The effective global leader of the future will hire talented employees, teach them the core values and mission of the company, clearly identify goals and priorities, impart responsibilities and accountability, and then let go.
Effective executives are open to different ideas and don’t manage how the job is done, which is style. Leaders should allow freedom for people to get the job done, as long as there isn’t a negative effect on the company; results will be reached with people expressing their own style.13
Knowledge workers should have responsibility for their own contribution. Individuals should help decide accountability in terms of quality and quantity in respect to time and in respect to cost.
I want more freedom to do my thing. I have my way of achieving the goal, so don’t tell me how to do it. I want to be involved in the decision-making process. I want leaders to take my input. I want to make my voice heard and be a more empowered part of the organization.14
Lastly, if people see opportunities for ownership and personal development, they are much more likely to stay with the organization. For example, companies can pro- vide intrapreneurial opportunities. Gifford Pinchot (who coined the term intrapreneur) has shown how major corporations can provide opportunities for semiautonomous enterprises to operate within the larger corporate structure. By allowing high-potential leaders to “run a business” inside a larger business, corporations can gain commitment while simultaneously developing people.
Creating a Team of Competent Individuals Who Can Handle
Company and Industry Challenges More Quickly
and with Greater Success
Competency comes with experience. Leaders develop the capabilities of their people by pushing decision-making down to those who are closest to the customer or activity. In doing so, it’s important to allow people to make mistakes and then to help them recover quickly.
Companies are going to be flatter. They will be getting decisions made at the lowest possible level in the organization. The less interference you have, the better.15
Because quick, informed decision making is imperative if a company is to compete in today’s global and fast-paced marketplace, it is well worth risking a blunder or two. The effective global leader will put safety checks in place to guard from certain disasters and will maintain an open-door policy with employees to discuss current projects and challenges. McKinsey and Company is a benchmark organization for encouraging challenge inside the work team and simultaneously building support for the final team decision.
I think organizations will move to flatter structures which empower employees to make decisions as long as there are certain checkpoints. You have to limit risk to a certain degree.16
Hoarding Power Versus Encouraging Achievement
The foundation of empowering relationships between global leaders and their employees is trust.
They [global leaders] must have the “trust factor.” We must trust that people are doing their jobs.17
Leaders who do not trust will micromanage the process in which people do their work, and they will probably keep many projects for themselves because they don’t trust anyone else to do them right.
They must let go of details, but they still need to make sure that the organization is going in the right direction. Instead of the leaders giving out orders of how things should be done, they must now serve the organization under them.18
This not only stifles creative thinking, but it undermines workers’ confidence. Any sense of autonomy is destroyed, and the leader is left with the bulk of the burden be- cause employees will only do what they are told; they will not strive to improve. Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the United States, was a role model for encouraging achievement and not hoarding power. She created an environment in which the person in the mailroom defined himself as the heart of the organization who was responsible for communications in and out as opposed to defining himself as a per- son who took orders and did mundane work.