What it takes to be a great leader | Roselinde Torres | TED

What makes a great leader today?

Many of us carry this image

of this all-knowing superhero

who stands and commands

and protects his followers.

But that's kind of an image from another time,

and what's also outdated

are the leadership development programs

that are based on success models

for a world that was, not a world that is

or that is coming.

We conducted a study of 4,000 companies,

and we asked them, let's see the effectiveness

of your leadership development programs.

Fifty-eight percent of the companies

cited significant talent gaps

for critical leadership roles.

That means that despite corporate training programs,

off-sites, assessments, coaching, all of these things,

more than half the companies

had failed to grow enough great leaders.

You may be asking yourself,

is my company helping me to prepare

to be a great 21st-century leader?

The odds are, probably not.

Now, I've spent 25 years of my professional life

observing what makes great leaders.

I've worked inside Fortune 500 companies,

I've advised over 200 CEOs,

and I've cultivated more leadership pipelines

than you can imagine.

But a few years ago, I noticed a disturbing trend

in leadership preparation.

I noticed that, despite all the efforts,

there were familiar stories that kept resurfacing

about individuals.

One story was about Chris,

a high-potential, superstar leader

who moves to a new unit and fails,

destroying unrecoverable value.

And then there were stories like Sidney, the CEO,

who was so frustrated

because her company is cited

as a best company for leaders,

but only one of the top 50 leaders is equipped

to lead their crucial initiatives.

And then there were stories

like the senior leadership team

of a once-thriving business

that's surprised by a market shift,

finds itself having to force the company

to reduce its size in half

or go out of business.

Now, these recurring stories

cause me to ask two questions.

Why are the leadership gaps widening

when there's so much more investment

in leadership development?

And what are the great leaders doing

distinctly different to thrive and grow?

One of the things that I did,

I was so consumed by these questions

and also frustrated by those stories,

that I left my job

so that I could study this full time,

and I took a year to travel

to different parts of the world

to learn about effective and ineffective

leadership practices in companies,

countries and nonprofit organizations.

And so I did things like travel to South Africa,

where I had an opportunity to understand

how Nelson Mandela was ahead of his time

in anticipating and navigating

his political, social and economic context.

I also met a number of nonprofit leaders

who, despite very limited financial resources,

were making a huge impact in the world,

often bringing together seeming adversaries.

And I spent countless hours in presidential libraries

trying to understand how the environment

had shaped the leaders,

the moves that they made,

and then the impact of those moves

beyond their tenure.

And then, when I returned to work full time,

in this role, I joined with wonderful colleagues

who were also interested in these questions.

Now, from all this, I distilled

the characteristics of leaders who are thriving

and what they do differently,

and then I also distilled

the preparation practices that enable people

to grow to their potential.

I want to share some of those with you now.

("What makes a great leader in the 21st century?")

In a 21st-century world, which is more global,

digitally enabled and transparent,

with faster speeds of information flow and innovation,

and where nothing big gets done

without some kind of a complex matrix,

relying on traditional development practices

will stunt your growth as a leader.

In fact, traditional assessments

like narrow 360 surveys or outdated performance criteria

will give you false positives,

lulling you into thinking that you are more prepared

than you really are.

Leadership in the 21st century is defined

and evidenced by three questions.

Where are you looking

to anticipate the next change

to your business model or your life?

The answer to this question is on your calendar.

Who are you spending time with? On what topics?

Where are you traveling? What are you reading?

And then how are you distilling this

into understanding potential discontinuities,

and then making a decision to do something

right now so that you're prepared and ready?

There's a leadership team that does a practice

where they bring together each member

collecting, here are trends that impact me,

here are trends that impact another team member,

and they share these,

and then make decisions, to course-correct a strategy

or to anticipate a new move.

Great leaders are not head-down.

They see around corners,

shaping their future, not just reacting to it.

The second question is,

what is the diversity measure

of your personal and professional stakeholder network?

You know, we hear often about good ol' boy networks

and they're certainly alive and well in many institutions.

But to some extent, we all have a network

of people that we're comfortable with.

So this question is about your capacity

to develop relationships with people

that are very different than you.

And those differences can be biological,

physical, functional, political, cultural, socioeconomic.

And yet, despite all these differences,

they connect with you

and they trust you enough

to cooperate with you

in achieving a shared goal.

Great leaders understand

that having a more diverse network

is a source of pattern identification

at greater levels and also of solutions,

because you have people that are thinking

differently than you are.

Third question: are you courageous enough

to abandon a practice that has made you successful in the past?

There's an expression: Go along to get along.

But if you follow this advice,

chances are as a leader,

you're going to keep doing what's familiar and comfortable.

Great leaders dare to be different.

They don't just talk about risk-taking,

they actually do it.

And one of the leaders shared with me the fact that

the most impactful development comes

when you are able to build the emotional stamina

to withstand people telling you that your new idea

is naïve or reckless or just plain stupid.

Now interestingly, the people who will join you

are not your usual suspects in your network.

They're often people that think differently

and therefore are willing to join you

in taking a courageous leap.

And it's a leap, not a step.

More than traditional leadership programs,

answering these three questions

will determine your effectiveness

as a 21st-century leader.

So what makes a great leader in the 21st century?

I've met many, and they stand out.

They are women and men

who are preparing themselves

not for the comfortable predictability of yesterday

but also for the realities of today

and all of those unknown possibilities of tomorrow.

Thank you.

(Applause)