How Business Leadership is Changing

Leadership styles today combine the classic values of discipline and execution with the contemporary values of openness and natural expression.

The New Economy of the 1990s brought much that was new and refreshing to work — casual office culture, enthusiastic employees, nonhierarchical leadership principles. It also led to excesses (on-site personal fitness trainers, luxury cars, stratospheric salaries for unseasoned managers, stock options for everyone) that topped even the avarice of the 1980s. That party is over, for now. Internet entrepreneurs (the few that are left from headier days and the latest entrants) are more restrained. Corporate leaders are reverting to classic styles of leadership. In Europe, CEOs such as Gunter Thielen of Bertelsmann AG and Jürgen Dormann of ABB Group are concentrating on basic tasks: business and cost consolidation, reorganization, shifting of strategic priorities, and rebuilding.

Does this imply that the managerial style the New Economy brought us is appropriate only during boom times? As we begin 2004, cautiously watching for signs of economic recovery, should we assume that command-and-control is the prudent leadership standard?

No. The truth is, leadership styles are always evolving, with newer elements complementing more traditional ones. Increasingly, senior executives, even entire corporate cultures, are combining classic leadership values, such as discipline, focus, and execution, with more contemporary values, including openness, a greater emphasis on the quality of communication, and naturalness. This bodes well for the future of all companies.

In many ways, it’s unsurprising that the integration of a new, younger generation of leaders into archetypal industrial enterprises is producing new leadership methods. It remains to be seen, though, whether this trend will include continued appreciation for one of the most beneficial shifts in business culture to occur during the 1990s — a greater tolerance and respect for expressing emotion and personal values, even spirituality. As Anselm Grün, a German Benedictine friar who is the business manager of the Abbey of Münsterschwarzach in Germany and an author of many books, writes: Only the one who “is able to find his peace inside himself, and in God, may create an atmosphere of peace around himself making employees feel well and enabling them to enjoy their work.” Grün, who oversees 20 companies owned by the Benedictine order, is also an acclaimed writer in Germany, with a strong following among German CEOs.

Another clergyman, American Matthew Fox, has preached similar themes to businesses executives. A former member of the Dominican order, Fox now is an Episcopal priest and founder and director of the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, Calif. In his book The Reinvention of Work — A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time, published by HarperCollins in 1994 (before the exuberant half of that decade), he writes: “Perhaps this reinventing of the quality of the workplace will also contribute to the reinventing of the quantity of work available. When workers have integrated spirituality with their work, their values, their creativity, addictions such as overwork and the practice of overworking employees might give way to more shared work.”

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