpose, waving a beacon to remind people of the direction of travel – but they are liberators of the greatness of their people, not controllers or monitors of people. They share their expertise, experience and information generously, so that others can make decisions and have impact.
They ensure, above all, that they are not the barrier to the greatness of any human employee in the organization. They swallow their ego, make sure they are facing up to hard truths about themselves and the beliefs they still carry, and focus – not on their own aggrandizement – but on leaving behind them a healthy and thriving organization that is fit for an uncertain and ever-changing future.
Blaire Palmer is author of Punks in Suits: How to lead the workplace reformation (Rethink Press)