When it comes to leadership, most companies have been talking for years about the same desired model: empathetic, collaborative leaders who know how to delegate, motivate, and build a shared vision for their teams, and who have excellent communication skills to handle conflict and manage diversity. The central idea is that a modern leader adds value indirectly, by creating the conditions for others to fully realize their potential.
However, we repeatedly see that these intentions do not move beyond the realm of formal discourse, and that the so-called “heroic” or traditional leadership paradigm remains in force in practice: a model in which the leader tells others what they have to do, and in which authority is built on two pillars: technical knowledge and charisma. Leading, from this perspective, essentially means controlling, directing, and protecting others. It is a clearly paternalistic and personalistic exegesis of leadership, which tends to foster submissive and reactive individuals around it. In general, the more heroic a leader is, the more dependent the organization becomes on him or her.
Now then: if, on paper, the need to shift from the heroic model to the modern one is so clear, why do we see the former still prevailing in practice? Where do we fall short when it comes to calibrating the change process?
In my view, there are three phenomena that converge in explaining this gap between theory and practice:
First, we experience what I call the “Fallacy of opposites”: a tendency to assume that the leadership paradigm of the future should be defined by its antagonism to the traditional model. For example, if the latter tended to focus on technical knowledge as a source of legitimacy, the new one will focus on “soft” skills or on the leader as a “coach”; if the former was characterized by centralized decision-making, the new style will bet on democratizing it. This process of cognitive simplification, aimed at rationalizing and organizing reality with clean, clear-cut categories, does nothing but block change. Indeed, people who were shaped within the traditional model will refuse to stop being who they are. Additionally, reality shows that many attributes of the heroic scaffolding remain as relevant as ever. Ronald Heifetz, for example, argues that technical knowledge is a condition for exercising leadership (though not sufficient).
The second phenomenon that conspires against change is what I call the “unreflectiveness of the obvious”: it is hard for anyone to resist or argue against the premises of the desired model: who would say that a modern leader does not have to delegate tasks? Or that they should not communicate with empathy and openness toward others? Or that feedback is a waste of time? The problem is precisely that what needs to be done is so unquestionable that no one does it. In a way, because the goal is so obvious, we unconsciously believe we are already aligned, and this blocks the energy needed to work through the process of getting there.
Finally, there is a third factor (perhaps more structural than psychological) that explains the persistence of heroic management in organizations. It is linked to contextual elements that mean companies can still achieve their objectives and survive with predominantly traditional leadership cultures. In other words, the urgency to move from one model to the other is not yet so clear-cut, and this undermines any attempt at change. To make matters worse, the upper levels are still often occupied by heroic leaders, creating an inconsistency between theory and practice that is still difficult to resolve.
In short, a company committed to creating a new leadership culture must overcome the temptation to simplify, in a Manichaean way, the essence of its ideal in opposition to what is “old.” Modern leaders are not a new species on earth, but rather people with a more sophisticated (and less systematizable) mindset for managing more complex environments. This requires bringing together, in the same person, skills that are hard to reconcile (some more typical of the old paradigm, others more aligned with emerging practices). This work of adding complexity to the desired culture will help us see the new model not as something obvious and self-evident, but as something we must question, build, choose, and work toward. This process will probably help us see the leadership of the future as more necessary and urgent than it may seem at first glance.