Essential Tasks

Successful leaders in the 21^st Century are those who see leadership as a “team sport” recognizing that no one person is able to flawlessly lead in today’s complex, frenetic, information-rich, globalized organization.  Leaders will still synthesize information from a wide variety of sources, translate that into a common vision or goal, and then effectively influence a multi-cultural team through personal and remote interactions to achieve great things.  However, successful leaders must know when to “cede” leadership to those with current information, cultural intelligence, or the power of the moment in order to build and sustain speed and momentum through it all.  The leaders’ ability to effortlessly flow from leader to expert, expert to follower, follower to leader will be what enables success.  This is not to say that all people will be leaders in the 21^st Century.  Leadership is not for everyone.  Not all want to be leaders and not all have the capacity for the job.

The Essential Tasks of Leadership

While there are many differences in the challenges, environment and tools of the 21^st Century, the tasks of effective leaders remain relatively constant.  A team needs a vision – a compelling view of the future that enables followers to understand what success looks like.  The vision will be described in terms that people can sense:  what it looks like, how it will feel, and the kinds of things that will be heard and experienced.  This provides the team with a sense of purpose and direction - the ability to maintain their focus when challenged by the reality of the work to be done.  21^st Century leaders will be doing more group visioning than individual visioning.  They will be planting seeds of the future state, refining and growing them with lots of sun, water and fertilizer from others.

A team requires organization and protocols for operating.   Roles and responsibilities are defined to ensure that all of the work of the team is assigned and completed.  The group establishes norms of operation and interaction, enabling it to improve in its effectiveness.  Without these elements, teams either disband or dissolve naturally; or worse yet, they become unruly mobs!  A 21^st Century leader will be able to harness the “social networking” processes of “digital natives” to propose, tag, debate, hack, and continuously evolve the organization and protocols necessary for effective team dynamics.

Another role of the leader is to motivate, inspire and influence team members.  Teams are required to accomplish tasks and goals that are difficult.  If they were easy, one person could take care of the problem and the team would not be necessary.  Teams accomplish work, which inherently means that effort must be expended and difficult work means expending more energy than would be natural for the team to take on without motivation.  The leader becomes a person who reminds the team of the goal, provides encouragement, inspiration and motivation.  Without the leader to bring out these elements, most teams will fail to accomplish the end result, or will do so with poor quality.

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