LEADERSHIP
organisation and business operation in a dramatic and exciting way. There are two responsibilities that human leaders should not give away or delegate to any other form of power. The first is the meaning of things in the sense of protecting our identity as living beings: who are we? What do we want to be? Where are we going? The second is the value of things in the sense of ensuring our survival and destiny as a species among other species: what do we care about? What is important for us as human beings? This selection leads to two critical leadership drivers: namely, sense-making and value-making. By combining them, we can identify four di erent leadership orientations characterised by a series of typical behaviours ( see box on page 36 ). It is quite obvious that educational providers involved in the preparation of the next generation of leaders are facing some major issues around the creation of new learning content and processes based on human partnership with AI. The most important question for us right now might be, “How do we prepare people for a world that we know nothing about?” Or perhaps, “How do we teach what we do not know?” We’ll leave you with a pertinent quote from no less a person than Albert Einstein: “As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.”
But back to the self-assessment exercise. What have you selected, and what does it mean for you? It is up to you to decide if it makes sense or not. If in doubt, check it out with someone who knows you well and whom you trust. Keep in mind that this is not a test, but an instrument designed to make you reflect on where you stand as a leader. We hope that you take it in the spirit in which it is intended, as a positive speculation on leadership. If you selected A, it could mean that you belong to the generation of leaders still attached to their well-tested attitudes and behaviours. Their philosophy is: it worked in the past, so it should work today. You trust your experience and you prefer the good old way of getting things done. You may be defined as an ‘old-timer’ leader who can still deliver great results. Be careful though, you could become obsolete without even realising it, as we need a good mix of past and present wisdom. If you opted for B, you are not afraid of forging a partnership with AI. You might be at the forefront of the new kind of cooperation between AI and human intelligence. It is risky, but also in line with the latest requirements of the time. This is akin to the new leadership trend that we call intelligence-plus. If you chose C, it is possible that you belong to the generation of new leaders who are responsible for the creation of values to ensure the survival and development of people. Business is good as long as it serves people’s quality of life. Do you recognise yourself as an ethical leader? If you went for D, then the meaning of things is critical for you. There is a good chance that you believe in checking the meaning of all the assumptions you are using to make sense of things. Actually, creating new assumptions is maybe your basic leadership motivation. Perhaps you are really a philosophical leadership type? Intelligence analysed “It may be beyond the limits of human intelligence to understand how human intelligence works,” according to Noam Chomsky. Let’s put things into perspective and take a risk. The risk is to guess what will become more critical in the near future. Let’s use a little bit of imagination to examine what leaders must learn to focus on today and tomorrow because of the challenges of this new world in the making. We need to bear in mind that it won’t be business as usual anymore. The growing role of NOI is changing the rules of the
BIOGRAPHIES
Professor Pierre Casse is the leadership chair at Iedc-Bled School of Management in Slovenia and the author of Leadership without Concessions and Leadership for a New World , as well
as the co-author with Paul George Claudel of Leading with Wisdom .
Elnura Irmatova is a researcher and DBA candidate at the school
Ambition DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | 37
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online