Respectful Leadership Is The Future of Work

With all of the media going crazy with emerging stories about misconduct continuing to come forward we have clearly entered the era of “glass houses” being shattered. 

What has been underground is coming to light and what has been tolerated is now being shown as unacceptable and will not be tolerated as we move forward.

The common theme with all abuse of any kind is ‘power’.

The old style of leadership was about having power over others and the future leadership is sharing power with all.

Today Louie CK came forwarded and admitted fault that he abused his position of power -this is a step forward in the right direction.

Any one of any gender, race, generation does not have the right to abuse power, to lord power over other humans for personal gain or to focus on self gratification.

In my research on the future of work I have repeatedly found that in the future of work ‘everyone is a leader’ – this is not a fluffy concept – this is a reality where all human beings are seen as valuable and every human being has input into future reality.

There is a changing of the guard from old style leadership of command and control, power over others and secret allegiances.

The new guard is open, transparent and all behaviors being held to a standard of human respect. Today any bad behavior can be photographed, video taped, or recorded in some way and that means that the true versions of ourselves can now be instantly exposed.

If there is anything to learn from the recent revelations is that this is just the beginning. There will be more people coming forward to identify bullies in all of their forms.

There is an opportunity to learn from these situations and the learnings are for all of us. Some of those are:

• The future of work requires respectful leaders – leaders who value humans as humans
• The future of work requires leaders who respect and appreciate diversity – diversity of gender, diversity of race, diversity of generations…..
• The future of work requires leaders who see that they are in the privileged position to inspire, mentor and help others
• The future of work requires leaders who can self regulate and self monitor for inappropriate language or acts
• The future of work requires leaders who are willing to not only take full responsibility for a misstep but also show the steps being taken to prevent a misstep ever being repeated
• The future of work requires leaders who are held to a high standard of ethical, thoughtful and inclusive behaviors.

Glass houses will continue to be shattered and abusive behaviors will be revealed as we head towards the new future being created on then planet right now.