Leaders are responding to situations and missing the changes in context

"The better leaders focus and respond to situations the more likely they miss changes in context. These always derail leaders as they require a fundamental rethink of the rules of leadership, author Emmanuel Gobillot told delegates at the CIPD annual conference in Manchester. "While this thinking is not new, it is now critical," said Gobillot, who wrote the UK and US bestseller, The Connected Leader. "We are now in the midst of a change of context."

A number of trends have been ignored by many large organisations and the leadership mindset needs to shift, he said. Changing demographics mean "you can no longer Photoshop diversity out of your business", Gobillot said. "We will be sitting around a table where the other people around that table have little in common with us. What will you do when you can no longer relate to the people around the table? Your experience becomes irrelevant."

Advances in technology, volume of information and the democratisation of the worker are shaking up ways of working. These trends pose major questions for leaders. "In today's world experience is irrelevant, expertise is irrelevant, efforts are irrelevant and power is irrelevant. Most organisations are ‘depunctualised' -  they no longer make sense. How do leaders repunctuate the business? They need to bring coherence," Gobillot warned.

He said leaders need to ask why their organisation exists and why anyone would want to be led by them. "It is always about the plan. If the plan doesn't work you have got to make another one. You need to align through narratives. The Elvis fallacy is everywhere at the moment - a little less conversation and a little more action. If you restrict conversation you will not come out of the crisis," he said.

 Without a move away from structural segmentation towards a deep understanding of social structures leadership will be dead, Gobillot concluded. HR can help this move by asking tough questions and holding people to account, being "honest brokers" and being "vocal about what they see going wrong in the business".