The new work environment and the need for greater contributions from employees make conventional approaches to leadership and leadership development incomplete and inadequate. For decades, companies have been identifying and managing leaders to guide and execute their organisation’s strategy. In this traditional framework, leaders have two primary and complementary roles:
- Transformational Leadership—This role involves setting direction and inspiring others to foster change and focuses on shaping the organization’s mission, culture, and strategy. Leaders should take steps to drive change across the organization and motivate others to perform beyond expectations.
- Transactional Leadership—This role calls for organizing and directing employees to ensure efficient strategy execution and focuses on the leader’s relationship with his or her chain of command.
It particularly relates to traditional concepts, roles, and behaviours of management, such as setting objectives and goals, monitoring performance, managing employee work, and distributing rewards. In the new work environment, leaders must do more than set strategic direction, inspire others, and drive execution. They also need to take on a third role of building and enabling employee networks, thereby helping employees maximize their contribution across the organisation:
- Socially Connected Leadership—This role involves establishing strong network performance by building, aligning, and enabling broad networks both internal and external to the organization. Socially connected leadership is more about influence than control; it is also a more indirect than direct form of leadership, requiring leaders to create a work environment based on autonomy, empowerment, trust, sharing, and collaboration.