In a thought provoking article published by the Havard Business Review on October 18, 2024, Rebecca Knight argues on fundamental shifts in leadership dichotomy from the 20th to the 21st century. The author avers that leadership rules that worked in the 20th century cannot work in modern day and age.
According to this article, the best leaders of the 20th century were question answers, setting the vision and strategy from above. On the contrary, the best leaders of the 21st century are question askers — they seek feedback and new perspectives, and ask curious questions about themselves, their teams and their environment. Knight highlights six essential skills for effective leaders in today’s business environment.
The first essential skill for effective leadership in the 21st century is emotional aperture. This concept was coined by Professor Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, a behavioral scientist at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Emotional aperture refers to a leaders ability to understand and tune into the emotional dynamics of the people he or she leads.
This leadership quality appeals to leaders of today to undertake some deep soul searching to establish effective means to connect with the needs and wants of those that they lead.
The second essential skill to be an effective leader is adaptive communication. This leadership attribute involves the need for a leader to know how and when to adjust their behaviour and leadership style to fit the situation and the immediate needs of their audience.
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Rebecca Knight argues that the golden rule for leaders to treat people as they wish to be treated of yester years is outdated and stale in today’s leadership environment.
This rule has been replaced by a platinum rule that demands that leaders should treat people as they need to be treated.
The third skill is for today’s leaders to be flexible in their thinking. This skill recognizes the challenging environment in which leaders of today must lead in. It thus becomes important for the leader to have a flexible mindset in order to be able to juggle competing priorities and hold opposing perspectives.
This is especially so when leaders must address ever increasing needs and wants of the people, against decreasing financial and other resources that are available to them.
The fourth leadership skill demanded of a leader of today is to be perspective seeking, taking and coordinating. This skill appeals to the risk that face leaders once they gain power and resources, be it in government or in the corporate world. There is overwhelming research evidence that power reduces a leaders ability to show empathy and narrows their focus.
Thus, many leaders are tempted to rely on their own opinions and tend to overlook alternative perspectives from others when they rise in the corporate ladder. Essentially, this tendency becomes a weak link in the leaders leadership journey.
Fifth skill demanded of an effective leader in todays operating environment is that of strategic disruption. This attribute appeals to the leader’s ability to challenge the status quo. Instead of leaning on established conventions of yester years, effective leaders of today must identify, and question outdated practices in order to explore new ideas that are necessary to improve and achieve desired outcomes. This requires of a leader to be a life long student by prioritising continual learning and improvement.
The sixth and final skill highlighted by Rebecca Knight is that of resilient self-awareness.
This skill involves the leaders ability to recognize their own limitations and understand when to seek support. In other words, a leader must submit to their own vulnerabilities in order to not only manage their own stress, but also to set a good example for the rest of the team.
Reflecting on the events and actions of this past week by President Ruto in comparative to the foregoing essentials leadership skills in the 21st century, a lid to our national leadership troubles opens up.
For instance, if a first-time visitor to Kenya took a survey of all the editorial headline picks for the week across mainstream media, what will they think of our President?
In a game of independent chances and competing business interests, how can there be a complete convergence of the headlines on print, visual and audio media?
It gets more comical when one explores the open sea of social media to sample what ordinary Kenyans think and are saying of their president and now his handshake brother, Raila Odinga.
To start with, if we are to assume the above six leadership skills were a yardstick of the character and attributes of the leader the country desires at this juncture, then President Ruto’s leadership style collapses completely.
For example, two weeks ago, the president triggered an uncalled for activism against donations to churches by public officials.
Nine months ago, after the aftermath of the Gen-Z uprising, the President burned any form of donations or harambees by all public officials through an executive degree. This was in response to the young people’s demand for accountability on taxpayers money, resistance to oppressive taxes and senior public officials vomiting on the feet of poor masses from opulence not supported by known and legitimate sources of wealth.
With certain sections of the religious community declining a series of Sh5 million donations from the president and his deputy in response to his stated ban, it is ridiculous how he quadrupled that to Sh20 million.
It gets bizarre how he goes ahead to commit another Sh20 million in a separate church the following Sunday with active violent protests outside the beneficiary church of his first donation.
Further, the President insists on a five-day development tour across the city with violent gags in his entourage, obviously paid to shove-up crowds terrorising innocent residents and business owners eking a living in a tough economic environment.
This raises confounding questions on how a sacred event like a presidential development tour into local communities can leave a trail of pain and agony to the would be beneficiaries.
While certain sections of the press would want to apportion blame to the intelligence and security apparatus, there is every reason to believe the blame is squarely at the President’s doorstep.
His public comments indicate he has accurate information of what Kenyans trolling him on media think and feel about his leadership and state of the economy.
Besides, the Kenyan intelligence apparatus is well-acknowledged as among the best in Africa and around the world.
This leaves the ball right at the court of the leader himself. He has the ability and power to listen to what the ground is saying and take appropriate decisions that show empathy to his people, demonstrate some degree of emotional connection to our collective needs, our cries against oppressive and ill thought-out policies, and desire for better and more responsive services.
If this column was to be asked for an honest advisory, it would strongly advise for the President to keep his millions to himself and acknowledge that he cannot run this behemoth of a bureaucracy alone.
He must start trusting his Cabinet to deliver on their respective dockets.
But more importantly, it is perhaps a good time for the President to take a well-deserved annual leave or vacation to take a break from his hectic 30 months schedule and give Kenyans a break.
I am sure Kenyans are not poor enough not to afford their President a fully paid vacation to take rest, rejuvenate and introspect on how to better lead the nation through violent sea.