Defining and Developing Personal and Brand Leadership

This month two of us –Andrew Winston and Chris Laszlo – begin 2012 with an inquiry into how personal and brand leadership is evolving to serve both thriving businesses and a flourishing world.  The question of what leadership really looks like is vital; it’s getting clearer that tomorrow’s winners will require the skills for both creating profits and nourishing human and natural systems.

A December 14, 2011 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journalby Al Gore and David Blood notes that “businesses cannot be asked to do the job of governments, but companies and investors will ultimately mobilize most of the capital needed to overcome the unprecedented challenges we now face.” A long line of thought leaders from Peter Drucker to Michael Porter tell us business is moving in this direction; and a growing number of corporations are leading the way, from IBM and GE in the U.S. to Unilever, Puma, Munich RE and Santander abroad.

So what is changing in the task of leadership? We believe that businesses in every sector are on the cusp of a new paradigm of sustainable value creation (which we have explored elsewhere), one that calls for a different type of leadership. In this opening piece, we attempt to quickly outline some of our ideas on the topic, as a framing exercise for the month ahead. Read More...