Soft vs Hard Leadership in the AI Age

Our new AI age means intense disruption and whirlwind change.  We should consider what constitutes effective leadership in this new chaotic environment.  Are qualities, such as deep area expertise, decisiveness, authority, and brutal task focus less important?  Are "soft" attributes  such as humility, adaptability, vision, and team engagement more important?  Let's take a closer look at the "soft" side of leadership.

Humility.  In an era of explosive change, knowing what you don’t know may be as valuable as knowing what you do know.  Leaders are face the challenge of  learning from the firehouse of  new developments and and the variety of new information that is flooding in daily.  Leaders in the AI age need to be willing to learn from both inside and outside their organizations. They also need to trust that there are others to know more than they do. Real knowledge may well come from someone 20 years younger or three levels down the business hierarchy.  In the AI age, an effective leader understands that less status or less experience doesn’t mean ignorance of what may be really important. 

Being humble may sound inconsistent with the need to exude an image of confidence and authority. But as the British philosopher Bertrand Russell famously stated, “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Adaptability.  Adaptability means being able not just ready to react to opportunities and threats as they appear but to anticipate business disruptions and act decisively before  being overtaken by events. This means being open to change an opinion even when it hurts and being able to communicate honestly the revised opinion to peers, teams, and even customers.  Changing one’s mind is often be regarded as a sign of weakness.  In fact, it is a strength and can improves decision making.  Adaptable leaders adaptability can to confront challenges with a focus on learning rather than being right.

Vision.  Having a clear vision is essential for  effective leadership. But today there is less clarity and consensus among followers, subordinates, and employees about what needs to be done  and why.  Leaders with a clear vision have compelling, meaningful answers to these questions and can are communicate them the grounds for taking action, or no action pending an immediate and team-based assessment .  Vision is what allows a leader to take action without  implement caving to short-term interests or expediency.

Engagement.   The effective leader is remain constantly engaged with the environment.  It is rarely easy to separate the "signals" from surrounding  "noise — which will either threaten (disruptors) or support (potential partners) their vision. Agile leaders both need to stay engaged and find need to find ways to keep their teams engaged, particularly when the going gets rough!