Lift

The following is an excerpt from Lift, by Faisal Hoque, available on June 7, 2022 from Fast Company Press.

“Leadership is no longer an exclusive role held by few, as discussed in Lift, but instead is a position that requires compassionate flexibility, collaboration, and confidence. With constant societal, environmental, and professional changes in our world, transactional leadership just won’t cut it anymore.”

— JENNIFER EGGERS, founder and president of LeaderShift Insights Inc. and author of the international best seller Resilience: It’s Not About Bouncing Back

“What will it take to lead in this Fourth Industrial Revolution? Between pandemics, climate change, social unrest, AI, and new technologies, the only normal in the ‘new normal’ is constant change. In his compelling new book, Faisal Hoque gives a much-needed Lift to leaders who want to stay on the forefront of change, and not be left behind.”

— ALAIN HUNKINS, CEO of Hunkins Leadership Group and author of Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders

INTRODUCTION

IN A WORLD BEING TRANSFORMED by unprecedented change, effective, meaningful leadership is becoming even more essential.

That offers historic opportunities, provided we recognize the type of leaders we need to have and what those leaders need to do to carry out a different form of leadership.

Sweeping change is everywhere, much of it focused on technology. Labeled the “Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR),” emerging technologies and their interactions with one another are upending how we work, play, educate, and govern ourselves. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, big data, multidimensional printing, and the development of varied collaborative tools such as “cobots” — robots designed to interact physically with human beings in a collaborative environment — are just a sampling of the power and pervasiveness of technological disruption.

But 4IR is not only about smart, connected machines and systems. Its scope is much wider as well. For instance, waves of further breakthroughs are happening at the same time in areas ranging from gene sequencing to nanotechnology to quantum computing.

It is the fusion of these technologies and their interactions across the physical, digital, and biological domains that is transforming how we work, play, live, and communicate. As Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, notes, this change promises to transform our very identities: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships.”1

However, while many may focus exclusively on this explosion of technology, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is by no means the sole driver of worldwide change. Rather, something of a perfect storm of factors is powering this level of sweeping disruption.

The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to change many of the fundamental aspects of how we live our lives. As we are forced to adjust and redo how we work, socialize, take care of ourselves, and educate our children, the practical and psychological effects of the pandemic will continue to impact us all — as consumers, businesspeople, students, and citizens. In many respects, the changes wrought by COVID-19 will by no means disappear once the virus and its derivatives are safely brought under control.

Long an issue eliciting varied degrees of concern, climate change has also emerged as a major force of disruption. Although perhaps the most visible and prominent result lies in a growing number of environmental disasters — the recent severe winter weather in the southern United States being one such example — climate change is also upending our choices as consumers, who are prioritizing environmental impact and product durability, and shopping at a local level whenever possible. Business models now need to take green policies into consideration and make them visible to and understandable by the public. Government is now more than ever compelled to address pollution, traffic, and the impact of development at all levels — as a more informed and connected citizenry is paying attention.

An additional, insidious driver of change is misinformation. Disseminated and reinforced by social media, twisted truths and outright lies are leading us to question not only who to believe and why but also our confidence in health care, government, education, public discourse, and other bedrocks of society that up until recently went largely unchallenged.

This tsunami of change and disruption carries enormous consequences. It also carries unprecedented responsibilities. The faster most everything changes and the greater the level of disruption, the faster we all need to learn how to direct that change.

And when I say all of us, I mean all of us.

Such a broad seismic shift has effectively empowered every person, group, and organization to be leaders in widely varying capacities. Individual access to data and connectivity — coupled with varied forces that have reworked how we see ourselves and the world around us — have catalyzed and made possible the opportunity to participate, contribute, and influence at unprecedented levels in most every aspect of life. In varied ways, we have all become leaders.

But not just any type of leader.

Traditionally, leaders operated in a transactional environment — a hierarchical system primarily focused on short-term results. The basic procedure was straightforward:

· A leader handed down directions.

· From there, the leader monitored results and performance — sometimes, perhaps too closely.

· The leader rewarded good performance — usually, monetarily — and punished poor performance.

