In search of lost leadership
In this essay, Annakerttu argues that the leadership ideal formed in recent decades — shaped by openness, optimism and competitive individualism — is entering a period of transition.A leader sits in a therapist’s office
They speak of feeling inadequate and of how difficult it is to be present, empathetic and attentive all at once. Leaders are expected to support others, notice signs of exhaustion, take emotions seriously and build trust. And yet they are also expected to be the one who ultimately states where the organisation is heading and what it will stand by.
At the same time, on the organisation’s Slack channel, strategy is being debated. One person wonders whether the direction still feels meaningful. Another questions whether psychological safety is truly being upheld. A third asks why the work no longer feels significant. Financial results and market forecasts move quietly in the background, yet only a few engage with them directly. Attention turns to the leader — to their ability to acknowledge concerns while moving the organisation forward.
In this cross-pressure we see something revealing: twenty-first-century leadership has become the place where financial results and individual inner narratives meet.
Our understanding of leadership is always shaped by wider societal change. It is inseparable from questions of power — who holds knowledge, and how that knowledge is used. When technology, economic logic and cultural ideals shift, so too does the kind of leadership that is considered legitimate and effective.
In this essay, I examine this shift through a historical lens and explore how our understanding of leadership has evolved according to who holds knowledge — and therefore power.
I argue that the ideal of flat, autonomy-emphasising leadership that emerged during an era of openness and optimism is now under strain. As uncertainty deepens and working life intensifies, the leader's role as a provider of direction is strengthening once more. This is not a return to authoritarian management, but a rather a restoration of boundaries and responsibility.
When Management Knew and Workers Executed
Few members of executive teams today would consciously trace their leadership philosophy back to Frederick Winslow Taylor. Yet Taylor profoundly shaped how we think about organising work and exercising authority.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, he developed what came to be known as scientific management in response to the coordination problems created by industrialisation. As mass production expanded, supply chains lengthened and consumer markets grew more complex, production became harder to manage. Information multiplied, and coordination grew more demanding.
Taylorism accelerated the development of modern bureaucracy. It rested on the idea that work could be broken down, measured, standardised and optimised. Planning and decision-making were centralised in management, while execution was delegated to workers. Order, hierarchy and control were treated as conditions for efficiency. The system generated unprecedented productivity gains.
Its view of the human being, however, was narrow and mechanical. Workers were primarily seen as executors of predefined tasks. Knowledge of how work should be performed most efficiently was extracted from them and concentrated in management. The centralisation of knowledge meant the centralisation of power.
In factories this was visible in concrete forms of discipline. Supervisors observed work directly and controlled its rhythm. Historical accounts even describe factory clocks as instruments of authority. The working day began and ended according to time set by management, which could differ from public clocks. Workers had no independent means of verifying it.
Taylorism’s influence extended far into the twentieth century, and its bureaucratic legacy persists wherever information flows through reports, metrics and processes.
When Autonomy Began to Blur the Boundaries
As knowledge essential to work moved closer to employees and work itself detached from fixed times and places, managerial control began to loosen. Several developments unfolded simultaneously. The globalised economy made operating environments more complex and increased the demand for broader and more varied information. A generation raised in prosperity and peace, and better educated, proved less willing to accept repetitive roles.
Employees were increasingly becoming specialists whose value lay in gathering and interpreting information and solving problems. Meanwhile, highly standardised work was relocated to lower-cost regions. Consequently, the focus of leadership shifted from supervising individual performance to managing the flow of information within organisations. This laid the foundations for modern knowledge work.
With technological development, work gradually detached from place and time, and could eventually be performed almost anywhere. Initially this felt liberating. Over time it became expected. Boundaries were no longer defined by office walls or working hours, but by individual discretion. A new norm of availability emerged.
Decision-making autonomy was expanded and responsibility moved closer to teams. The assumption was that in a rapidly changing environment the best solutions arise where knowledge resides. Leadership was redefined accordingly. Hierarchies were flattened, leaders left their corner offices and positioned themselves as coaches who enable, facilitate and listen. As the most visible example, this shift appeared in start-ups, where the boss was a friend and people played ping-pong at work.
Yet responsibility dispersed more quickly than a shared sense of direction strengthened. Information became widely accessible, but forming a coherent collective picture grew harder as viewpoints multiplied. In many organisations, strategic direction remained abstract. Mission and purpose were articulated but translating them into concrete actions and clear boundaries proved difficult.
Values such as courage, entrepreneurship and accountability were written into corporate charters while performance metrics were tightened.
In many organisations, autonomous teams now develop solutions from their own vantage points, without a shared direction. Pressure increases, urgency accelerates and workloads expand. Eventually exhausted teams begin to ask: where is this heading in the bigger picture? Why are we working on these exact things?
What is missing is leadership.
In an era of chronic uncertainty, organisations must recognise that the leader’s core task needs to be restored: responsibility for forming the overall picture, making major strategic choices and undertaking difficult prioritisation.
The Restoration of Safe Boundaries
The Taylorist image of the human being has rightly been discarded. Yet the hierarchies that faded during years of optimism and growth, and the power structures that became less visible, are reaching a turning point. The promise of the boss as friend and of work being light, inspiring and endlessly engaging resonates less in a world where growth is no longer assumed and the future feels less certain.
Times have changed. Uncertainty creeps everywhere — in global affairs and in everyday life alike. Stable career paths feel more fragile. Expanding layers of coordination and constantly evolving tools exhaust people. In this situation, many consciously seek to limit the place of work in their lives. Work cannot define a person entirely. For that very reason, people begin to long for clearer boundaries — for distinct modes of time, for knowing when they are working and when they are not.
The moment calls for leaders who do not waver under competing opinions, but who make clear decisions and remain consistent. Their task is to define the boundaries within which teams exercise autonomy.
Strong leadership also requires self-awareness. A leader is not omniscient, but they are responsible for structuring the broader picture. They ask questions, listen and refine their understanding as new information emerges. At the same time, the organisation must experience that not everything is perpetually open to renegotiation. A chosen direction should hold until data and reality clearly indicate otherwise.
Such leadership demands the capacity to tolerate disappointment. Not every decision will satisfy everyone, yet decisions must provide a basis on which to build. What matters is that choices are not arbitrary and that their reasoning is made explicit for workers to get on board.
This period is also marked by a search for signals of continuity and safety. These may appear in concrete forms: organisations that communicate their history, their roots and their connection to a larger narrative. Offices, symbols and practices that convey that even if the environment shifts, we are not disappearing. It is the leader’s task to recognise these stabilising elements and build a vision upon them that can endure uncertainty.
The leader may still find themselves sitting in a therapist’s office. For many, this may be the right place to recalibrate their ego, strengthen their self-awareness, and seek the emotional support that they can no longer expect from their subordinates. Restoring safe boundaries in leadership does not mean becoming harsher or less empathetic. Rather, it is about recognising that the responsibility for setting direction ultimately rests with the leader, even at the risk of being wrong. A leader does not need to know everything. However, they are expected to chart the path.
That, after all, is what they are paid to do.
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