In the 21st-century workplace where there is a stronger emphasis on collaborative working and team-building, where does this leave the notion of leadership?

“The view of leadership in business has changed over the past few decades,” says David Thompson, who is director of talent management at investment bank ABN Amro. “We need to rethink the way that we lead other people.

“Previously, being a leader has been about setting goals for the team and, more often than not, teams do need a leader. But the Generation Yers – those born after 1980 – are demanding different things from their leaders.”

While previous leadership ideas were based on directing and controlling, nowadays people “want to be seen as individuals, to be given the space to be innovative, and to be trusted to get the results in their own way”, says Thompson.

Almost two-thirds of people adopt different personalities depending on whether they are at home or at work, and Thompson says that it is the people who are the same at work and play that provoke a stronger emotional engagement from their workforce. “People are two to three times more compelled to work for them than for managers who don’t have that authenticity,” he says. “In recent times, the practice has been making people fit into a particular mould and act in a certain way. That notion is falling away and you actually get more out of people if you give them license to be themselves.”

Julia Newall, a co-head at Goldman Sachs University, the investment bank’s internal training programme, agrees that there has been a shift in leadership style. “It is more participative and facilitative whereas before it was a lot more directive. The benefit is empowerment. People put in more effort when they feel empowered and that impacts on the bottom line.”

Leadership style must depending on the team, adds Newall. “If you have a junior team, you are going to need a leader who can set the vision for the team; with an experienced, mature team the manager might take a more participatory role.”

Enlightened organisations are giving their leaders more freedom, says business expert Lynda Gratton. “Leaders need to be capable of bucking convention and creating innovation.”

Businesses looking to create dynamic, innovative leaders need to treat them well, says Gratton, citing communications company LG, which sends its leaders on year-long sabbaticals. “Leaders are people with high potential who are under a lot of pressure,” she says. “They have no time to relax and find out who they are. On a break they can discover something about themselves.”

And sometimes the best leaders are ones who don’t actually lead. Says Cambridge University’s Judge Business School author Mark de Rond: “If you step back, then other people have to step up to the plate.”

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