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Leadership 4.0
This video explores how leadership is changing in an increasingly complex, uncertain world. Moving beyond the old “hero leader” model, it argues for Leadership 4.0: a shared, collective approach where leaders don’t claim to have all the answers, but instead harness their team’s collective intelligence, ask better questions, listen deeply and balance financial results with social, ethical and environmental responsibilities.
In this video you’ll learn:
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Why the traditional “leader as hero” model no longer fits today’s volatile, complex business environment.
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How expectations of leaders have expanded beyond financial performance to include ethics, social impact, sustainability and meaning at work.
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What Leadership 4.0 looks like in practice: using collective intelligence, experimentation and learning with the team to find solutions.
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Why modern leadership is more communal and inclusive, based on listening, asking the right questions and sharing leadership with others.
Speakers:
Professor Hervé Coyco
Professor Connson Locke
Full transcript
The traditional leadership model that used to be taught in business schools in the past was one of the leader as hero sitting on top of a parade of followers and setting everything for the company.
The old-fashioned view of a leader was… the General in front of an army or the coach telling the team what to do.
The world is too complicated these days. The general is leading the army into a fog.
The business context of a leader has become increasingly complex, uncertain, unpredictable.
At one time maybe we thought leaders had all the answers and then we started to realize they don’t and now we know they definitely don’t.
In the past the leader’s expectations was to deliver a financial performance or business performance.
Today leaders are much more challenged in that first they operate a much more complex, uncertain, volatile environments.
And second the expectations that lay under your shoulders are broader. The society is expecting, shareholders are expecting financial results, business performance. Society is expecting an impact in terms of environment, reducing inequalities, giving meaning to the teams. It’s also a question of being exemplary in terms of ethics.
All of this creates a lot of stress on the shoulders of leaders.
And so if leaders don’t have all the answers, well, where are the answers coming from? They’re coming from the people and so
I think that the leadership skills that people need to start building now are the skills, the ability to ask the right questions talk to the right people and listen.
I believe the most advanced and important leadership style today what I would call leadership 4.0. is about collective intelligence: the ability of a leader to gather the collective intelligence of a team. The leader knows the direction, but the leader doesn’t know the solution: it has to be explored and we are going to explore it together with the team. So it’s about learning, experimenting, developing new strategy on the job.
The new way of thinking about leadership is leadership has to be more what I call communal, which is you need to talk to people, you need to understand people.
This is about diversity and inclusiveness, but it’s also about hearing people’s voices, asking the right questions, getting the right people to the table.
This era of leader sitting on top of a pyramid of followers is gone. It’s all about shared leadership. Leaders need to open up and let a new generation of leaders step in and contribute to the development of the organization.