Decades ago, Peter Drucker brought us The Effective Executive. In a world where there is less and less administrative structure, less unionization, and a more diverse workforce, the model of leadership remains fluid. Some, such as Ken Blanchard, have gone so far as to say that the old way of leadership is ‘dead’. Finally, organizational psychologists like Adam Grant encourage us all to use our unique, “Original” (pardon the pun) attributes to follow our morals to lead a productive life. Taken together, to serve as a dynamic leader in the 21st century, the leader must be adaptable, apt, and genuinely empathic. We as a society will face challenges that we’ve never dreamed of before with the coalescing of multiple fields of study. As interdisciplinary researchers, clinicians, psychologists, executives, and writers, we’ve been preparing for this very need. The traditional training for scientific researchers was to “stay in their lane”, thus identifying a core area, and subsequently study that for their lifetime. This has changed. Now, researchers are expected to, and really need to, fuse the concepts, practices, and tools from a variety of fields together to most aggressively and accurately address a question. The world is not without variables. As researchers, we try to limit the variables within an experiment. However, excluding all norms of the world make the experiment artificial, as we (and our experiments) are influenced by a variety of factors of which we’ll never be able to control. This principle demonstrates the core need of effective leaders today. The effective leader is understanding of different subject matters and their integration. The effective leader prioritizes diversity. The effective leader puts people’s well-being first. The effective leader has continuous communication so that constituents are never left guessing, nervous, or scared. The effective leader prepares to fail, and prepares to have his/her staff fail. The effective leader maintains humility, creativity, diversity, accessibility, and effective planning, while simultaneously maintaining accountability among the group. We bring you strategies to be an Effective Leader. Looking for resources to help you manage up, down, and side to side? Let’s start Leading from the Middle.
