First Principles of Leadership

Recently I was asked to think about what qualities and abilities leadership, in the future, might need. I was somewhat hesitant in that I will be the first to admit I have no crystal ball of what the future holds, and so I am somewhat reluctant to be considered an “expert” on a topic like future leadership qualities and abilities. Sometimes when I think of experts, I think about people who put themselves out there, and in their desire to be noticed will state a position or as fact something that deviates from what others are thinking. For one thing that gets an expert noticed is bringing to the attention of their audience something new, something shiny, something that no one else is saying. And if you look hard enough you can always find that person who called the housing crisis, or the next recession, or who claims that AI will replace all of us in our jobs, or how, say HR needs to change, but that same person will very rarely be able to call things consistently with accuracy over time. (Sometimes I have to wonder if I am just becoming a grumpy old person.) Now there are true experts out there, people who know their fields soup to nuts, and stick to what they are truly knowledgeable about and avoid speculating about an unknown and in many cases an unknowable future.

But is the future of leadership really one of those things? There are countless theories of leadership and a huge amount of research has been done on leadership. And much of that research is worthwhile reading and gives insight in what to look for in a leader. But on what basis can we say that in 10 or 20 years or even 5 years what skills leaders will need? Much of the desire for this speculation is driven by the challenges of the changing landscape, sometimes fleeting landscape that we find ourselves in. What skills do leaders need to cope with the AI revolution, and robotics, with globalization, or will it be de-globalization? What about the impact and need to manage people in remote work situations or back-to-office demands? What about managing worker stress, which is at the highest level we have seen, high rates of turnover, the need to attract new staff, or manage lower rates of turnover then is optimal, or the plunging level of trust in many organizations? Or to manage the next global medical crisis? (It is only a matter of time.) Or to manage other crises such as product failures or brand damage. From a positive angle how about new product launches, mergers and acquisitions, or geographic expansions? The skill sets needed for these varied challenges speaks to the benefit of diversity in abilities, thinking, and backgrounds, for what works in one situation might be useless in another. But what if in order to predict the future of leadership we look at the past and from a somewhat differing but familiar perspective?

[Related Reading: Measuring and Promoting Civility in the Workforce]

Let’s look at this question from the other end, not at the unique skills and abilities that leadership will need, but rather at the enduring underlying fundamental leadership traits that have persisted over time and will persist, call them first principles. And taking it a step further rather than taking it from a leadership angle, what if we took it from an employee angle and looked at what employees want, consistently over the years, that leaders need to be prepared to deliver upon?

One critical leadership skill is motivating staff. We know that organizations develop to allow accomplishments that can’t be done alone. And when you get a group together, a critical aspect of accomplishing goals is motivating that group to do so. What do we know about historical motivation theories?

Frederick Herzberg, in a 1959 publication, said that there are two primary factors driving motivation: hygiene factors and motivators. Hygiene factors include things like pay, safety, physical environment, and relationships with co-workers. Motivators include recognition, career growth, training and development opportunities, and challenging work.

Starting in 1943, Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs. Starting with the basic physical needs (air, water, food, shelter), followed by safety (employment, health, security), belonging and love (relationships), esteem (feeling valued, prestige, accomplishment), and eventually reaching self-actualization (achieving full potential, creativity). To advance to the next level of the hierarchy lower-level needs had to be met, though by 1987 his thinking had evolved, and he stated that lower-level needs only had to be partially met before moving on to the next stage in the hierarchy.

David McClelland developed in the 1960s a theory that he explicitly stated cut across cultures, genders, ethnicity or age. His universal theory is a three needs theory; achievement, affiliation, and power. In his theory people were not either or, but rather each of these needs existed on a continuum, differing by person. For instance, in 1977 he found that those in senior management positions had a higher need for power and a lower need for affiliation.

There are many more theories out there, but these three should be sufficient for my purposes here. Based on these motivational theories what do we know about the traits of an organization that motivates and needs to be supplied by leadership?

Summarizing, these are the core qualities that employees have consistently stated throughout the years they are looking for in an organization and leadership is responsible for delivering upon:

1. Setting the organizational direction and letting people know how they fit into that, what their responsibilities are.
2. Giving people what they need to fulfill those responsibilities, including resources, effective and efficient business processes.
3. Creating an environment that is engaging, making people feel valued and treating them right, fairly and equitably.
4. And, when the organization or individual accomplished their goals, rewarding appropriately.

While these tend to come up over and over as drivers of performance, organizations over time have changed somewhat on their ability to deliver on some of these, and while others have remained remarkably constant, you would have to characterize the overall trend as improving. Some of these items would be considered independent while others are dependent variables. A word of caution, over such an extensive period of time, client bases shift, which can impact the results of these sampled items. So, I would treat these numbers as indicative rather than definitive.

Pride in Company, Overall Satisfaction, and Being Treated with Respect & Dignity are quite favorable now and have shown substantial improvement over the decades. Understanding Company Direction, Getting Information Needed for the Job, and Being Effectively Managed and Well-Run less so. I am quite certain that the fundamental skill sets that leaders need to deliver on these motivational objectives have not changed over the decades, but both the methodologies and technology used to deliver on these certainly has. For instance, I would expect that whether someone is working onsite, remotely or hybrid, their desire for respectful treatment, feeling valued, for working in an effective organization, etc. are the same. How you deliver on those fundamentals very likely is different.

Today technology has advanced quite rapidly and, in many cases, faster than organizational policy and practice, which has not kept pace. For instance, geographically dispersed workforces are common while at the same time many organizations struggle with how to manage a dispersed workforce. How do you hold a team meeting when people are scattered around the globe, with time zone challenges, rather than being face-to-face in an office? How do you enable office cooler chatter, between varied staff, which might lead to surreptitious ideas spawning innovation? How do you assess capabilities and development needs in people you rarely see? How do you team build with virtual teams? Organizations are getting better at these challenges, but there is still a long way to go.

Going backwards, putting everything back the way it was, is simply not an option for that would be like going back to relying on paper maps and painfully written out directions rather than the ubiquitous GPS. How many of you remember the OAG? The bible of frequent travelers with exceedingly small print and very thin paper, which fit into your briefcase, so you would know which flights go where and how they could get you from point A to B. (I know I am dating myself.) Now, of course we simply look to our smartphones for that information. What is true is that the toothpaste never goes back into the tube.

Organizations and leaders must learn to deliver the unchanging fundamentals clothed in the new technologies, the new formats that today’s workers expect. And my assumption is that the same will be true for what tomorrow holds for leadership.