Distributed leadership is all the rage in today's corporate world

Bosses, step back a bit and let your team do the job. They won't disappoint you.

In a challenging business environment, with disruptions like AI and information deluge, an understated style of leadership - leading from the back- is coming to the fore.

"Leading from the front is not only broken... youngsters resent that kind of leadership. We have no option but to look at alternative ways of leadership. Perhaps, leading from the back will make for more sustainable success. It will certainly make for happier organisations. Technology has made people lonely... there is a need to bring warmth in society," said Ravi Kant, former vice-chairman, Tata Motors.

Kant, who has nearly 50 years of corporate experience across industries - including 15 years with Tata Motors where he was CEO, MD, and VC - says he has followed this form of leadership. Leading from the front has been borrowed from the military style of leadership.

According to Kant, if anyone says 'they know it all', they come with a lot of ego. "You cannot work like that anymore. You've got to be humble... you've got to understand that it is about distributed leadership today."

While earlier people aligned themselves with their organisations, Kant says that today if companies do not align with their employees, they will not succeed. "Today's young employee says, 'I can do wonders, but you have to give me freedom'. With work-from-home and hybrid becoming the norm, work has become even more decentralised. We must be flexible so that we are able to deal with any situation that arises. Leading from the front has no relevance, no role in this kind of a scenario," says Kant.

Shepherd Leadership
In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela equated a great leader with a shepherd: "He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along, they are being directed from behind."Pallavi Kathuria, partner at leadership advisory firm Egon Zehnder, says: "A shepherd never loses control of his flock and course-corrects when the flock goes astray. In this act, the leader is giving direction to his people from behind. For about a decade, this style has been appreciated, but the reason it is gaining popularity now is because the world has become more complex and people want to work for a purpose and not take orders from a leader."

In a BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible) world, Kathuria says people are increasingly looking for a different style of leadership, and leaders themselves have learned that the era of the 'hero leader' is over.

Striking A Balance
Several styles of leadership have been noticed throughout history, including micro-management. Some say these could be perceived differently by different people.Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati says leadership is a combination of what one might call leading from the front and back. Some mistakenly believe that 'leading from the back' means a leader relinquishes all control and simply lets others lead, says Gulati. He adds that the seeming paradox is that in times of uncertainty especially, people do want to be led from the front. But they also want to be heard. 'Servant leadership' is another source of confusion as people consider it to be leading from the back i.e. not making any decisions at all.

"We presume two extremes - one where the leader does nothing and simply sits back, and the other where they are making all the decisions by themselves from the front. Neither is true and neither is good. The answer, of course, is more nuanced and is about great leaders who understand how to create the right environment in which others make decisions. And they are also not ones to shy away from making bold decisions when they have to make them," says Gulati.

Through all this, says Gulati, one of the challenges of leadership is to elicit followership - where others follow them not because they are the boss but because they want to. "This can be hard," adds Gulati.

Risk Becoming A Misfit
There will always be those who resist this change. Kant says the 'alpha male' types who do not align with this idea of leading from the back, because they are made differently, will become misfits.Kathuria says CEO tenures are shortening because people are rejecting the A-type leadership style. However, this (leading from behind) style is taking time to become more prevalent mainly because leaders worry they will lose control if they step back, says Kathuria.