The last 20 years has seen an incredible increase in technology. Most of the principles of good leadership remain the same, regardless of how technology changes. However, technology presents new challenges for leaders.

Virtual Contact Leadership

One of the benefits of modern technology is the ability to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. While this is a benefit for businesses looking to expand, it presents unique challenges for leaders. Many leaders have a leadership skill set that relies heavily on their personality and “presence”. Many of these skills don’t translate well into electronic communication.

Leaders need to be aware of this and work to improve their skills in communicating and leading using modern tools. They can no longer rely on the power of their personality to give them an edge. One of the biggest areas leaders must develop is the ability to communicate well through the written word.

In the past, leaders were often able to rely on assistants for written communication. However, with the ubiquitous use of email, this is no longer an option. Leaders who cannot communicate well in writing will find themselves at a disadvantage.

Leaders preparing for the future should make a conscious effort in the following areas:

• Developing strong writing skills.
• Understanding different forms of electronic communication.
• Understanding the culture of different forms of electronic communication.

Leading Outside the Organization

In the past, leaders generally led people who reported to them through the chain of command. As businesses become more focused on their core competencies, leaders are finding that many of the people they are leading are in other organizations. Leaders of the past who lead through position and title will find it difficult to lead in the future. Many of their old techniques will not work across organizations’ boundaries.

This shift will require that successful leaders of the future develop a greater degree of true leadership skill. The shortcuts used by many in authority will not work when trying to lead across organizational boundaries.

Leaders in future organizations will also require a better holistic understanding of the entire business ecosystem, not just their organization. Leaders who can successfully make this transition will be in high demand, not just by companies looking to hire their skills, but by organizations looking to partner with them for mutual benefit.

The Difficulty of Earning Leadership Trust

Some of the recent high-profile scandals in business will require some changes for leaders of the future as well. Subordinates are less likely to trust a leader because of position and title than they were 10 years ago. In the future, obtaining trust will require even more effort.

In the future, leaders must seek to actively measure the level of trust in their organization and take deliberate steps to improve the level of trust. Before making big changes leaders must gauge the level of trust in their organization to make sure they have built enough of a solid trust foundation to obtain successful buy-in.

While the core skills of leadership will remain the same over time, the leadership of the future will require a different emphasis on particular skills. By preparing for these changes ahead of time, leaders can ready themselves today for what organizations will need tomorrow.

In any organization, effort can be divided into two categories. Effort that helps achieve the vision and effort that does not. There is some work that is difficult to correctly categorize–especially in complex organizations with a great deal of complexity. However, most of the time there is a great deal of effort expended on items that are clearly not in support of the vision.

It is probably impossible for an organization to operate at 100% efficiency. In many cases, inefficiency results, not from natural organizational entropy, but because every person has a different view of the vision.

When information is lacking, the human mind becomes creative. There have been studies to determine the reliability of testimony by court witnesses. In the study, people were exposed to a situation in ways that certain details were intentionally unknowable. However, after repeatedly being asked about the unknowable details they began to “remember”. These memories didn’t come from their actual experience. The subject’s brains were filling in details purely from imagination.

Now think about an organization full of people with an incomplete understanding of the vision. Every day they are faced with situations where understanding the vision is required in order to make the correct choice. Over time, they will fill in the details themselves and create their own personal version of the vision.
Since a good deal of this personal vision comes directly from their imagination, it is not surprising that the vision they create often is more aligned with their personal vision than the actual vision of the organization. This isn’t their fault. It is the natural way the human mind works.

There was a large church that was trying to identify better with its congregation. During a meeting of some of the staff, one of the newer staff members asked, “Who is our target market?” to better understand exactly who the organization was trying to reach.

A pastor at the meeting responded to the question by saying that the target market was people who hadn’t ever been to a church. The other staff members pointed out that 99% of the sermons preached by the senior pastor were targeted toward people who were already churchgoers and often wouldn’t even make much sense to people who had never attended a church.

The fact that the staff had to ask who they were trying to reach was a clear indication that the vision was not being communicated clearly from the top leadership. This pastor had created his version of the vision based on his personal preferences. This wasn’t something that he was doing intentionally; it is just the way the human mind works.

If each individual in an organization is creating a separate version of the vision that is heavily influenced by their own personal preference, it is amazing that organizations can function at all. But remember that people are only going to use their imagination in the areas where information is lacking. If the vision is well defined and effectively communicated, the areas left to people’s imagination is minimized.

If half of an individual’s personal view of the vision is coming purely from their own imagination, it is likely that half of the effort they are expending is not in alignment with the true vision of the organization. If everyone in the organization is filling in holes in the vision, then it is likely that half of the organization’s effort is being expended toward the focused vision and the other half is pulling the organization in different, random directions.

Much of the benefit of a large organization in the first place, is the efficiency that comes from having many people all expending effort toward the same goal. When a significant portion of the effort is being expended in random directions, much of the value of having an organization is lost.

When a leader regularly communicates a clear vision, the amount of wasted effort is minimized. In addition, the more effort across the entire organization is focused in the same direction, the more synergy will exist between individuals and departments.

As obvious as it seems, many leaders forget that their actions speak louder than their words. I was managing a department at a medium-sized organization that had a casual dress code on Friday. One of the vice presidents decided that casual Fridays were a bad idea and mandated that everyone wear corporate casual every day. For my department, that was inconvenient because we saved most of our dirty work for Friday when we were wearing jeans.

However, even if it was inconvenient for our department, I explained to everyone that the organization was trying to maintain a professional image. No one in my department liked the change, but they were fine with adhering to it.

The second Friday after the change, all of my staff was in the office and wearing the corporate dress code. In walked the vice president who had made the change. He was wearing the same casual clothes that he had prohibited two weeks earlier.

When he left our department, all of my staff turned to ask if they could dress like that as well. We stuck with the mandated dress code for several months before it was finally repealed.

While the vice president had enough authority to get away with not following his own rules, he should have known better. Even if he had a very good reason for it, he should have been more aware that saying one thing and doing another is very poor leadership practice.

If you are going to ask others to adhere to a certain level of conduct, you should expect to adhere to it yourself. If you want your staff to be in the office by 8 am, you should be there before they arrive. If you tell your staff not to park in the customer area, your leadership will suffer if you decide that your importance makes you exempt from the rule.

People can follow what you say without actually following the intent. When this happens, the effectiveness of your organization is decreased. If they don’t see you following your own set of rules, they may follow them to the letter, but don’t expect them to go the extra mile to try to understand the intent.