Is This the New (Old) Business Leader?

Economic volatility is the new normal, according to The View from Harvard, and in this world, "leaders don't lead for very long" and have to contend with uncertainty and a constant threat of turmoil while running the business.

If this is so, businesses will be looking for a different kind of leadership model. Where will we find it? Joe Lampel, Professor of Strategy at Cass Business School, has a surprising suggestion: the public sector. Here's why.

For the past 20 years, businesses have extolled and rewarded entrepreneurship, opportunism, even aggression, in senior managers and leaders. Stewardship played a very distant second.

But that model is under attack, in almost every industry sector. Now we are seeing the negative aspects of this type of leader, their propensity to take ill-judged risks and make hubris-driven errors.

Employees can no longer trust their dynamo boss to keep them employed -- and leaders without trust don't get too far.

This could result in businesses reverting to a more old fashioned leadership model where stewardship becomes a priority. This new boss will look to take care of their business unit, to ensure it's not exposed to unnecessary risk.

And the best breeding ground for this type of leadership, argues Lampel, is in public sector organisations and not-for-profits, where people aren't motivated by stock options.

Once slightly looked down upon, job security is important again.That means businesses can introduce that into the employment relationship -- making it clear that recruits can look to the business to safeguard your job. This is not a return to the 'job-for-life' mentality, but it does suggest a revival of the collective ideal inherent in some company structures.

Some for-profits are better placed than others to develop this "now-tro" leadership model: Lampel names Centrica and John Lewis Partnership as two businesses more naturally oriented to organisational goals, rather than financial rewards.

A business is likely to need different leaders at different stages of development -- an entrepreneurial risk-taker to launch or revitalise a company, a steady hand to manage growth, a fixer to pinpoint and address specific problems in a mature business, then an entrepreneur again. But the current economic crisis seems to have disrupted this cycle for many businesses all at once.

Lampel's quick to point out that this is just one possible leadership trend that may emerge out of the current economic upheaval. "We know what has to happen," he says. "We just don't know who will provide the best model".