Leadership has evolved. Leaders, not so much
The journey towards a leadership system that embraces empathy, a sense of protection and authenticity has begun, but the dominant boss pattern is still too strong, even among employees. And that is a risk, especially for companies
The evolution of leadership over the past decade reflects a shift towards greater adaptability, innovation, and collaboration. However, the persistent deficit in emotional intelligence and soft skills such as empathy, authenticity, and transparency highlights a critical area for growth and the need for a balanced approach.
“I’m frustrated,” confided a young woman working in a corporate office.
The 25-year-old recently graduated and was looking to pursue a creative career. Rent and other living expenses in New York City necessitated finding a job quickly. So she landed work for an operations director at an organization with over 200 employees.
The good news was that the role wasn’t too challenging. Basic administrative work didn’t require a lot of technical skill. The bad news: The director (her immediate supervisor) was not a good leader. Communication was erratic and sometimes hostile. Responsibilities weren’t clearly defined. Recognition was non-existent. “I’m looking for other work,” she confessed, “but it’s a challenge.” Still, she’s decided to stay put and endure the daily stresses of dealing with a leader who excels at their job but fails at inspiring staff to do their best work.
In the rush to harness generative AI, leaders forget that the most important thing is the humility that comes from knowing you don’t have the answers. And that they need to be found in collaboration
This early career professional is not alone. A survey conducted by Culture Amp found that in the last two years, there has been a global decline in workers’ confidence in higher-level leaders and 44% of workers globally are thinking of looking for work elsewhere. “Employees report that leaders are less likely to demonstrate how important people are to the company’s success; they are less able or willing to keep people informed; and they are less capable of communicating a motivating vision,” according to analysis of the data in the Times of London by Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London Business School.
This is at odds with what the youngest workers say they want. A small study from Regent University hints at a broader trend: the desire to have emotionally intelligent leaders. “Leaders prioritize their team’s needs and operate with transparency and consistency in communication. Leaders operate using an authentic “leads by example” mentality that gains genuine buy-in and loyalty in the process.”
Continuing to report to a leader who isn’t taking the care or time to exhibit the soft skills workers say they want is due in part to an increasingly tight labor market with layoffs impacting nearly every industry, and the financial burden of rising energy and food prices. Last year the global inflation rate is estimated to have hovered near 7%, the highest increase since 1996.
The leaders we had
A decade ago, this may not have been an issue. Older workers were used to a top-down approach, where directives flowed from the upper echelons of management to the lower ranks. Command-and-control leadership was the norm, with leaders emphasizing authority, decisiveness, and operational efficiency.
For some leaders, profits took precedence over people, and ethics were tossed out completely. I recall reporting on the shakeup at Volkswagen: “When the German automaker installed software intended to defeat emissions testing, CEO Martin Winterkorn’s character and management style were called into question. Although Winterkorn claimed not to know about the technology, he’s been classified as a hard-driving perfectionist bent on securing the top spot among global car manufacturers.”
In 2015, Martin Shkreli, founder and former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals and self-professed “Robin Hood” was arrested for securities fraud and subsequently stepped down from his post. Elizabeth Holmes’ startup Theranos was the subject of investigative reports that eventually toppled the company, even as they both leaned into their questionable leadership with impunity.
Alongside this, as organizations grappled with the rise of the digital age, social media, and a more informed and engaged workforce, the paradigm began to shift.
In 2014, Tim Cook was named CNN’s best CEO of the year for his leadership at Apple. Cook presided over a 40% increase of the company’s stock that year by showcasing how Apple could innovate after the death of Steve Jobs. Notably, his appointment coincided with a coming out. In Bloomberg Businessweek Cook wrote that he was “proud to be gay” and understood how he could inspire others in the LGBTQ community.
In 2015 Time Magazine named then-German chancellor Angela Merkel to its Person of the Year (the first woman to get the designation in 29 years). That year she was to allow refugees and migrants to seek asylum in Germany, when many other countries were closing their borders. Estimates put the number of people entering the country at 1 million by the end of this year.
In 2016, Hamdi Ulukaya the CEO of Chobani offered to give employees shares in the company—which was not an unheard-of strategy— but allowed workers at the young company to profit from an IPO. He also committed to giving all kinds of workers an option for employment, including offering refugees a place to work.
2018 saw the rise of activist leadership as top brass elevated their brands alongside social issues. Patagonia then-CEO Rose Marcario pledged to give back $10 million in tax cuts to grassroots environmental organizations, former Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh who led the company through a dramatic turnaround, and TOMS founder Blake Mykoskie who pioneered the buy one give one model each took stands on gun control.
The skills leaders need now
These are just a few examples of how leaders in this past decade have stepped up to the expectation that they are more adaptive, agile, collaborative, and inspiring. As the pandemic ushered in widespread remote work, an even more flexible and inclusive leadership style was necessary. Leaders are navigating complex networks of relationships and managing more diverse teams spread across different time zones and cultures.
Moreover, the rise of data-driven decision-making has led to a greater focus on analytical skills. Leaders are expected to harness big data to drive strategic decisions and gain a competitive edge. The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into business processes has further complicated the leadership landscape, requiring leaders to not only understand these technologies but also to anticipate their implications for their organizations.
It is no surprise then, that prioritizing vision, innovation, and the ability to inspire and motivate others is tablestakes. Emotional intelligence, EQ or EI as it is sometimes called, a term coined in 1990, also began to evolve into a buzzworthy skill in the past ten years, according to academic research.
While many leaders are scrambling to make sense of how best to leverage generative artificial intelligence as yet one more tool to enable competitive teams, Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, maintains that the most important leadership traits are courage and humility. “Courage to meet the challenges—substantive and interpersonal—that lie ahead,” Edmondson explains to me via an interview. “Humility to realize you don’t have the answers, they must be discovered collaboratively,” she adds.
