BY\u00a0FAISAL HOQUE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Covid-19 pandemic <\/strong>has and will continue to change many of the fundamental aspects of how we live our lives. Forced to 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 \u2014 as consumers, businesspeople, students and citizens.<\/p>\n Long an issue eliciting varied degrees of concern, climate change<\/strong> 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 \u2014 the recent severe winter weather in the Southern United States being one such example \u2014 climate change is also upending our choices as consumers who are prioritizing environmental impact, product durability and buying local. Business models now need to take green policies into consideration and to make them visible to the public. Government is now more than ever compelled to address pollution, traffic and the impact of development at all levels \u2014 a more informed and connected citizenry is paying attention.<\/p>\n An additional, insidious driver of change is misinformation.<\/strong> Disseminated and reinforced by social media, twisted truths and sheer lies are not only leading us to question who to believe and why but also our confidence in health care, government, education and public discourse.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And when I say all of us, I mean all of us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Such a broad seismic shift has effectively empowered every person, group and organization to be leaders in all sorts of capacities<\/strong>. Individual access to data and connectivity \u2014 coupled with varied forces that have reworked how we see ourselves and the world around us \u2014 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 \u2018leaders\u2019.<\/p>\n But not just any type of leader.<\/p>\n Traditionally, leaders operated in a transactional environment<\/strong> \u2014 a hierarchical system primarily focused on short term results. The basic procedure was straightforward:<\/p>\n That\u2019s 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\u2019s more an issue as to what transactional leadership is not designed to do that makes it ill suited to a world characterized by change.<\/p>\n For one thing, transactional leadership\u2019s emphasis on the short term isn\u2019t positioned to foster long term thinking and planning. Where dynamic change can quickly transform what\u2019s current to outdated, vision that goes beyond tomorrow is essential to recognize the change that\u2019s occurring and plan to best leverage that over an extended timeframe.<\/p>\n Transactional leadership is also geared to fixed, systemic processes \u2014 do it this way and be rewarded accordingly. By urging others to just stick to the script, that approach also effectively discourages creativity and innovation \u2014 two attributes that will prove essential to constantly adapting to how we work, live, play and learn.<\/p>\n The far more effective alternative is transformational leadership<\/strong>. The concept of transformational leadership<\/a> 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 \u201cfour I\u2019s\u201d): idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration.<\/p>\n Transformational leaders focus on people \u2014 they encourage, inspire and motivate those around them to innovate and create positive change. They encourage autonomy and creativity. They are open and responsive to change. They\u2019re agile by choice.<\/p>\n They are keenly aware of the impact their decisions have on those around them as well as themselves. They understand that their values and integrity embodied in their actions and choices are both an internal as well as an external model. How they choose to lead themselves works hand in hand with how they work with and inspire others.<\/p>\n In world of explosive change and transformation, transformational leadership at all levels \u2014 from the heads of state down to the individual \u2014 offers the best opportunity to leverage change to transform all of our lives for the better. That goes for how we work, play, govern ourselves and consider and plan for our collective future.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That this level of extraordinary change can seriously backfire against us has already been shown. The horrific events in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6 underscore that very real danger \u2014 a threat that Stanford law professor Nathaniel Persily foreshadowed in a 2019 report, \u201cThe Internet\u2019s Challenge to Democracy: Framing the Problem and Assessing Reforms. In it, Persily points out that the \u201coriginal promise of digital technologies was unapologetically democratic\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n That example from public events underscores a call to action for leadership \u2014 for government, obviously, but also the technology industry\u2019s complicity in providing a platform for dissemination of perilous disinformation that threatened the physical safety of our nation\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also a call to action for every one of us as leaders \u2014 leaders who recognize our own responsibility to identify and mitigate the spread and import of feigned information. That applies to individuals as well as business leaders, community groups, educators, the religious community \u2014 all leaders empowered to make a difference.<\/p>\n But issues such as misinformation are not merely problems to be addressed. They\u2019re also enormous opportunities that afford not just the chance to right wrongs but to also build something far better in their place. The dichotomy of danger\/reward exists throughout the upheaval of change we\u2019re experiencing. For instance, climate change is undeniably perilous, but it\u2019s also been called the greatest health care opportunity of the 21st century.<\/p>\n How everyone of us acts as leaders will dictate whether the outcome will be outright disaster or a healthy, ecologically stable planet.<\/p>\n The opportunity that transformational leadership offers the leader in everyone is both significant and meaningful. We all have an obligation to ourselves as well as others to understand, nurture and manage the \u201crevolution\u201d that\u2019s taking place \u2014 rather than having revolutionary change manage us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n [Featured Photo by Diego Jimenez<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2021 by Faisal Hoque. All rights reserved<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Serial entrepreneur Faisal Hoque is the founder of Shadoka<\/a>, which develops accelerators and technology solutions for sustainable growth. He is the author of Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation, and Sustainability<\/em><\/a> (McGraw-Hill) and other books. Follow him on Twitter <\/em>@faisal_hoque<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a world being transformed by unprecedented change, effective, meaningful leadership is becoming even more essential, just as quickly. That offers historic opportunities, provided we recognize what sort of leaders we need to have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[556,557,531,630,1],"tags":[978,909,625,550,652,560],"class_list":["post-8781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-most-recent-blogs","category-innovation-blogs","category-leadership","category-transformation","category-uncategorized","tag-change-management","tag-future-of-work","tag-growth","tag-innovation","tag-leadership","tag-management"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n
\n
\n