Let me start by provoking you.
If you feel you’ve reached the top of the leadership mountain, you are about to discover it’s all shrouded in fog.
We’ve all been conditioned to see leadership as a linear climb, reaching that inspirational peak. Right? But what if the summit is further than we thought and what we see is a dense fog on our way?
Don’t get me wrong. If you find yourself in the foggy part, it means you’ve done a good job so far. You’ve traveled the path of self-discovery, moving from traditional leadership to inspirational leadership.
Now, you are probably proud of being an inspiring leader. But I’m here to tell you that I strongly believe that being an inspiring leader is no longer enough.
Let me explain.
You’ve felt the effects of the pandemic and now see how AI is here to stay, right? The thing is that we often understand how new stuff could be bad, but we don’t see the good stuff we don’t know.
Leadership is mostly about connecting with people, and AI will change how we do that. If you don’t think AI can make connections better, you will probably need to step back and get a broader view of things.
Why? Because the reality is that AI tools are already making talking and deciding easier.
And that is a huge invitation to embrace AI to help you, as a leader, to understand and connect with people like never before.
As AI does more of the boring stuff, we’ll need to be better at the important stuff – like being creative and understanding others. After all, let’s not forget that “leadership is mostly about connecting with people”. I wrote about it at Fast CO (here).
This scenario opens up new ways of living and, of course, working. And in these new working models, it’s inevitable to also talk about new leadership models.
These new models are necessary because the ideal of leadership that was sold to us (and we empowered ourselves to reach it) carries some unnoticed prisons.
Let me mention a few:
- We’re shaped by a culture of individualism.
- We believe in one-size-fits-all inspiration.
- In the end, it’s all about the leader.
- It’s a self-centric approach.
The result of this? Signs of exhaustion are everywhere and they are becoming impossible to ignore. The whole system is on the brink, stretched thin and ready to snap.
And now, as I write, I have this thought/feeling that denying the reality of it all, would just be lying to ourselves.
We need a change, a break from this endless cycle of strain and fatigue. This change will happen when we accept that there is still a significant part of the leadership path to climb.
This content was published originally on LinkedIn and you can continue reading it here.