According to Edmondson, the stakes have never been higher. She notes that in 2014 leaders could be effective, or at least seen by others as effective with a higher degree of self-absorption, bravado, and even arrogance. They could also get away with playing it safe—not taking risks that might jeopardize their standing. Now she says, leaders must have the “humility to realize that leadership is not about [them]— it’s about making a difference whether for an organization, a country, or the world.”
A persistent deficit in soft skills
Collaborative leadership: studies show that a less dominant attitude provides companies with more efficient and satisfied teams.
Courage and humility alongside empathy, authenticity, and transparency are often touted as essential traits for modern leaders and foundational aspects of high emotional intelligence. Yet many still fall short in these areas. Global management consultancy Korn Ferry found that only 22% of 155,000 leaders have strong emotional Intelligence.
Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of others is consistently supported by research. Empathetic leaders can build stronger, more cohesive teams, improve employee satisfaction, and drive better organizational outcomes.
However, many leaders still struggle to ex hibit genuine empathy. The pressures of high-stakes decision-making and focus on financial performance often overshadow the need to connect with employees personally. A report published in Harvard Business Review reveals a gap between the 78% of senior leaders who acknowledge the importance of empathy and the 47% who believe their companies are effectively practicing it.
Authenticity: authentic leaders foster trust and respect which are crucial for building strong organizational cultures and driving long-term success.
Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD (Institut européen d’administration des affaires) has conducted research and teaches what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. In our current workplaces, Petriglieri finds that people have “deep bonds to work but loose affiliations to organizations, and authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as hallmarks of virtue and success.”
However, he told me in an interview via Zoom that if you look at leadership across industries you can boil them down to a “dominant model.” Petriglieri says that is someone in high visibility getting attention and exercising influence. They are often consummate storytellers rather than authentic leaders.
The pressures of maintaining a polished public image and navigating complex political landscapes can influence leaders to present a façade rather than their true selves. This discrepancy between the public persona and the private reality can undermine trust and create disillusionment among team members. Yet workers continue to lift them up because as Petriglieri says, we have a “romanticized view of dominance.”
Transparency: leaders who are open and clear about decisions, processes, and intentions, foster an environment of trust and accountability, where employees feel informed and included in the decision-making process. In an era of increasing demand for corporate social responsibility and ethical behavior, building trust through transparency is more important than ever.
Research from MIT shows that trust in the workplace can offer a competitive edge: leading to a 260% increase in motivation, 50% less turnover, and 41% lower absentee rates.
The tendency to withhold information, whether to protect proprietary data or to avoid difficult conversations, can create a perception of dishonesty or evasion. This lack of transparency can erode trust and hinder organizational effectiveness.
It is not always intentional. Some leaders do not quite understand the nuances of transparency. Kieran Snyder, Chief Scientist Emeritus, co-founder of the AI platform Textio, and founder of nerdprocessor.com, believes that communication and appropriate transparency are cornerstones of effective leadership in any setting.
“This doesn’t mean that you, as a leader, share every single thought that goes through your head with every single audience. Nobody wants to work for someone unpredictable and chaotic,” she explains. “But it does mean that you communicate in honest and forthright ways, whether the news is good, bad, or unusual, Snyder maintains, “It builds trust when people know they can rely on you to be truthful and steady.”
The leaders we have
Can soft skills such as communication, transparency, and authenticity be associated with transformative leadership? According to a survey of people managers by LHH, a global provider of Human Resources solutions, nearly half (44%) said that emotional intelligence is most important when leading teams through times of change.
Harvard Professor Edmondson also believes these are essential for leadership to have a transformative impact. “Leadership” means getting things done through others. Leaders do not, and cannot, do the work needed to achieve transformative goals, themselves. Instead, they must inspire and engage others to do the hard work that lies ahead. A leader’s only impact lies in their ability to engage others’ hearts and minds—and this is inherently about communication.”
Edmondson says that for her “authenticity only works if you authentically have a sense of decency and generosity of spirit. If your authentic self is selfish, uncaring, or incurious, authenticity is unlikely to foster impact”, she explains.
Unfortunately, Petriglieri argues, a lack of authenticity is just beneath the surface of leaders’ initiatives such as promoting diversity or paid leave. He suggests they are used as tools to boost the bottom line. In an opinion piece for Fast Company (disclosure: I edited this piece) he wrote:
“Most of those efforts reinforce a view of leadership that, put bluntly, is a means to get your way, and get stuff done—in style. If you can do that, you are a leader. If you can’t, you are not. This is the hollow core of popular portraits of leadership as an individual virtue or as a set of tools that let a person bend others’ minds and move their bodies too.
Influencing others matters more than representing them. Efficiency matters more than freedom. Participation is framed as a way to get people on board, rather than to free them up.”
Petriglieri penned that piece four years ago, at the height of pandemic and a surge of civil unrest. Now, it appears that we are at another inflection point, as global corporate structures are shifting and half the world will vote in high-stakes elections. We are beginning to see corporate, academic, and political leaders turn away from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) along with the attendant soft skills once used to promote them.
Petriglieri is not surprised. “We still admire a dominant leader,” he tells me, explaining that what is primarily required is creating the perception that the leader “cares” about their workers or followers. This is where the skill of storytelling comes in, he says. By crafting a story of care that people want to hear, a leader can rise. And as they do, they ascend to that dominant model we recognize. “We are pattern-matching machines,” he explains, “if that is the template, everyone who behaves like that is a leader.” If we select and develop a relatively selfish leader, he says, then “we complain about the product we put out.”
Lydia Romano Dishman
Journalist and business columnist for Fast Company, she has a long track record of working with
major publications including Forbes and New York Time Magazine.