the last forty years cannot model, and quite possibly cannot even imagine, the leadership and social intelligence skills the next generation will need to thrive in this brave new world.
Power and Collaboration
While some corporate and political regimes still strive to disempower others for personal gain, relentless waves of technological, economic, and cultural innovation are eroding dictatorial resolve. In his book The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin speaks of “an emerging collaborative age” in which “lateral power organized nodally across society” is “fundamentally restructuring human relationships, from top to bottom to side to side, with profound implications for the future of society.”
There’s one major issue we face in this transition: Far too many people experience power and collaboration as opposites, as if one must be sacrificed in favor of the other. Those who value power are more inclined to suppress collaboration to fulfill ambitious goals or reinforce the status quo. Those deeply committed to collaboration sometimes neglect assertiveness for fear of damaging relationships, even when a clear, directive, humane use of power may be necessary to motivate widespread positive change.
I once belonged to the latter category. Growing up female in the 1960s, before the women’s rights movement gathered force and floated more gently toward my small, Midwestern city, I was encouraged to develop the nurturing arts at the expense of leadership. As I graduated college and entered the workforce, I was desperately untrained in the skillful use of power and influence, except through those genteel, primarily unconscious, passive-aggressive moves “the weaker sex” developed through five thousand years of subjugation.
In the 1980s, equal opportunity opened things up a bit. I could use intelligence, vision, enthusiasm, and degrees or certifications to be promoted, and I excelled at inspiring and collaborating with others — especially when working with self-motivated, caring people. But whenever it was necessary to make tough decisions, motivate uncooperative employees, deal with feuding factions, or lead others into controversial or uncomfortable areas, I tended to avoid conflict, at times abdicating authority when I needed to stand strong.
More dominant colleagues had no problem pulling rank, handling dissent, and herding others toward short-term goals, but these command-and-control-style managers were less effective over time. Many crossed the line between assertiveness and intimidation, losing trust along the way. Some withheld information and suppressed creativity, producing dull, listless staff members who hid growing resentment behind limp smiles of compliance.
If these leaders inspired anything at all in their employees, it was the tendency to choose between two mediocre options — to take their talents elsewhere or to become more complacent, in some cases machine-like, “retiring in place” decades before receiving that coveted gold watch.
Pandemonium and Paralysis
When I began to teach emotional and social intelligence skills to a variety of entrepreneurs, corporations, and nonprofits in the early 2000s, I noticed that the gap between relationship-oriented and goal-oriented leadership styles widened in certain fields — which increased dysfunction. Social service, educational, and charitable agencies attracted plenty of considerate, openhearted employees, but these people didn’t necessarily know how to get along. Unresolved conflict festered behind facades of politeness. Undercurrents of increasing frustration were expressed through skeptical silences in meetings and toxic whispers in the hallways.
Staff members who considered “power” a dirty word engaged in passive-aggressive moves to gain influence. For example, when differences of opinion and working style emerged, some people in the “caring fields” used the subtle, damaging ploy of undermining a rival’s reputation by diagnosing him or her with any number of personality disorders, behind his or her back, usually while feigning concern for the person’s mental health. This “armchair psychologist” power play successfully gained the person using it some followers — while creating factions that worked at odds with one another as a result. Yet those who employed this increasingly popular technique rarely acknowledged the unproductive results for the organization as a whole, let alone the personal ambition behind this divisive behavior. Instead, they saw themselves as victims or as self-righteous protectors of colleagues who were victims.
Highly sensitive people and abuse survivors, who felt called to these fields for the best of reasons, amplified stress in other ways. These employees were more likely to exhibit hair-trigger responses to minor threats or simple disagreements, take creative debate far too personally, and hold grudges. Such tendencies undermined working relationships, most insidiously because conflict-averse people acted out anger and frustration in secretive yet increasingly virulent ways, making it impossible for supervisors to catch difficulties in their earliest, most manageable stages. Simply by giving one another the silent treatment, for instance, key staff members could make it difficult for colleagues unrelated to the conflict to get their jobs done. Over time, more factions would be created, with each side feeling disrespected or undermined by the others.
Untrained in how to set boundaries, communicate their needs effectively, handle disagreements, and motivate others through unemotional yet compassionate assertiveness, leaders and followers alike had trouble fulfilling their noble goals, and the energy of idealism was depleted by the daily realities of interpersonal unrest. This made it difficult to serve clients, as well as to experiment, debate, and adapt to shifting social and economic climates — no matter how admirable the organization’s mission might be.
Corporate and entrepreneurial settings, on the other hand, attracted more goal-oriented, technologically savvy people. These organizations faced a whole other set of challenges as people with great ideas and relentless ambition rose to influential positions without developing the emotional and social intelligence skills to lead effectively.
To make matters worse, brilliant minds were encouraged to ruthlessly compete with one another, most often through a combination of financial incentives and bell-curve firing practices, breeding mistrust, defensiveness, and the tendency to withhold important information from colleagues.
In the most extreme cases, a “kill or be killed” mentality focused on short-term profit at the cost of long-term company growth and sustainability. This led to all kinds of callous acts resulting from institutionalized predatory behavior. In one of the most famous examples — Enron — executives purposefully created a “survival of the fittest” culture, encouraging ravenous competition, not only with other companies, but within the corporation itself. Championed by Jeffrey Skilling, who served as president and chief executive officer, this philosophy promoted increasing aggression and, in some staff members, unethical business practices. As Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind observed in their book The Smartest Guys in the Room, traders and executives “who stayed and thrived were the ones who were most ruthless in cutting deals and looking out for themselves.” The strategy backfired for everyone involved. Enron’s subsequent downfall not only resulted in jail time for Skilling and other employees, but the company imploded at a significant cost to stockholders, employees, and society at large.
In politics, the gap between relationship-oriented and goal-oriented leadership styles evolved into a strange combination of pandemonium and paralysis as the twentieth century came to a close. To this day, social service concerns clash with competitive corporate ambitions on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, resulting in all the dysfunctions described above, acted out in a confusing free-for-all of unproductive behavior.
No wonder even the most well-meaning democratic governments can’t seem to get anything significant done: The challenges that every modern organization faces are magnified exponentially when an entire country gets involved.
Where Do We Go from Here?
In the last twenty years, a number of studies have explored “masculine” and “feminine” styles of leadership.
