Roselinde Torres: What it takes to be a great leader

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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And what's also outdated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 the world that was, not a world

that is, or that is coming.

We conducted a study for 4000 companies

and we ask them, let's see the effectiveness

of the Leadership Development Programs.

fifty-eight percent of the companies cited

significant talent gaps

for critical leadership roles.

That means, 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 21 century leader?

The odds are: probably not.

Now, I spend 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 you can imagine.

But a few years ago

I noticed a disturbing trend

in leadership preperation.

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 there were stories

like Sidney, the CEO, who's so frustrated

because her company is cited

as 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 once-thriving business

that surprised by market shift,

finds itself have to force the comany

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 and companies,

countries, and non-profit 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 and anticipating and navigating

his political, social and economic context.

I also met a number of non-profit 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 Liabraries

trying to understand how the environment

had shaped the leaders,

the moves that they made,

and then the impact of those move

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 form 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 what to share some of

this with you now. 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

then 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 are prepared and ready? There is 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 you know they're

certainly alive and well in many

institutions. But to some extent, we all

have a network of people that we are

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

then you are. Third question. Are you

courageous enough to abandon a

practice that has made you successful in

the past? There is 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 naive or reckless or

just plain stupid. Now interestingly, the

people that 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 posibilities of

tomorrow. Thank you.

[Applause]

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