One can’t but notice recent media coverage of the pressure that the leadership of such eminent people like President Zuma and Julius Malema are under. It reminded me of an advert on the back page of the in-flight magazine taken by a well-known business school some years ago. The advert, apart from advertising the school, made the point that leaders shape the world which, of course, is true but, at the time, it led me to wander about the shape of leadership generally at the moment.

It’s probably true to say that never before has this planet put so much emphasis on leadership and leadership development. Yet, as humankind, we are still having as much fun bashing our current flavour of the month as we did during the Crusades and in Hitler’s time and, yes, as always, we still have good and bad leaders and a whole lot in between.

But what shape is leadership in? Much has been said about the command and control type leadership of the twentieth century and the rumour that it is a thing of the past. I like to think that this rumour is true but, whilst there are business and political leaders around us that clearly endeavour to influence their environments with more effective philosophies, these appear to be in the minority and, yet, even many of these will knee-jerk back into command and control when things get tough – you know the saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”! And yes, there is a place for more direct leadership when there is a crisis, and followers require that direction.

Yet, there is a growing minority that walk the talk that they need to lead people – that is that they need to find a way for people to follow them – in a way that empowers the people rather than themselves. And, of course, there are a whole lot of leaders in between on this continuum between control and command and what we might call influential or effective leadership, or as I prefer to label it, facilitative leadership.

Funny that often it’s the name of men that seem to role off our lips when we speak of leaders. And not so strange to come across a quote by Marilyn French, as I coincidentally did recently on my traditional weapon (i.e. laptop), that “most women I know feel like outlaws”. Do we men really appreciate what it has been like to live in such a male dominated world? And what has been the impact of the fact that the opinions of women may well have been ‘outlawed’ in so many respects? And what about the various race groups who have moved into our white male environments?

I am not sure that we have begun to appreciate the richness that diversity brings to debates and discussions. For many, diversity is a political necessity, sometimes a necessity that brings us some discomfort as we experience differences of opinion we previously did not have to experience in our monastic, old school tie, same-thinking teams of the past. But next time we are in a diverse environment, be it social or work, and a discussion breaks out, we need to sit back and listen for the diversity of thoughts being put on the table and the potential this brings in terms of what could be.  I think every time we do so we will marvel at the possibilities – after all, we are all uniquely different people no matter what gender, race, religion, culture etc and we all bring a uniquely different frame of reference with this uniqueness.

There is at least one hurdle we need to overcome before we get there, though. It seems to me that very few people, including leaders, are able to feel comfortable with multiple views on the table. Too often the need to be right and to prove others wrong takes precedence over listening to the possibilities if we allow the variety of views to co-exist in a way that will allow a solution of substance and creativity to emerge or evolve. Too often we think one-dimensionally rather than apply what Jim Collins and his co-authors (in Built to Last) described as “the tyranny of ‘or’ and the magic of ‘and’”. What could the possibilities be if we allowed ourselves to think in this way? How might this shape our leadership?

Best wishes