Episode 249: When the Leadership Playbook No Longer Works

So, you know, and this is going to be, like many of our episodes, pretty free thinking.

So I received an article from my cousin who listens on occasion, and it was about an emerging leadership style based on the Franciscan order of Catholic priests.

And it got me thinking that if I believe what I'm reading and listening to about, the convergence of technology and AI and how that's going to revolutionize every aspect of our lives.

And I thought about different models of leadership that we've experienced in the past and the fact that it's amazing how a leadership style that's seen so important to emulate 30 years ago, today seems so obsolete and absurd.

And at the heart of this article was the fact that different styles of leadership.

So if I go back to Jack Welsh, Do you remember that choice? Everybody had to be a leader in the spirit of Jack Welch, strong and sit down and get rid of 10% of your losers every year and challenge people every year to get rid of another 10% of your losers and management by objectives and all that.

And today we're like scratching our heads saying, boy, this leader would be Then came gentle leadership.

Exactly.

Then gentle leadership.

And then gentle leadership became servant leadership.

My job is to serve those people that produce and are closest to our customer.

And then the last 10, 15 years, it's been agile leadership.

I can move on a dime.

I can shift.

My thinking is able to work on so many different levels.

And you get it, listeners.

So what the Franciscans are talking about is looking at what is the leadership model for the next generation.

And they're kind of implying this kind of equalitarian viewpoint that leader isn't someone who stands at the front of the room or up at the pulpit in the context of religion, but it's someone that is in the flock working in a way that empowers every aspect of people they touch, whether it be their employees, the customer, their congregation, their competition.

And I go back to something you said last time, Joyce, about The Daily Drucker, where I think one of his quotes, what seems to be so sensible now then becomes absurd into the future.

And so it kind of got me thinking about...

What is some offerings about the leader of the future? What would be the attributes that may seem absurd to us in this conversation, but maybe just what's needed to lead in the world that's coming at us pretty darn quickly? How's that for a setup, Joyce? I see your hands up, so it's either I'm surrendering,