The Future Of Leadership — From A Millennials Perspective.

The state of leadership in this data-driven, technology-led and challenging time in the global economy, needs some attention.

Leaders are being tricked into focusing on their numbers. Leaders are forgetting the power of respecting people. Leaders have forgotten how powerful inspiration and positivity are.

Let me be very clear: now more than ever we need to focus on the people we manage because, without that, the story the numbers tell won’t be a good one.

Less time needs to be spent on talking about culture and actually taking action in areas that make people engaged, fulfilled and energized to come to work.

Every day we go to work to create our legacy. As a leader, you must never forget this fundamental truth in your own career and the careers of your people.

Here’s what the future of leadership is about:

Leadership is about inspiration, not domination.

Yes, you are a leader and can fire people if you’d like to.

Yes, you can run people into the ground and use the latest job software to hire new people and repeat the process. All of this nonsense is hard work and you still won’t get the numbers you’re looking for or that next promotion.

The future of leadership is about understanding how people form tribes and rally around each other to achieve results that can look from the outside like they’re impossible.

When you inspire people to take action, do the right thing and respect one another, they form tribes and concentrate on doing the best work of their life rather than trying to beat each other or beat the competitors.

The one thing that has defined my career as a leader is inspiring people through my own struggles.

That’s why I regularly talk about mental health challenges I’ve had, a near miss with cancer, career failures and businesses I started that didn’t work out.

People are inspired by a leaders flaws and the ability to be vulnerable enough to share them so that the team can garner inspiration from them.

Domination, on the other hand, is the false idea that a leader should:

• Chase the next promotion instead of helping their people grow
• Threaten staff with KPIs or being sacked
• Be overly hierarchical

You can’t dominate people because they will not stand by you thus resulting in your leadership title being stripped away before your very eyes.

Leave dominating people in the past with the slave era and embrace the future of leadership which is inspiration.

Leadership is about transformation, not manipulation.

When we transform as people, we do the impossible.

The future of leadership is about focusing on helping people transform their limiting beliefs, using data-driven software to transform how people feel, and assisting people to see that who they were in the past is not who they can be in the future.

When you transform people, you can transform an organization. The future is about the continuation of transforming old industries and bringing to life new industries that expand the capability of the human race.

People will lead this transformation just like they’ve always done.

Manipulation is a technique that was used in the past to get people to do work they didn’t want to do. The days of these techniques working will become less and less effective.

The internet has already allowed people like you and I to see the truth about a leader or group of leaders using tools like Glassdoor, Culture Amp and LinkedIn.

The future of leadership is about understanding that you can’t win by manipulating people. You can win, however, by being overly transparent.

Authenticity and honesty in the future of leadership will go together with the advantages that the internet and software have already bought to market that expose the lies of the past.

Focus on transforming people and you’ll simultaneously transform as a leader.

Leadership is about appreciation, not intimidation.

Over the last five years, the way we work has changed.

We can be a freelancer; we can contract out our skills to multiple companies at the same time; we can work part-time and look after a child; we can create an online business for next to zero capital outlay. The options are endless.

That’s why appreciation is so important. When you appreciate people, you make it less likely that they will trade in your bad leadership, for one of the other ways they can choose to work and earn a living.

The future of leadership is about appreciating the fact that people are giving up a significant part of their life to come and work with you and it’s your job to make them feel appreciated.

Let me give you an example: two minutes ago I just sent an email to one of my team members whose wife is about to have a baby. For the last seven days, he has worked really hard to ensure his portfolio of clients have been over serviced and set up for success while he’s away on paternity leave.

His performance has been higher than ever. My email to him was to show appreciation for everything he has done and took me only a few minutes to write.

Rather than intimidate him to work hard before going away, I appreciated him instead.

Appreciation is underrated, and on surveys of culture, people continually complain they don’t feel appreciated. It costs nothing for a leader to appreciate someone yet we still hire consultants at thousands of dollars an hour to answer the question “Why are our people not engaged?”

The ways you get people engaged are mostly free and appreciation trumps all of them.

The future of leadership is about understanding how the intangibles of leadership (that cost nothing at all) can be even more powerful than the technological future we’re heading for.

We must understand that the human component of leadership will be even more relevant in the future.

The future of leadership is tied to the past and multiplied in the coming years by real humans that are engaged and want to do the impossible.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +411,714 people.

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