Intellect-Quality Management

Leadership requires both soft and technical skills.

I am deliberately skipping the soft part because it has been over-emphasised in literature and conferences. To lead effectively leaders must understand their systems and how they function. This will improve their strategic acumen and operational intelligence.

When leaders cannot understand the interrelationship of their system parts such as the impact of business processes on customer experience and satisfaction or the impact of their leadership styles on employee engagement and productivity then they are leading from a blind spot. Infact they are not mature to lead.

Technical concepts such as system thinking, management system and performance management system are critical in building the technical capabilities of effective leaders. If you are a leader and you do not know them then you do not have a license to be the captain of that ship.

Amongst these concepts, the most important one is system thinking. On a daily basis leaders are either breaking or improving the performance of their systems through the decision they make, and their behaviour.

Welcome to Leadership 4.0

In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), traditional leadership models like relational, influence-based, process-driven, transactional, and directive approaches are no longer sufficient. A new paradigm is required to effectively navigate the complexities and opportunities of the current VUCA world.

Leadership now is responsive, innovative, networked, collaborative, people centric and techo savvy.

Formal leadership of directing, instructing and commanding does not bring results. Now leadership is about nurturing and harvesting collective intelligence of all, moving with speed, sensemaking and real time adaptation, connecting with all stakeholders to improve their experience and embracing cybernetics.

This means every organisation should reinvent its leadership system and align to 4IR.

The Leadership Paradox: Why there is still a leadership gap

Despite substantial investments in leadership development, a persistent gap remains in leadership. We are still scratching our heads because even after these developments leaders are not living up to expectation. The issue lies not in the quantity of training, but in the quality and relevance of the leadership pipelines, paradigms and frameworks being taught. For decades, we have defined leadership through the lens of charisma, power, and control, emphasizing hierarchical structures and top-down approaches.

Why?

We still define and teach people outdated leadership frameworks and outdated knowledge. We think leadership is associated with high positions, power to issue directives, follower and leader kind of transactions.

Not anymore, with time concepts and disciplines changes. We are now in Leadership 4.0 era. Where leadership is networked, shared, swarming, responsive and human centric. We have not disrupted and taught current leaders that sometimes situations requires them to exchange roles and be followers, exactly what happened with Covid-19 task teams. We have also failed to teach leaders how to use power, sometimes strategic decision making can take bottom up approach; have you heard of emergent strategies - frontliners making revolutionary discoveries that are eventually adopted as strategies. We have also failed to teach modern managers that it is healthy for juniors to differ with them ideologically and on principle.

Leadership 4.0 highlight that formal leadership still exists, however, it is not about instructing, commading, directing and deciding. But about:

- Sensemaking: Interpreting and navigating complex environments
- Connecting: Building and leveraging networks
- Nurturing: Developing collective intelligence and talent
- Harvesting: Tapping into the wisdom of crowds
-Techno savvy: optimising technology to improve efficiency and scalability

To bridge the leadership gap, organizations must adopt a more nuanced understanding of leadership, one that prioritizes collaboration, collective learning, and open innovation.

By embracing this new paradigm, leaders can unlock the full potential of their teams and drive sustainable success in a rapidly changing world.