Leadership

To survive and prosper in the twenty-first century, businesses will need to develop a new leadership paradigm, one that embraces the global common good rather than individual self-interest. This paradigm should be based on vision-guided, values-driven leadership that targets not only the success of the company, but also the well-being of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, partners, society, and the environment. It is nothing less than full-spectrum sustainability.

The problem we are facing is that those in charge of our global financial systems and business organizations see themselves as separate from the rest of society. They do not see themselves as part of the global collective we call humanity. They see the Earth as an infinite resource that can be plundered at will. For them, the planet is just an economic externality, not a life-support system.

They think the only responsibility they have is to their shareholders. They see their shareholders as also somehow magically separate from society. It is as if our business leaders are out of touch with reality or live on a different planet. So many of them seem to operate from the lowest levels of consciousness and lead a schizophrenic existence.

When they are at home, they are concerned about their local environment. They want to live in beautiful places. They are concerned about their grandchildren’s futures. They want them to live in a better world. They are concerned about ecological diversity. They want to visit remote wilderness areas or wildlife reserves. They may even support causes that address some of the social injustices in the world.

When they are at work, they step into a different world. They deny that these issues exist, or they see them as impediments to their success. For them, the gambling casino of the stock market is their pathway to self-esteem. The share price of their company and the wealth they have accumulated become proxy measurements of their self-worth. They are driven by their ego’s need for achievement.

We need a new leadership paradigm; one that requires our business and political leaders to set aside their narrow self-interests and embrace a collaborative approach based on values-based decision-making that supports the well-being humanity and the planet, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the best business strategy for creating a sustainable future for all.

The leaders of our organisations need to recognise that business is a wholly-owned subsidiary of society and society is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment. Business can only thrive and prosper in a world where people live at peace with each other and where we all live in harmony with the planet. If the life-support systems of our planet are not preserved, not only will our human society perish, but our economy will disintegrate, too. Building a sustainable future for everyone is not just a societal imperative. It is business imperative, too.

Leading Self
The first requirement for a new paradigm leader is a strong capacity for self-leadership. This requires you to establish an intimate understanding of who you are, how you operate, what is important to you, and, most importantly, what you need to do to find fulfilment in your life. You need to focus on personal mastery – manage your internal stability and external equilibrium by making decisions and choices that support you in meeting your ego’s needs (deficiency needs), your soul’s desires (growth needs), and your body’s needs (physiological needs). You need to align your ego’s motivations with your soul’s motivations if you wish to lead a fulfilling life.

Leading Others
The second requirement for a leader is the capacity to lead others. Leading others or any group of people with a common goal or purpose is obviously not the same as leading yourself. It requires significantly more skills and capabilities. Just as you learned to create the conditions for your own fulfilment in Leading Self you now have to learn how to create the conditions for a group of people to find their individual and collective fulfilment. You not only need to give your team a sense of purpose, you need to enable them, individually and collectively, to achieve high levels of sustainable performance. It is not just about assuring that your team meets its goals and objectives. It is also about getting the best out of your team members by supporting their professional growth and helping them to develop their personal mastery skills. As the leader of a team, your task is to be a role model and a coach. You will not be credible in doing the latter if you are not effective in doing the former.

Leading an Organisation
Leading an organisation is infinitely more complex than leading a project team, work team, division, or business unit, and it is not something you can do on your own. You need to surround yourself with a leadership team. You need the best team you can get, but, more than that, you need a team you can trust, a team that trusts each other, and a team that trusts you. When you lead an organisation, you need to be able to create the conditions that allow you, your leadership team, and all your employees to find fulfilment and meet all your stakeholder’s needs, including investors, customers, partners, the local communities where you operate, and society in general. This means, as the leader of an organisation, your first priority is to care about people and then care about results. If you do the former, you will not have to worry about the latter. Your team and everyone who works in your organisation, as well as all your stakeholders, need to know that you have their best interests at heart.

Leading in Society
There are many ways that you can become a leader in a societal context. You can be a local or national politician. You can be advocate or activist for social change, or you can set up or run a charity, an association, a sports team, a study group, or some other form of interest group. The possibilities are endless. Whatever you do in a societal context that involves other people will inevitably involve setting up a group or an organisation that will need to be led and managed. If you are involved in leading one of these types of groups, everything I have written about leading yourself and most of what I have written about leading others and leading an organisation will be useful for you. However, if you are leading in society you

Barrett Values Centre (BVC)
Since 1997, the Barrett Values Centre has been helping organisations to thrive by supporting leaders in their development and evolution. Follow this Leadership Development link to find out how BVC’s Cultural Transformation Tools can help you develop your leaders. You may also want to consider taking the Barrrett Academy’s Leadership Development E-Learning Courses.

The Barrett Leadership Model
The BarrettLeadership Model is the breakthrough work of Richard Barrett. Inspired byAbraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and tested over more than two decades of real-world experience, the model identifies the seven most important areas of leadership motivation.