As I was reading through McKinsey’s “centered leadership” model, I couldnt help but try to draw comparisons with the Kouzes and Posner’s 5 explemary principles of leadership—model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable other’s to act, and encourage the heart. Why do we need yet another model of leadership?

I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on how (or if) curiosity and resilience fit into this leadership model. What I have learned through this economic downturn is that these are critical qualities to search out when identifying current and emerging leaders in my business.

The model is interesting and has some similarity to the models we use in coaching, the latter are more holistic and complete. The centered leadership model concept focuses on the life side instead of the leadership attributes side, so it could apply to anyone, not just leaders. That’s why this model misses some components exclusive to leaders, especially the relationship role of leaders to their followers, including directing, inspiring, and developing people. Even though this part is missing, I am still very glad to see that the centered leadership model has some pioneering effect by introducing life core into leadership. So the brighter near future for leadership is to combine both life core and leadership-specific attributes together to create a more meaningful model.

If we are to learn significant lessons from the recent events we need a different approach to leadership. Unfortunately we may need different leaders, because leaders facing the future will need as Joan McClusky says the ability to weigh the personal cost of their leadership decisions, we need people who understand the gravity of their role, who are able to take large steps, not retreat to the middle, to consensus, for we have seen what happens then. We cant create leaders any more, we must support them as they accept the responsibility of leadership in a world governed by complexity and ambiguity. No five or ten characteristics of leadership handed out package-like to aspiring leaders will in any way either select the elite leaders we need, or equip them. As an executive coach, let me tell you, leaders are those will step up because they understand they have to and they are willing to pay the cost.

This is a very intriguing insight into leadership during a crisis. Often tough situations can be mitigated by centered leadership, while even mild situations can go out of control without them. I am delighted to note that most leaders recognise the need for leadership based on the parameters suggested by McKinsey. But the real test is whether the lessons learnt during the crisis will be forgotten soon afterwards.

Surely asking leaders to self certify on these dimensions is subjective to say the least. Being ‘self satisfied’ is not an obejctive marker of effective leadership. A more reliable set of data would include externally observed criterion. Whilst the leadership issue seems set to remain woolly and contingent upon a range of random circumstances, at least for those of us reading the ‘research,’ we might be able to momentarily suspend disbelief in the ‘pop psych.’ Less Oprah and more gravitas, please, McKinsey.

It is not difficult to see the connection between practicing this and enhanced positivity, connecting better with people, more sure to take on the unexplored, and amidst all this, conserving energy not only because of reduced negativity but a striking of the reservoir of energy within. To me this all seems connected to the dimension of “meaning”—finding one’s core and alligning life accordingly.

If you rely solely on self ratings of things like passion for leadership, leadership success, and life satisfaction, it is hardly surprising that these are highly correlated—in general people who are more likely to say one nice thing about themselves are more likely to say other nice things about themselves. The real test would be if the self-reported results were related to some independent assessment of leadership skill or success.

There’s something about this survey that smacks of “just how terrific are you and how great is your life as a result?” I’d be more interested in seeing a survey based on characteristics of leaders such as Winston Churchill in WWII. Such as—How much do you weigh broad versus limited beneficiaries when making decisions? How much does your personal concept of integrity weigh in your decisions? How much support do your decisions get across the range of those affected?

Management practice requires a performing operational organisation. “Centered leadership”, as you state in your article, is aimed to “put up” such an organisation while considering evolving external impulses. The rough, short term changes coming up due to the crisis may be considered as such impulses.

I myself am a consultant with strategic organisation experience, and a background of economics and mathematics. Recent developments in formal logic thinking, as developed in specialised research institutes around the world, make it possible to establish accurate models of enterprise behaviour. Such models may be of great value to simulate desirable enterprise behaviour and offer valuable insight to management.

Therefore, I miss such considerations in your approach.