· The cycle was repeated ad infinitum.

That’s not to suggest that everything about transactional leadership is bad. After all, it only makes sense to incentivize good work and discourage the substandard. Rather, it’s more an issue as to what transactional leadership is not designed to do that makes it ill-suited to a world characterized by change.

For one thing, transactional leadership’s emphasis on the short term isn’t positioned to foster long-term thinking and planning. When dynamic change can quickly transform what’s current to outdated, vision that goes beyond tomorrow is essential to recognize the change that’s occurring and how to plan and act to best leverage that change over an extended time frame.

Transactional leadership is also geared to fixed, rigid processes: “Do it this way and be rewarded accordingly.” Urging others to just “stick to the script” effectively discourages creativity and innovation — two attributes that will prove essential to constantly adapting to how we work, live, play, and learn. Old solutions derived from conventional thinking and action will prove largely useless.

The far more effective alternative is transformational leadership. The concept of transformational leadership started with James V. Downton in 1973 and was expanded by James Burns in 1978. In 1985, researcher Bernard M. Bass further expanded the concept to include ways for measuring the success of transformational leadership. There are four factors to transformational leadership, also known as the “Four I’s”: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration.

Transformational leaders focus on people — they encourage, inspire, and motivate those around them to innovate and foster positive change. These leaders encourage autonomy and creativity. They are open and responsive to change. They’re agile by choice, not by mandate.

They are keenly aware of the impact their decisions have on those around them, as well as themselves. Transformational leaders understand that their values and integrity embodied in their actions and choices are both internal and external models. How they choose to lead themselves works hand in hand with how they work with and inspire others.

In a world of explosive change and transformation, transformational leadership at all levels — from heads of state down to individuals — offers the best opportunity to leverage change to transform all our lives for the better. That goes for how we work, play, govern ourselves, and consider and plan for our collective future.

But acquiring and becoming skillful at the characteristics of transformational leadership takes a good deal more than good intentions. As was touched on earlier, transformational leadership comes from a conscious, consistent practice of empathy. To truly empower others to be their very best, a transformational leader must be aware not only of their abilities but also of their weaker characteristics — that, and have a supportive attitude toward overcoming those challenges. The future will mandate true collaboration and cooperation, attributes that can only be achieved with leadership that’s as fully in touch as possible.

But the environment in which we find ourselves calls for more than just understanding that a new style of leadership affords the best opportunity to leverage change for the common good. It’s just as necessary to know how to execute that leadership style in real-world circumstances. Sustainable impact derives from both systemic thinking and execution. Empathy in and of itself is a praiseworthy element of transformational leadership. But lacking a thoughtful, empirical means with which to put transformational leadership into practical action leaves it as just that — good intentions.

All that begs the question — if empathy and systemic execution are so essential to leveraging an environment of exponential change, where do you go to learn those and other skills of transformational leadership? The answer is experiential learning. As you’ll see later in this book, education in all its varied forms will benefit by shifting a greater emphasis toward experiential learning — from grade school to college and beyond that, with an ongoing focus on acquiring meaningful, relevant skills. Not only has experiential learning proven highly successful in the past in terms of student engagement and other measures, but it’s also the most effective way to learn in a world where so much is changing so fast. The lessons of 12 hours ago — let alone days or weeks — are often yesterday’s news. The more immersive and ongoing the learning, the more useful and applicable the end results.

Experiential learning will also prove essential outside a classroom setting. As leaders scramble to cope with effective means to promote and carry out successful leadership — particularly transformational leadership — learning on the fly from what we experience will be critical to evaluating and adapting to a world in exponential flux. The new book of the “rules” of leadership is being written and rewritten constantly — experiential learning affords the best opportunity to keep pace with that seemingly incessant change.

