How Will Leadership Function in the Future

I was asked this by a friend the other day and it is a frustrating question because I find difficulty in articulating what I see. I must also say that there are many who will totally disagree with what I say but I'm okay with that.

First, I want to say that I think the level of dysfunction in our current leadership models are drastically under sold. I think that the reality is that leadership has been able to do just enough positive things to make people believe that we actually do have leadership. But vast areas of the organization remain unaffected by leadership.

So what would I like to see in the future? I've been trying to think of this in very basic and practical terms so I'll try to give an example of how I see things now and where I would like to see them go in the future.



Now
Currently we have a leader who either by himself or with a team starts looking at what the purpose is of our organization. They then decide on goals that they believe, if reached, will allow us to fulfill our purpose. Once they have goals they develop strategies that will help the organization reach those goals. Then they try to implement those strategies, hold people accountable in regards to those strategies, evaluate progress, make changes when necessary and generally manage the plan.

This is very much a top down approach which makes sense because we usually try to choose our best and our brightest to be in leadership. It also seems to be very logical. It makes sense and seems workable. And yet we often get frustrated because it only seems to work for a select few within the organization and large numbers remain unaffected by this leadership strategy.

Future
I think leadership needs to look very different in the future. We will probably have a general overall purpose but specific "sub"-purposes will vary. Strategies will develop out of relationship and conversation. Future leaders will take advantage of technology to build relationships and maintain conversation with people across the organization.

Here's how a strategy might develop. While in conversation with people across the organization he shares his passion about what he believes needs to be done. At the same time he listens to the hearts of those across the organization. There is a high degree of "seed planting" going both ways. The leaders then nurtures, encourages, networks, resources, etc. those passions.

For a practical example lets say that the leader is in conversation with a church and the conversation reveals a passion to plant another church. This passion may have originated from a "seed" the leader planted or it may have originated on its own. Because of his position the leader may be aware of another church or churches that have a similar passion so he suggests a partnership. Then perhaps those churches would go on to form an affinity group designed to plant a church in a particular area. The leader may also suggest other organizations that could provide training or other resources. He would also be in regular contact simply to show support and encouragement.



I hope this made some sense in terms of what I would like to see in the future. I still find it a little difficult to articulate and I know that this sounds extremely simplistic. But I think that the future approach needs to affect a much larger portion of the organization. It also needs to have a greater bottom-up or grass-roots feel to it. Two of the keys will be relationship and conversation.