The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, co-written with Ryan Heil, PhD, entitled “Choose Love Not Fear: How the Best Leaders Build Cultures of Engagement and Innovation that Unleash Human Potential.”
The topic - the democratization of society - is rapidly becoming more relevant to those of us in leadership roles. Consider the following:
Democratization is Narrowing Our Leadership Choices
The all-powerful leader may have been successful enough in the past. However, in today’s world, that type of leader is quickly becoming a liability. The one trend in the practice of leadership that has been consistent over time is the transfer of power from those who used to hold all the power to those who, historically, have had little. Today, we stand at the brink of a digital revolution that is accelerating democratization at a pace that will render leaders less powerful. That is a good thing. Leaders with an abundance of power inhibit engagement and the expression of creativity. When leaders hold more power, people have less freedom. They have less need to be fully engaged when one person has the answer and make the rules.
To be successful in the future, we will need less powerful leaders. The changes that we will experience in the next couple of years will be far greater than what we have experienced in the last couple of decades. We will be challenged to move faster, innovate quicker, and lead teams of people who are far less willing to follow absent a worthy cause. The changes at our doorstep will rock our world and force us to find a way to influence people more through the power of our beliefs than through our positions.
Just as Martin Luther used the printing press to gather support in his revolt against Rome and radio and television were instrumental in bringing down the Iron Curtain, recent developments in technology have accelerated the pace of change and shuffled the rules governing how people will interact. As people find new ways to share information and connect with like-minded souls, they invariably become more courageous when they realize they are not alone. Just as there is power in information, there is even more power in groups of people connected in a ubiquitously informed community. The lone voice today can find kindred spirits around the world without leaving the couch. A frustrated team member can alert a significant number of teammates, customers, and regulators in short order regardless of the accuracy of the information.
We are not saying that today’s leaders are not powerful or that they are less important. We are saying that we will be required in the future to find a more inclusive way forward. We are saying that the last chapter of fear-induced, command and control leadership is being written. We are warning that, although leaders can still command compliance in many cultures, future efforts to achieve such compliance will require more power and will come at a much higher price. The methods that formed the foundation of yesterday’s successes are likely to be less effective, and shifts in our leadership thinking and actions that might have been perceived as optional yesterday will quickly become more necessary as innovation becomes the most valuable currency in every endeavor from reinventing the spread offense in college football to changing the way customers connect and purchase products.
Today, many teams are still led by baby boomers (one of us), most of whom learned to challenge traditional authority much more than their parents did. But a willingness to challenge orthodoxies pales in comparison with what is coming. Millennials (one of us) those born between 1980 and the turn of the century, are here and they are different. They grew up in the middle of a communication revolution - the effects of which baby boomers often underestimate. They are capable of great commitment but won’t give that commitment easily. They are likely to be less trustful and more self-confident. They are less willing to follow authority blindly and have been conditioned to connect with others while challenging the existing order. They are accustomed to being informed because, for their entire lives, every answer has only been a click away. “Informed and connected” is what they know and, therefore, what they expect.
This is all good news because if we are mindful, we will understand that there will be no effective retreat to yesterday’s methods of using fear to control. We will no longer be able to pretend that when 30 percent of our team members are highly engaged, we are leading effectively. Bad leaders will finally be too expensive to support. And we will no longer be able to ignore people’s need to belong to a group that is connected through a gratifying level of positive emotion.
Instead, we will need to acknowledge that times are changing and that shifts in our leadership choices that might have been perceived as optional yesterday are quickly becoming more necessary as tomorrow’s most coveted recruits are demanding a different kind of culture and a different kind of leader.