That this level of extraordinary change we’re experiencing can seriously backfire against us has already been shown. The horrific, unprecedented events of the violent uprising in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, underscore that very real danger — a threat that Stanford law professor Nathaniel Persily foreshadowed in a 2019 report, The Internet’s Challenge to Democracy: Framing the Problem and Assessing Reforms, where Persily points out that the “original promise of digital technologies was unapologetically democratic. . . . That promise has been replaced by concern that the most democratic features of the internet are, in fact, endangering democracy itself. Democracies pay a price for internet freedom, under this view, in the form of disinformation, hate speech, incitement, and foreign interference in elections.”2

That example from public events underscores a call to action for leadership — for government, obviously, but also the technology industry’s complicity in providing a platform for dissemination of perilous disinformation that threatened the physical safety of our nation’s leaders, literally.

But it’s also a call to action for every one of us as leaders — leaders who recognize our own responsibility to identify and mitigate the spread and import of feigned information directed toward destruction. That applies to individuals, as well as business leaders, community groups, educators, the religious community — all leaders empowered to make a difference.

But issues such as misinformation are not merely problems to be addressed. They’re also enormous opportunities that afford the chance not just to right wrongs but also to build something far better in their place. The dichotomy of danger/reward exists throughout the upheaval of change we’re experiencing. For instance, climate change is undeniably perilous, but it’s also been called the greatest health-care opportunity of the 21st century.

How each of us act as leaders will dictate whether the outcome will be outright disaster or a healthy, ecologically stable planet. That’s one reason this book has a one-word primary title. When we talk about “lift,” it refers to the opportunity we all have to contribute to the betterment of everyone through transformational leadership. We may act individually, but the impact of what each of us does can be truly global.

The opportunity that transformational leadership offers the leader in everyone is both significant and meaningful. We all have an obligation to ourselves and others to understand, nurture, and manage the “revolution” that’s taking place — rather than having revolutionary change manage us. That will mandate the right kind of leadership skills be systematically developed and implemented, open to ongoing change and adjustment to react to the reinvention that is mostly everywhere.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ARRANGED

Change and disruption of the magnitude we’re experiencing call for a response that isn’t mere wishful thinking, a spirited prayer hoping for the best. Rather, it requires both substance and strategy — that we all are fast becoming leaders in varied capacities and that the resulting evolution mandates a leadership style geared to the level and speed of the change that’s taking hold at an ever-increasing rate.

The book is divided into three different sections. The first, titled “Where We Are Now,” encompasses four chapters, each of which examines the four drivers of revolutionary change we’re experiencing — the Fourth Industrial Revolution, COVID-19, climate change, and pervasive misinformation. Each chapter will address each driver’s impact on a variety of areas, including work, education, health care, government, and the individual. How have these four factors transformed how we see ourselves, others, and the varied groups and institutions that compose society? Moreover, how unlikely is it that we will revert back to habits, routines, practices, and beliefs that once were considered sacrosanct?

The second section, “Amid the Change, All This Opportunity,” will offer a detailed examination of the various opportunities that the level of change we’re experiencing affords all of us — as consumers, workers, educators, and individual members of an increasingly connected society. More flexible, engaging work; cost-effective health care; practical and affordable education; connected and responsive government — these are just a sampling of the many opportunities sweeping change has made possible.

But only if it’s managed properly and proactively. The final section, titled “Be Transformational,” will examine the components of transformational leadership, how such a leadership style is best positioned to direct change, and what specifically every one of us as individual transformational leaders needs to do to best involve ourselves to leverage change to achieve the utmost good. Here, the importance of execution is reinforced — the imperative of systematically putting transformational leadership into action, bridging the more emotional elements of leadership with pragmatic application.

Each chapter will include a variety of sidebars, most of which are personal anecdotes and observations from this book’s three authors and other professional colleagues. In these, we’ll share stories, recollections, and ideas detailing how we’ve all experienced the changes that this book examines. They’re also an important element of transformational leadership. By sharing relatable stories and thoughts, we look to display a genuine sense of empathy with readers. It’s a quiet reminder that we’re all in this challenging environment together — the more we can all learn from each other, the more successful we can become as leaders in our own right.

To further the value and use of this book, included at the end of every chapter is a section titled “Learn and Transform.” Culled from material from each chapter, this feature will offer pertinent, actionable suggestions and guidance that you can use to put the principles in this book into meaningful action — the sort of experiential learning that can produce transformational leaders with the skills to enact lasting, beneficial change.