27/5/2014 Why “Leadership” Isn’t Just for Leaders Anymore

s+b Blogs Posted: May 20, 2014

Sally Helgesen Sally Helgesen is an author, speaker, and

leadership development consultant,
whose most recent book is The Female
Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work
(with Julie Johnson; Berrett-Koehler,
2010).

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Organizations & People

Why “Leadership” Isn’t Just for Leaders Anymore

I speak quite a bit about leadership on college cam puses and hav e been consulting with one particular college for the
last y ear. And I’m struck by how often students m ake a point of telling m e they don’t want to be a leader.

What do they m ean when they say this? Most often, they m ean they don’t particularly want to head up a large
organization. “I want a good job,” they ’ll say . “But I don’t need to be boss.” Or they ’ll m ention wanting to start their
own business or work for a nonprofit.

These responses fascinate m e, because leadership today is less tethered to positional power—to being the boss—than at
perhaps any tim e in history . In the past, those who held high positions were assum ed to be leaders because that’s
where decisions got m ade, while those who lacked form al power were cast in the role of followers who im plem ented
those decisions. But in today ’s lean and fast-shifting env ironm ent, where the spread of inform ation and networked
technologies hav e broken down hierarchies and eroded silos, people at ev ery lev el need to m ake decisions. As a result,
leadership has becom e broadly distributed.

In today’s lean and fast-shifting environment, leadership

has become broadly distributed.

This point was driv en hom e to m e a few y ears ago when I did som e work at the U.S. Arm y War College in Carlisle,
Penn. Ov er dinner one ev ening, the colonel in charge of curriculum dev elopm ent told m e that his m andate was
undergoing a radical shift. “As a War College, we used to hav e a clear-cut m ission,” he said. “Our job was to prepare
the top 2 percent for m aking com m and decisions and operating at a strategic lev el. But today , soldiers in the field
hav e m apping technologies on their phones as sophisticated as any thing com m anders can access back at HQ. They
don’t hav e to wait to be told how to proceed in a m aneuv er. Our inv estm ent in technology only m akes sense if our
soldiers are free to m ake decisions that senior leaders would hav e m ade in the past. So the old 2 percent m andate

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27/5/2014 Why “Leadership” Isn’t Just for Leaders Anymore

doesn’t m ake sense any m ore.”

The Arm y ’s recognition of the need for dissem inated leadership showed up a few y ears ago when it put its operations
m anuals online and inv ited soldiers to wiki in their edits. Field participants weighed in on ev ery thing from setting up
supply lines and placing artillery to ev acuating casualties and supporting conv oy s. The Arm y required no official
approv al before publishing the edits, which kicked up quite a controv ersy , though Stars and Stripes later reported that
no superfluous entries had been posted. Engaging the troops not only elicited a wealth of fresh ideas, it also sent a clear
m essage that real-tim e innov ations in the field had strategic as well as tactical v alue.

Good organizations are following a sim ilar path, authorizing frontline people to m ake decisions that directly affect
custom er experience and giv ing operational team s leeway to m ake process im prov em ents. The lev el of autonom y
granted can som etim es be startling, as the public routinely learns when a big trade in a financial firm goes wrong: “A
2 6 -y ear-old bet how much against the euro?”

The consequence of this em phasis on rank-and-file decision m aking is that em ploy ers are increasingly on the lookout
for people ready to assum e a leadership stance from the get-go. For exam ple, a recent surv ey conducted by Hart
Associates for the Am erican Association of Colleges and Univ ersities found that 9 3 percent of em ploy ers who hired
college graduates not only placed top priority on skills such as critical thinking, the ability to com m unicate, and the
capacity to m ake com plex decisions, but also believ ed these capabilities were more im portant than students’ m ajors or
grades. Nine in 1 0 reported hiring based on ethical judgm ent and integrity , intercultural skills, and the capacity to
engage in continual new learning.

Ev ery one of these skills is rooted in and reflects leadership ability , which m eans that em ploy ers today are basically
looking to hire leaders—not necessarily leaders who will start com peting to becom e CEO, but leaders who can guide
team s, help innov ate solutions, and m ake sm art and ethical decisions when the situation dem ands it. This is why it’s
disheartening to hear a student say he or she doesn’t “want to be a leader.” It’s like articulating a desire not to com pete
for a good job.

To com bat this m ism atch, all of us need to spread the word that leadership no longer equates with positional power.
College adm inistrators and faculty especially need to join in this effort. In an earlier post, I noted a New York Times
colum n by Tom Friedm an on “how to get a job with Google.” Friedm an interv iewed the com pany ’s senior VP for
“people operations,” Lazlo Bock, who talked about the com pany ’s em phasis on hiring for soft skills. In Friedm an’s just-
published follow-up colum n, Bock seem s fairly dism issiv e about the potential v alue of a college education. Perhaps
that’s because schools aren’t doing a good enough job helping students dev elop and articulate their readiness to lead in
the post 2 percent env ironm ent the War College com m ander spoke about.

What m ight help? Taking leadership out of the silo it seem s to exist in on m any cam puses would be a start. Leadership
is often segm ented as a stand-alone course in the business curriculum , or as a num ber of courses offered together as a
“leadership m inor.” Instead, curriculum designers m ight do well to better integrate leadership into ev ery aspect of the
cam pus experience. Also useful would be focusing m ore on the concrete skills required of leaders, such as giv ing and
receiv ing feedback, dev eloping self-awareness, and regularly reflecting on lessons learned. Finally , colleges should
recognize that leadership is not just about enhancing the dev elopm ent of select high-potential students, but also about
a way of approaching the world that can benefit ev ery one.

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