Page 29 - The extraordinary leader

6 • The Extraordinary Leader

comprehensive measures that track the leader’s impact on customers,
employees, organizations, and shareholders.
8. We have not taken into account the evolving nature of leadership.
That is, we have analyzed leadership around the characteristics that
are required for success or effectiveness today but have not given
much attention to the competencies that will be required in the
future. Thus, much of the leadership analysis and development has
been “looking in the rearview mirror” and not looking out over the
horizon.
9. There has been no way to define the different constituencies of the
leader. Thus, if a leader is in charge of “Baby Boomers” born from
1945 to 1955, this would call for some different values, motives, and
skills than if the leader was responsible for a group of “Gen-Xers” born
from l975 to 1985. That complexity is now compounded with
“Generation Y,” those born from 1986 to 2000, and the soon to come
“Generation Z,” born in 2001 and beyond.
10. Still another variable is whether the leader is operating alone versus
acting as part of a leadership team. Clearly there are organizations in
which one person plays an extremely dominant part and exercises
control and influence over the big issues, along with the day-to-day
tactics. Other organizations have a leadership team that acts in
concert. In some cases, a formal “office of the president” has people
who act quite interchangeably in the organization.
11. A further dimension is the impact of technology. Effectiveness in
some organizations would demand a high level of comfort with the
latest computer and information technology, whereas others would
tolerate a leader who could neither send nor receive e-mail. New
technologies exist to conduct virtual meetings, and in some
organizations a comfort and familiarity with such technology would
be a “must.” A Dell Computer employee reported, “My boss spent the
entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed
corrections. She claims the file I gave her was corrupted and she
could not edit it. The PDF file I gave her was ‘read only,’ but all she
had to do was copy it into a word-processing program and make the
corrections.”
12. A new dimension of leadership is one of geography. Some leaders
interact with a virtual team, whereas others have their staffs on-site.