Here I want to give a personal, keep it simple reflective approach about leadership. Rather than a heavy strategic lecture.
Leadership here means the act and skill of guiding and influencing a group towards achieving common goals.
No one is born a leader. We grow into leaders over time, through experience, challenges, and opportunities. Some discover leadership early, by leading school clubs or sports associations, maybe already even some small enterprise. However, few are ready leaders when they take their first steps into working life.
Most start their working life as entry-level line workers. Some then progress to managerial positions. Some deliberately strive for this next step. Others are nominated to a managerial position due to good performance. Those who find a superior role interesting continue on this track.
The first managerial position already brings responsibilities and obligations. In the past, it was enough to take care of your own affairs. As a manager, you must think about and plan things concerning others. You must supervise and direct subordinates’ actions, intervene, and make decisions concerning others.
As we age and gain more work/life experience, and as we evolve and change, so does how we experience and see leadership. Few people in their fifties think about leadership as they did in their twenties. As we develop professionally and evolve as persons over the years, so does our leadership style.
The environments we work in also shape us. Leading a company is different from leading a hospital, a university, a sports team, or a non-profit. Those who find leading people is meaningful and motivating—and are successful in leading others—are the ones who grow into the leaders of the future.
Every leader defines their own leadership. One way to check where we stand, how good we are here, is, for instance, to ask what the stakeholders, the owners, our superiors, colleagues, and subordinates think. Are we successful? Are we reaching our goals? Are we performing in accordance with their expectations?
To better understand our own leadership, it can also help to reflect on the different leadership styles that exist and how they may influence the way we lead others.
Leadership styles
Leadership styles refer to the different approaches leaders use to guide, motivate, and manage people. Business literature categorizes leadership styles based on distinct defining features.
During my career, I’ve seen many different leadership styles. Some leaders are visionaries, inspiring their teams toward a better future. Others are strong organizers, creating stability and order. Some lead through their energy and charisma, while others coach and develop people quietly behind the scenes.
This is not black and white. Different leadership styles are not absolute truths. In practice, leadership is always a mixture of several different leadership styles. No single leadership style is perfect. Different situations and teams often need different approaches.
Here are a few leadership styles you might recognize:
Authoritarian Leader:
Makes decisions alone. Fast and clear but risks low engagement.
Visionary Leader:
Paints an inspiring future. Sparks passion but must stay grounded.
Bureaucratic Leader:
Strict rules, policies, and procedures. Decision-making can become slow.
Democratic Leader:
Seeks input from the team before making decisions. Builds ownership but again can be slow.
Charismatic Leader:
Inspires with personality and charisma. Can lead to a cult, reflecting negatively on the action.
Laissez-faire Leader:
Significant autonomy and decision-making delegation. Can lead to confusion and loss of direction.
(For more detailed information about leadership, just write “leadership styles” in Google.
Leadership styles are not just theoretical concepts. As headhunter, I met leaders practicing a wide range
of leadership styles.
The successful ones had one thing in common: An ability to identify, select, and hire the right people—and
then manage the company (= them) so that these people were motivated, developed, prospered, excelled
in their jobs, and above all, stayed. These leaders were humble, committed, and they were liked.
Leadership nowadays
I sometimes feel that good leadership is lost in many companies nowadays:
- Too often, the leadership and decision making seems based more on oversized ambitions, lucrative incentive systems, and inadequate risk management.
- In many companies, executive management can earn millions seemingly regardless of whether the company is doing well or making significant losses.
- This, in my mind, impacts and changes leadership in the most undesirable ways.I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid there may be a tiny seed of truth in this.
Leadership in the future
When I started writing this article my intention was to say a few words about leadership challenges in the future. Then, it hit me: The relation between decision-making and the future has changed, and this directly impacts leadership too.
Thirty years ago, I would have talked about leadership challenges of the future, because we would have had time before the future would come. This has changed.
First came the internet, accelerating access to information and making information instantly available to everyone. Business leaders had to start reacting faster to information that could potentially affect their business. Reaction time was reduced.
