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Characteristics of Third Generation Leadership & 3G Leaders

Guest post by: Douglas Long

Article Overview: This is a world in which people are almost addicted to learning new things – especially if they can help them with social networking. This is a world in which people are very aware of the vast amount of information available and in which they have to make daily decisions as to what information to accept and what to reject. This is a world in which, fundamentalists of any form aside, people are increasingly willing to grapple with complexity and seek new answers to age-old issues. This is a world in which we need 3G Leaders.

Characteristics of Third Generation Leadership & 3G Leaders

In the Harvard Business Review's book "Leaders on Leadership" (1992), Jimmy Carter, past President of the USA, says: "[a leader requires] the ability to work with other people, the capacity to expand one's mind and one's heart as the years go by, and to see the broader dimensions of the future. Most important, it's necessary not to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail. If a leader is not willing to attempt things that might not succeed, then he has little faith in himself or the goal he seeks to achieve."

In my book "Leaders: diamonds or cubic zirconia" (1998) I quote the people interviewed as stressing the first building block for a leader is for a person to recognise that they have a leadership responsibility and, coupled with this, to have the self confidence to acknowledge they are not always right and so to have a preparedness to enlist help from others and to apologise when they are wrong.

Self-confidence

Self-confidence is the base on which any leadership attitude or behaviour is built.

Most of us are born as out-going, psychologically sound infants. Unfortunately some of us develop into introverted, insecure children and adults resulting in bullying, mental and physical violence, drug abuse, victimhood, a sense of hopelessness, and the like. The ramifications of this are immense and add to many of the difficulties society faces today.

Most of this deterioration arises because we live in a "red zone" dominated society in which personal identity and security seems to come primarily from obeying hard and fast rules and conforming to what "society" deems as being appropriate. In this society a person's worth very often seems to be calculated by what they "have" rather than by what they "are". The result is that most of us strive for greater material success and feel somewhat inadequate if we fail to achieve it. I suggest that the recent Global Financial Crisis was (and is) a direct result of this approach.

Self-confidence doesn't mean being brash, aggressive, or offensive. Rather it means having a realistic sense of one's own strengths and weaknesses coupled with a determination to make a positive contribution to one's world wherever possible. Self-confidence means knowing you are a person in your own right - a person to be respected - and who gives respect to others simply because they are individual's in their own right, too. It means knowing that what you say and do is important - just as important as what is said and done by other people.

True self-confidence becomes possible when we shift our brain's locus of control from the red zone to the blue zone. Third Generation Leadership and 3G Leaders are conscious of this and learn how to manage down their red zones and to manage up their blue zones. They know that by doing this they will not only further develop their own self-confidence but that they will also help the development of those with whom they interact.

Expand one's mind ... to see the broader dimensions of the future

While physical growth is completed by one's late teens or early 20's, the "expansion of one's mind" - mental and emotional growth - is possible throughout our lives.

In the era of First Generation Leadership which held the belief that those in charge should make and implement decisions and G1 Leaders who then demanded obedience, there was little or no emphasis on most people continuing with formal learning experience after the completion of whatever schooling was prescribed. The elite would continue to grow but the vast majority were there simply to do what they were told. In the era of Second Generation Leadership which held the belief that those in charge should still make and implement decisions, G2 Leaders sought conformance with their views. In order to get this, some on-going education was necessary but the leader reserved the right to say what, how, and when such education or training was provided as well as to whom such education or training should be provided. Again, formal learning was not widely advocated for anyone and everyone.

I have a sneaking suspicion that, in the future, historians may argue that the single most important factor of the late 20^th century was the explosion in availability of and access to information because of such things as the internet, mobile phones, and social media. When I was a child, most homes did not have a telephone and those that did generally had "party" or shared lines. I remember when we got our first phone - a dedicated line - and the envy shown by quite a few of our neighbours. My children grew up in a world where computers were becoming common place and my grandchildren cannot imagine a world without the internet and mobile phones.

This is the world in which we now live and operate. It is a world in which young people find that most learning is done through networking outside of formal environments such as schools and universities: a world in which frequent changing of jobs is considered normal; and a world in which anything one wants to know can be ascertained almost instantaneously through the technologies available.

Back in the 1980's I remember one management writer using the old image of punch cards - those means of programming a computer or inputting data that were most commonly used during the 60's and early 70's - and stating that people wanted to be treated as individuals; they did not want to be "spiked, folded, or mutilated".

Welcome to the Third Generation Leadership world.

This is a world in which people are almost addicted to learning new things - especially if they can help them with social networking. This is a world in which people are very aware of the vast amount of information available and in which they have to make daily decisions as to what information to accept and what to reject. This is a world in which, fundamentalists of any form aside, people are increasingly willing to grapple with complexity and seek new answers to age-old issues. This is a world in which we need 3G Leaders.

Helping others develop true self confidence and to expand their minds are activities that are only fully possible when the leader has moved away from the red zone of anxiety to the blue zone of courage (see "The Success Zone" Mowat, Corrigan & Long, 2009, Global Publishing). They are characteristics of Third Generation Leadership and of 3G Leaders.

The characteristics of Third Generation Leadership and 3G Leaders are:

• they engage with others as individuals rather than seeking to obtain obedience or compliance
• they are collaborative and facilitative
• they encourage growth and self directed learning by everyone
• they respect other people even if they are not receiving respect in return
• they invite questions and discussion
• they ask questions with a view to helping others find their own solutions
• they listen to help others engage with their own or shared solutions
• they are totally non discriminatory in thought, word and action

Because of these characteristics, 3G Leaders are able to create environments in which people feel:

• emotionally safe
• unconditionally respected
• believed in as individuals
• listened to

and these are the critical conditions for people to be engaged not only with what they do but also with those they are doing it with.

These are the optimal conditions for organisational and personal success in the 21^st century.

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Article Tags: 3G Leaders, blue zone, complexity, decisions, red zone, self confidence, social networking, Third Generation Leadership



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