Clients Say the Most Amazing Things: The definition of leadership never changes, but required leadership skills constantly change.

February 12th, 2014
Written by: TPO

From time to time, TPO posts first-hand C-Level business perspectives, excerpted from an ongoing series of conversations we have with our clients. This one is from the president of a management consulting firm focused on the small- and medium-size business market.

“True leaders, true leadership – because it is a fundamental human thing – hasn’t changed. I think that there is a subset of leadership skills that are required more today than they were required 20 years ago, but all good leaders will have those skills. I think the new subset of skills that are more important for leaders today are different.

“Those include the ability to draw folks out, to get them involved, to promote higher degrees of participation, whereas the entrepreneurial leader that was very, very successful in previous decades was driven exclusively by results. Leaders who got acclaimed and very recognized were those who won by numbers, whether it was profit, or the number of folks, or the longevity of the company, or whatever was more profit-driven, more result-oriented.

“We can’t manage and lead by numbers anymore than we can replicate Van Gogh by painting by numbers. I think that a leader today still needs to be result-oriented, but he or she also needs to redefine success because the result goes beyond profits.”