Today, we have AI, impacting technological developments at an unprecedented speed. A business leader must feel like they are sitting on a high-speed train that is constantly increasing speed, while looking out the window and seeing the business world changing before their eyes at the same speed.
Before AI, the future was still in the future. A year was a year away, five years was five years away. Business leaders had some idea of how much time they had when leading their company, developing strategy, and making operative business decisions.
Today, the future is coming at us much faster. Something that yesterday seemed five years away could, thanks to AI, be just six months away – or even faster.
Nowadays, a business leader can wake up one morning to discover in the newspaper that, due to AI:
- A competitor has improved their manufacturing process, enabling them to produce products 10 times faster than your company can.
- A competitor has managed to decrease their production costs, enabling them to sell their products at one-tenth the price of yours.
- A competitor has developed a superb new product that could completely change the game and potentially destroy your company’s business.
- Or all of these things simultaneously — Decision time becomes zero.
Indirectly, AI creates huge leadership challenges.
Below are only a few dimensions relating to leadership and decision-making that leaders must consider:
- Impact of technology on our values and behaviour vs. leadership
- Ethical considerations in AI-driven decision-making vs. leadership
- Remote work and hybrid teams vs. leadership
- Rise of flexible work models vs. leadership
- Workforce optimization and automation vs. leadership
- Crisis management best practices vs. leadership
- Cybersecurity threats and defense strategies vs. leadership
- AI and machine learning for operational efficiency vs. leadership
- Data-driven decision-making, analytics, and business intelligence vs. leadership
- Digitalization changing the business landscape vs. leadership
- AI impact on local supply chains and delivery, e.g., robot transports vs. leadership
- Future reward systems and incentives vs. leadership
It’s easy to make a list like this. It’s much harder to truly understand how all this impacts leadership and decision-making processes for business leaders.
- This concerns every company, every business activity, also public and non-profit organizations.
- Even those who feel relatively safe today are not immune.
- The business world is now like a huge interdependent organism.
- What happens elsewhere will eventually impact everyone.
And the future now comes much faster than before. And this is not just about technology. This is about leadership.
- AI will impact company functions, processes, and best practices.
- It will impact company values and cultures.
- How people think.
- How they work.
- How they are led.
- How they want to be led.
The future will challenge leaders more than ever before. But no matter how fast the world changes, the fundamentals of leadership will not.
Things like leading from the front, vision and strategic thinking, commitment, righteousness, trust, respect for others and a will to make the difference will be just as important as ever.
Lastly: My experience of different leadership styles
Polar Express:
A leading Finnish company operating internationally in transport and forwarding. I reported directly to the CEO, a top leader in his field. Very competent, very demanding, very result-oriented, fast-moving, and fair. On the minus side, distant and busy. However, he always had time for me when I needed it. He trusted me and allowed me to do my job independently. He also clearly showed his appreciation for me and my work. I liked him very much and appreciated him highly.
EXS (MPS Enterprises):
I had a direct superior but also worked closely with the CEO. Both were very different. My superior was outgoing, people-oriented, sales-oriented, and result-oriented. The CEO was a senior-level top executive, very issue-oriented, authoritarian, most demanding, and result-oriented.
Both were great leaders/managers in their own way, demanding a lot but at the same time supporting, encouraging, training, and sharing their knowledge with me. MPS Enterprises was a family company, so I also dealt with the owners. From them, I learned even more. The ownership dimension was never present in our interactions. I was always treated as an equal and was listened to. I very much liked both owners and the demanding but, at the same time, encouraging, positive, and open corporate culture they had created.
Boyden:
One of the world’s leading international executive search companies. I worked at Boyden Helsinki for 21 years. Here the leaders—the partners—created an atmosphere and working environment like this:
I quote what I have said before:
“All my superiors and colleagues were truly skilled and professional people who taught me what teamwork is, what a never-give-in attitude is, and what always giving your everything is all about. How working hard can also give room for good humour and a good atmosphere. Not a day passed without hearing laughter from some room. A real dream team if you ask me.”
This tells everything about what kind of leaders and leadership we had.
These three companies taught me that not all good leaders come from the same mould, but that very different types of good leaders exist.