Who wants to lead anymore?
It's time for universities to address the leadership crisis
Ask any leader or manager and they will tell you: leadership has become increasingly complex. Not only because of external challenges, such as climate change, the call for more diversity in the workforce or political polarization, but internal forces and dynamics as well. Working from home, striving for a healthy work life balance and enabling employees to grow, possibly into leaders themselves. How do you tackle all these issues, while still staying sane? According to Professor Svetlana Khapova, the answer is simple: ‘We need to stop looking only at management to solve things. Today’s issues are much deeper and more serious than before. To solve leadership issues, we need all disciplines.’
Auteur: Rachelle Wagner
From the VU building, you can see the Zuidas coming into view. Only a few hundred metres away from the university you will find big corporates, creative start-ups and influential law firms. Svetlana Khapova, Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Leadership, perhaps quite understandably wants to be part of the ‘continuous professional life cycle’ that happens over there, especially with all these huge topics leaders need to tackle.
It's no surprise then that as a professor whose academic career has focused both on careers and leadership pretty much her entire career, Khapova recently realized that leaders don’t need ‘just another two- or three-day course and are good to go’. Today, leadership requires much more. It’s a lifelong journey. And that’s why she founded the Leadership Academy: to help leaders understand what it is that required nowadays and to be part of that lifelong journey at the same time.
'We need to challenge leaders and potential leaders. We need them to think in much more multidimensional perspectives.’
Why leaders need multiple perspectives
One of the big questions VU’s Leadership Academy tackles head on is: what makes a good leader? That’s probably not a new question. But at the Leadership Academy they try to answer it in a way that feels, well, different to what we’ve seen before. And that is not a coincidence. ‘We need to challenge leaders and potential leaders,’ Khapova explains. ‘We need them to think in much more multidimensional perspectives.’ By multidimensional perspectives, Khapova means that leaders should not only focus on those tasks they are inclined to do - look at performance, give feedback and motivate employees – but also incorporate insights from other disciplines. That’s why you will find that philosophers, theologians, scientists and even medical researchers are involved in the Leadership Academy. ‘We have philosophers looking at the concept of promises by organizations, for example. We have theologians looking at hope and how this concept was developed in theology. We have colleagues from the medical faculty speaking about genetics and well-being. What can leaders learn from those perspectives and how can we apply them in management?’
Another core topic is perspective flexibility, especially when dealing with paradoxes. It is about recognizing that as a leader, you constantly operate in the midst of competing demands. Khapova illustrates this with a classic example: the tension between exploration and exploitation. Leaders must decide whether to invest in new, innovative initiatives (exploration) or focus on maximizing the performance of existing, successful operations (exploitation). Both are essential, yet they pull in opposite directions. The challenge becomes: how can leaders reconcile this seemingly impossible paradox?
With all this in mind, it comes as no surprise that Khapova believes it’s about time to look at leadership more broadly. ‘Leadership is much more than a style,’ she says. ‘We need to focus on the bigger issues at hand. We face disengagement at work, issues around social and psychological safety, and the ongoing debate about remote working.’ On top of that, the accountability of many leaders has shifted significantly. ‘A CEO is no longer responsible to the shareholders only, but also the to stakeholders, which are the employees and in many cases citizens, as well. It has become a multi-stakeholder environment.’
‘What I discovered is that there's a lot of disappointment among young people about current leaders as role models.’
The reluctance to lead
The downside is clear: leadership has become so complex and difficult that fewer people are willing to take on leadership roles. Younger generations, in particular, are asking themselves why they should even want to lead. Khapova wondered the same thing: why are young people so reluctant to lead? ‘There is the apparent reason: more focus on work and life balance. That’s the easy one. Work is no longer our only priority. ‘But that’s too simple,’ she says. ‘What I discovered is that there's a lot of disappointment among young people about current leaders as role models.’ That makes their reluctance understandable. ‘Some of them say “If this is where the current leadership brought us, I don't want to be part of this. Why should we have to clean up the mess previous generations made?’
The Zuidas as an ecosystem
But if no one wants to take on a leadership role, we face even more serious challenges in the coming decades. We need leaders who understand these complex issues and how to navigate them. That is why Khapova stresses that leadership is not just the responsibility of managers. ‘Everyone can be a leader, not just those in management positions. Leadership is the culture of an organization,’ she says. However, universities also play a crucial role: ‘We need to support people in this leadership crisis. We have a responsibility here.’ This was also one of the big motivations for Khapova to found the Leadership Academy. ‘We are helping leaders make sense of the world, make sense of leadership, of how we work, connect, and relate,’ Khapova says. ‘That's the kind of space people need today. And the university can provide that. So we definitely have a big role to play as leaders ourselves,’ she says.
It proves her point that leadership is not just the responsibility of managers or even employees, it goes beyond the borders of the corporate world. Leaders need to be everywhere. And the university not only can, but needs to take on that leadership role in this leadership crisis as well. ‘We need to be part of the professional’s ecosystem in Amsterdam,’ Khapova concludes. ‘For too long, we have been sort of in a conversation but been mostly separate from each other. Yet to me, it's one ecosystem.’
‘We need to support people in this leadership crisis. We have a responsibility here.’
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