
As part of the #usblogs offshoot of our #usguys tribe on Twitter, we select a theme every week and post our thoughts on the weekend. This is my baby step contribution to the theme of this weekend, “The 21st Century Leader.”
To answer the question of what a 21st century leader looks like, I would look at what makes a leader a leader? The conventional responses have been
A leader serves his followers instead of commanding them.
A leader satisfies others’ needs first and his own last.
A leader takes none of the credit and all of the blame.
A leader recognizes new leadership and is willing to hand off when it is time.
and so on. So when we look at these traits of a leader, are there really any differences between leaders in the 21st Century and the centuries past? I don’t think so.
What does change between the centuries is the methods by which a leader can exercise his influence. In the 21st Century, the radical changes have been the explosion of tools available to exercise influence. While earlier leaders were restricted to their own city, state or country, today’s leaders span the globe in followers. This explosion of communication has also democratized leadership in that leadership is now available to the common man on the street. An example? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. versus Avaaz, the international civic organization that promotes the influence of the people’s opinion in global decisions.
Dr. King’s movement depended on influential people across the country to rise up together, the so-called connectors, the priests and the “Everybody Loves Raymond” of the time. Closing off communication between the connectors, or the connectors and their followers, could have stopped the movement in its tracks. Cut to today, despite an almost complete boycott of Wikileaks by service providers, they still leak information that is important for the world to know. One connection is taken down, but another takes his place, only possible because the connections now number in the millions, which in turn was made possible only due to the preponderance of the Internet and communications, and the tools built upon them, in our daily lives.
Summarizing, a 21st Century leader is the same in terms of traits as leaders past, but what he is capable of has changed drastically due to the change in how far and how effectively he can wield his influence.
Pic: Signature of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Foundation
The #usblogs blog round up post is at Tom Moradpour’s blog.
