New Era Leadership for Liminal Times and Beyond

Abstract

This paper introduces a comprehensive, systemic approach to create the organizational leadership capabilities needed for the demands of the post-pandemic era. We call this New Era Leadership. While every age is marked by critical events and crises that drive change, we believe that the current combination of events and generational workforce shifts creates a powerful momentum for people to participate in shaping their environments, and an associated demand for co-creative and self-aware leaders. We asked ourselves if the known leadership models, supported by their methods, educational approaches and practices, are capable of meeting this challenge, and examined their features and capabilities. We take a historical view of the characteristics of legacy leadership models from ancient times to the present to understand the important factors and dynamics relating to leadership, the gaps that exist between existing leadership approaches and today’s needs and explore how a New Era Leadership model addresses those gaps. We detail the characteristics of the New Era Leader and the systemic, systematic actions needed to materialize this model, and conclude with a summary and ideas for future research directions.