The Changing Composition Of Leadership.

• Author: O'Shea, Sharon

Intuition Creativity Trust Power-sharing Consensus This is business?

Widespread economic and technological changes in recent years have delivered a series of sharp shocks to the traditional corporate structure. In the process, virtually every abiding truism of business has been called into question.

Add together globalization, mergers, acquisitions, partnership alliances, information technology, the Internet and e-commerce, the rise of the entrepreneur, a diverse customer base and workforce, a tight labor market, and what have you got?

According to people on the fore-front of management research, these elements have combined to create a need to make decisions across all time zones concurrently, to sustain corporate growth and to recruit and retain talented employees. Companies must also be able to cope with the loss of centralized control over what employees and competitors know -- and be able to tolerate the break-neck pace of business and the overall flattening of the corporate structure. And they need the guts to take big professional risks.

A new leadership ethic has formed itself around these fundamental changes -- one that values innovation, creativity and the ability to think in very different ways about what it means to lead.

"Today's leaders need to be adept at making decision-makers, not making decisions," says Stephen Yearout, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "With the e-economy has come the need to operate and make decisions in every aspect of your business at e-speed. That alone brings with it this driving need for leaders at all levels. The best leaders have given up the traditional management-control dimension in favor of seeking to build and develop more trust throughout the organization, because you can't have a large leadership pool unless you have trust in your people."

Bruce Pasternack, senior vice president/managing partner at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, agrees. "Too much is being written about the CEO as the great leader and not enough about organizations that demonstrate leadership capacity throughout the organization," he says. "Really good leaders take their skills and abilities and build into their organizations the capacity for leadership all the way down the line."

Paradoxically, achieving this goal requires a strong and confident person at the helm. Relinquishing power doesn't come naturally to most top-level executives, particularly those trained in the traditional military, command-and control style. Sharing...