Manila, 10 June 2020 — Which of these two leadership stories will you choose?

Our June theme in Grow3Leaders is how to influence people for change to happen. Today we look at two leadership stories and the question which of these you are buying into.

Best of the Past

To start with the first story, let’s look at one of my favorite TED talks. In Six Keys to Leading Positive Change, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard University, nailed it when she described a sequence of six steps that each of us can take when learning how to lead. She distilled these steps from her years of research and experiences, and I’m grateful to her for setting out these steps so clearly. 

And yet, if you believe that’s enough for us who want to influence people for change to happen in our 21st century, think again. While recognizing that leadership can start at any age, Prof Kanter’s insights can be seen and welcomed as a best-in-kind distillation of leadership practices from the 20th century.

Standing on the shoulders of Kanter and other giants, and looking at our world today, we see that the 21st century has changed the landscape and has ushered in new paradigms, including for leadership.

We can call it a 21st-century leadership revolution because that’s what it truly is. In the past century and eons before that, we thought that 10% of the people are leaders and 90% followers. The 21st-century leadership revolution has turned that upside down as it makes us see that everyone can now learn to become a leader.

A Leadership Revolution

This paradigm shift is enabled by a new understanding of what leadership is about. From the research by the Center for Creative Leadership, we have learned that leadership is a process of influence with three important outcomes: direction, alignment, and commitment. 

With this definition, it follows that being in a position of executive authority doesn’t automatically make you a leader, because you might focus on management rather than on influence change. Conversely, we also see that you don’t need such a position in order to become a leader because everyone can learn to influence change from where they are.

What else marks this shift, this revolution?

Of course, technology plays an important part to enable us to exercise leadership differently from the past. We now have unprecedented opportunities to connect with other people anywhere in the world. It’s much easier to step out of our silos, at least from the point of view of available technology giving us the freedom to do so. 

So we’re talking about a revolution where everyone can learn to become a leader (influencer), enabled and supported by technology. That, however, is only half of the picture. Time to look at the second story. And for that, we go to Bali.

Making Change Happen

Let’s revisit Making Change Happen, an interview I conducted four years ago this month with two young 21st-century leaders who started a campaign that would grow into an international movement. 

When Melati and Isabel, two sisters, started their advocacy to stop plastic bags in Bali, their beautiful and increasingly polluted island home, it was a dream that got them started. So far, that sounds similar to what leaders in the past have experienced. Almost always, it started with a dream. Melati and Isabel called it an ‘awakening.‘ 

Explains Melati, “It’s a deep moment, when things suddenly come together and you see that you have to take action, to take a lead. For me and Isabel, that moment was about garbage.”

What happened next was something different from what their role models in the 20th century had done. Their next three steps illustrate the revolutionary shift in paradigm from individual to collective leadership.

Step 1: “We needed a team”

Confronted by the question of how to start their campaign, Melati recalls their decision: “We knew that we could not do it alone, and that we needed a team. We took the responsibility to start, among six best friends, and from there on it happened organically, together.”

Where Teaming Up is step 4 in Kanter’s sequence, the sisters chose to start out with a collaborative approach, by forming a team right away.

In Grow3Leaders, teaming up into a Collab is the first thing we do when we commit to influence a change together in our workplaces. In doing so, the first step we make is to shift our leadership style from I to WE.

Step 2: “It was our campaign”

Showing Up is step 1 in Kanter’s sequence. Nothing much happens unless and until you show up. So true.

Yet the way the story in Bali unfolded is different and more powerful from the start. The team showed up in action, not just by their presence or participation. They started by launching a petition on Avaaz that saw six thousand signatures come in during the first night. Their campaign was born through action.

Showing up means more than coming and watching. It is more powerful when it involves action. Say the sisters, “It was our campaign that really helped our leadership to come out… We decided to start with what we could do.”

Now, if you are introverted and feel this as a big challenge, the sisters have a tip for you: “Introvert and extrovert is like any other label. It can be limiting. It’s best to stay true to your pure core and keep discovering.” 

Step 3: “Deliver a message”

Speaking Up is Kanter’s second step. In the campaign story in Bali, this came third, after jumping into action with the campaign.

Communication is, of course, a timeless requirement for all leaders to master, including the 21st-century influencers. The Bye Bye Plastic Bags team worked hard on developing their effective communication skills, with all the support they could get. Isabel remembers, “We learned how to deliver a message… our skills have grown massively.”

The hard work paid off. Two years later in 2015, the sisters traveled from Bali to London to represent their team in delivering a TED talk in the Royal Albert Hall. Watch it here.

What happened next has been documented by news agencies in the world. The Bye Bye Plastic Bags team expanded into a movement that kept growing and spreading to countries around the world, as you can see in the map below.

Their story of collaborative leadership, 21st-century style, was told in venues around the world and the team was recognized at the UN General Assembly, the Bambi Awards in Germany, in CNN Heroes and Forbes, and many other places.

And in Bali, the teamwork, the campaign, and the message keep evolving as the story of collective leadership continues.

When Leaders Choose

We used to think for a long time that leadership is vested in individuals. That’s the 20th-century story, pointing to a process of leadership growth that usually started later in life and was slow, tough, and hopefully steady. This story was informed and amplified by the vast majority of English-language literature on leadership being published in North America and other Western countries.

Now, the world is waking up to an updated understanding that influencing change in our 21st century will be more effective and efficient — and, in my experience, more fun — when it’s done collectively through collaboration.

A year ago, I met with emerging leaders from the Philippines and Indonesia at Asia’s longest operating university, Santo Tomas in Manila. For them, it turned out to be a no-brainer to buy into the story of the 21st-century leadership revolution where everyone can learn to lead together, supported by technology that connects us in new ways. That message is now resonating with most emerging leaders I work with and, increasingly, with senior professionals, managers, and executives. 

This year, acceptance of the new paradigm has accelerated when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted our work and showed us that many people, although not in all professions, can effectively work from home, provided we are able to access the internet. We can connect and work together across silos and in new ways, and thereby even leave long commuter journeys to ‘the office’ behind us. 

While many executives have already 'seen the writing on the wall’ about the new paradigm, others are still invested in the story of the past. Some heads of educational institutions still think today that the right time to develop leadership skills is when you approach the age of 40. We observe that mindset more frequently among managers and executives with a strongly technical background. It was on display at a conference I attended last week.

Which story for you? 

So which of the two stories are you buying into?

The 20th-century story of individual leadership where a few can ‘make it’ to become part of the 10% through privilege and/or personal persistence? Or the 21st-century leadership story of starting out with collaboration and actions to influence change, supported by a set of 21st-century skills and technology to connect us?

In Grow3Leaders, it’s the 21st-century story of leadership that we are working hard on to embrace and practice. We are a private community of leaders from countries around the world, and from different generations, who are committed to learning and practicing effective leadership behaviors together and ‘out loud’ to create positive change in our workplaces, especially during these difficult times of dealing with Covid-19.

Joining us is free of charge—not free of commitment. Collaboration and action is required from the start. Send us a request if you feel that you are up to our Grow3Leaders challenge and are ready to join together with three of your colleagues in your workplace.