Our work as faculty and researchers brings us luxuriously close to the real foot soldiers of the corporate world, those leaders and their teams navigating their way through the rockiest terrain imaginable.
Global challenges such as climate change, geopolitical forces between the democracies swinging to the right and left, resulting in Brexit and new superpowers superfluously swinging their wrecking ball in any direction. It is no wonder that our leaders crave navigational equipment which will help them to survive the endless turmoil of keeping their businesses and industry both stable and growing. Sadly, the endless trail of social and behavioral sciences which have diligently produced an abundance of leadership theories are simply not agile enough to cope with real life complexities as they emerge. This was strongly evidenced in stories told by leaders in this research, who demonstrated that an individual and hierarchical approach to leadership is no longer working as it did in the past, often resulting in disengaged staff and poor performances.
