According to the Can Business Schools Humanize Leadership? paper by professors at INSEAD, leadership programs today focus too often only on coercion and influence. They claim it is time to get back to humanity and represent your own teams and organizations. Asking fundamental questions, understanding the answers and acting on those answers is what true leadership is about.
Leadership development should be about personal histories and aspirations
Examining your own aspirations can make leadership courses more human. Instructors must do the same and struggle with the same questions. The groups during these courses imitate the workplace environment, and it is about understanding leadership and followership. Knowledge and skills are the starting point for exploring new questions. It must make you feel troubled in a constructive way.
Financial results or personal style? Leaders cannot pick just one priority
When there is too much emphasis on influence, leadership becomes simply a tool that enables you to achieve financial performance goals. A personal approach to leadership, expression-based, turns it into a means to achieve and promote your own values and style. However, a truly successful leader must combine both. He needs to be able to reach certain financial results and strongly embody his company’s culture. When one of these two concepts has not been achieved, leadership is not complete and efficient.
The actual meaning of purpose
The authors from INSEAD argue that we need to understand the buzzword purpose correctly. It is not a feeling of satisfaction, it is not a feeling at all. It is about asking tough questions and trying to arrive at true answers. Why am I doing this? For whose benefit? What will the consequences be? The answers to these questions must guide you and form the actions you take.
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