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LEADERSHIP IN A

DISRUPTIVE

WORLD

Four Practices that Established Leaders Must Learn

from the High-Tech Startup Community JEFFREY D. YERGLER, PH.D.

My experience as a university instructor of management and become like a millstone tied around their necks (Friedman,
as a leadership and management consultant has led me to two 2007). Tey hope upon hope that what they know and how
beliefs about leaders and leadership today. First, the increasingly they lead will be enough to move their organizations forward
complex nature of leadership and the corresponding struggle despite their fear, concern, and their awareness of disruptions
involved in navigating this complexity place tremendous in, around, and beyond their organizations. Tese leaders have
pressures on a leader’s confdence and self-efcacy. Tis most likely miscalculated and, as a result, organizations and the
challenge to self-efcacy results when leaders sense they lack the people in them become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned.
expertise and knowledge required to thrive in this complexity. Bazerman (2014) identifes this tendency as “implicit bias”
Second, this complexity is felt within organizations resulting in and it results when leaders “discount facts that contradict
high levels of emotional reactivity which emerge as expectations the conclusions [they] want to reach and…uncritically accept
placed upon leaders to consistently execute fawlessly (Friedman, evidence that supports [their] positions. Unaware of [their]
2007). Te accelerated use of technology, social media platforms skewed information processing, [they] erroneously conclude that
that produce immediate transparency and instant global [their] judgments are free of bias” (p. 53).
communities, along with economic, social, and political Leaders have no choice but to learn to lean into these headwinds
uncertainties can all converge to generate a tsunami of fear- of disruption. Tere is no room for retreating or circling the
producing paralysis that can constrain the creative capacity of wagons thinking that the best ofense is a good defense. Johansen
even the best leaders. Feeling locked-down by their fear, leaders (2012) beautifully described how leaders must learn to thrive
may fnd themselves unable to move forward into and through in what he called the “VUCA” world (volatility, uncertainty,
this cauldron of uncertainty and anxiety. Clearly, Goldsmith and complexity, and ambiguity). When leaders choose to resist
Reiter’s (2007) advice would be an apt and timely description the urgency for an agile approach to learning that leads to
of this leadership conundrum, “What Got You Here Won’t Get informed action and when they ignore their ever-shrinking
You Tere.” Tese crises in leadership courage are more acutely portfolio of relevant skills and tools to thrive in a VUCA world,
noted by Kellerman (2012) who observed that, “humankind… they can accelerate their long, slow slide into mediocrity and
is sufering from a crisis of confdence in those who are charged inefectiveness (Johansen, 2012).
with leading wisely and well, and from a surfeit of mostly well-
intentioned but fnally false promises made by those supposed to To be fair, any leader trying to infuence, direct, and manage
make things better” (p. xiv). complex organizations in 2015 must navigate difcult and
unfamiliar terrain. Leaders must indeed be prudent, thoughtful,
Many of our leaders keep a stranglehold on the way they have careful, and strategic when it comes to casting vision, setting
always practiced leadership even though this grasping has strategies, and developing and executing tactics that address

LEADERSHIP Vol. 21.1 Spring/Summer 2015 7

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