Joan Marques - Leadership Today

The story that todays workforce is looking for different skills and qualities in its leaders has become abundantly clear in the past decade, not only through a major shift in corporate leadership, but also through shifts in leadership qualities being taught in business schools and topics that leadership scholars focus on these days. According to Daniel Goleman, soft skills are inner- and interhuman skills such as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

In 2009, three scholars conducted a multi-method study with surveys and interviews, in which 11 major European multinational corporations participated. This study underlined the impression that workforce members are really looking for soft skills in their leaders today. The survey part of the study yielded the following compiled list of desired leaders qualities: (1) Acting with integrity. (2) Caring for people. (3) Demonstrating ethical behavior. (4) Communicating with others. (5) Taking a long-term perspective. (6) Being open-minded. (7) Managing responsibly outside the organization. (p. 11). The interview part of the above-mentioned study yielded five reflexive abilities desired for leaders: (1) systemic thinking; (2) embracing diversity and managing risk; (3) balancing global and local perspectives; (4) meaningful dialogue and developing a new language; and (5) emotional awareness (p. 15).

The time when leaders had to be charismatic, swaying, convincing, diehard, conniving, and only bottom-line focused lies behind us, and that is a good thing, because leaders who focused only on glamourous performance and profit brought sheer damage to their companies, nurtured unhealthy relationships within their workplaces, and harmed the reputation of business in general in the past decades.

It needs to be underscored, however, that till today, there are many organizations with leaders that have been exposed to obsolete theories and behavioral models, and refuse to change. Unfortunately, many management educators are co-responsible for this ongoing problem. There are also ample reasons why the shift to a more creative approach in leadership gets stagnated. Some examples: (a) established structures in major corporations; (b) reluctance from current managers to sacrifice power and prestige; (c) fear that the new system will ultimately fail; (d) lack of trust in the qualities and motivations of employees; and (e) ignorance, caused by lack of awareness about the need for transformation.

Proudly focusing on soft skills in the first part of this book, we present the following perspectives in the upcoming soft skill-based chapters: