The future of leadership: ten questions for business leaders

Anderson Petergeorge, GLI 2023, was invited by The Oxford Character Project to join 'The Future of Leadership', a discussion with Kim Polman and Paul Polman, which was co-sponsored by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. The discussion centred on the question:

What is the future of leadership in a rapidly changing world, full of opportunities and challenges?

Following the event, Anderson wrote a blog post on the future of leadership and posed ten questions to current business leaders. You can read the entire post below.

Original post source: https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/oxfor...

We were joined by Kim Polman (Chair of Reboot the Future), and Paul Polman (Business leader, climate and equality campaigner, co-author of 'Net Positive: how courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take'- a Financial Times Business Book of the Year). Kim and Paul kicked off the discussion by sharing insights from their extensive experience of leadership in business and social impact organizations.

As a group, we were able to come up with a multitude of thought-provoking questions to continue being discussed throughout our careers. Below are ten examples of questions that surfaced from our discussions.

1. What can we do to get more cross-generational collaboration and voices in our decision making?

2. As leaders, how do we work to change current metrics and measurements focused on profit-maximization at the detriment of society?

3. How do you empower people to be courageous within systems of power?

4. How do we conceptualize impact beyond ESG?

5. As leaders, how do we reignite faith in our team?

6. Do we as leaders spend enough time reflecting and aligning our own values

7. Do organizations have a clear idea of the values they stand for and promote?

8. How can we move to a more decentralized leadership model?

9. How do we bring currently invisible voices to the tables?

10. How can we combat short-terminism in our goal setting?

A few notable quotes from the participants and speakers that left a mark on all of us from the discussion:

• 'Leadership that got us here is not what will get us out'

• 'Putting yourself in service of others is also in your best interest'

• 'When you bring like-minded people together they become much more courageous as they tend to rise to the common denominator'

• 'Balance is found between competition and cooperation'

As MBAs, looking to re-enter the workforce with aspirations to lead teams and organizations, these questions are critical for us to consider during and after the MBA to become ethical and successful leader. Whether it’s in our classroom sessions in courses such as Capitalism in Debate, in our GLI weekly sessions on developing our character or even a casual coffee in the Oxford Saïd cafeteria, I am looking forward to continuing these discussions with my MBA peers.