By JoAnna Brandi
In our American culture, we have the tendency to look outside of ourselves for leadership. That’s a trap. Isn’t it time we looked inside ourselves to see how we can be the leader we want and need to be in the 21st century.
We used to think that leadership was telling people what to do. We saw the manager as “hero.”
We, as managers, were needed to solve problems, needed for our technical expertise and our know-how. We were needed to keep the ship running in tiptop shape!
All our old leadership models came from the military, where people took their command from a few people at the top. These models don’t work in today’s world. As the industrial age models rust, the power has shifted from the people who sell, to the people who buy.
Today’s business leader needs to a master juggler, and a compassionate listener. She needs to be savvy and intuitive and sharp as a tack in business matters. Most of all today’s leader needs to be able to mobilize HUMAN energy, align it and direct it towards a single goal – creating more value for the customer. This, in turn creates a more profitable company. Companies that have high levels of customer happiness and employee happiness outperform those who don’t.
I believe there are seven traits of successful leaders for the 21st Century.
Creative thinker - Einstein said, “The world we have created is a product of our way of thinking” Nothing will change in the future without fundamentally new ways of thinking.
If we want to create a new world we have to first change our thinking and thinking patterns. 80% of the population thinks reactively. They take action to make something go away (usually a problem.) The other 20% are creative thinkers – they take action to make something come into being (the creation.)
Creative thinkers thrive on the question “What’s Possible?” Reactive thinkers ask, “What’s wrong?” or “Who’s to blame?” Reactive thinkers live in reaction and response to circumstances. Creative thinkers go beyond circumstances.
The next quality of tomorrow’s leader is “Change readiness.” The Change-ready individual embraces change. They understand the process of change and how it affects most people, and is skilled at enrolling people in it with a minimum amount of fear.
Most people do resist change – that’s because it forces us right out of our comfort zones. A leader knows how to move people out of their comfort zones with dignity and respect. He helps people share a “common understanding” of the past and why they need to change it and then provides them with a positive image of their future along with actions they can all agree will move them in the right direction.
A leader is a Landscape Architect. It is their primary job to build a living environment– called culture. Culture is the soul of the enterprise. Today’s leader is a master “culture-crafter.” They sculpt and craft an environment that sti
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