In Thinkers 50 Leadership Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove focus on various dimensions and elements of leadership, a subject that has fascinated thoughtful commentators at least since a blind poet, Homer, created the Iliad and Odyssey; then, Sophocles and Shakespeare; and more recently, business thinkers who include Charles Handy.

They pose this question: “What must a new leader strive for?”

“The new leader generates and sustains trust. We’re all aware that the terms of the new social contract of work have changed. No one can depend on lifelong loyalty or commitment to any organization. Since 1985, about 25 percent of the American workforce has been laid off at least once. At a time when the new social contract makes the ties between organizations and their knowledge workers tenuous, trust becomes the emotional glue that can bond people to an organization.

“Trust is a small word with powerful connotation and is a hugely complex factor. The ingredients are a combination of competencies, constancy, caring, fairness, candor, and authenticity – most of all, the last. And the new leaders achieve that when they can successfully balance the tripod of forces that are working on and in most of us: ambition, competence, and integrity.”

To learn more about Charles Handy and his work, please click here.

Here is a direct link to the volumes authored by Crainer and/or Dearlove.