MODERN CHALLENGES AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Before the conference «The state of the world, the need for a new paradigm and the role of Ukraine in it» conference speakers – representatives of the World Academy of Art and Science and the World University Consortium – held a series of lectures at leading Ukrainian universities and business schools. Well-known international experts discussed the issues of effective leadership, its key characteristics and limits, challenges facing modern leaders with the students of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, MIM-Kyiv business school and National Academy of Public Administration.

By the examples of success stories of well-known business leaders, including Steve Jobs, the experts concluded that high achievers were high energy people. It is not physical energy, but the energy released by an intense aspiration for progress and change.

However, enthusiasm and ambition are not always equal to profitable business. «Just a directed energy becomes the force that creates an effective leader. Direction is given by vision, values and goals. Look at Steve Jobs: he had a vision, he wanted to create a machine that would serve the people, he flipped then popular paradigm in which people served for machines», – noted Garry Jacobs, CEO, World Academy of Art and Science.

However, the leader is simply one person. He needs organization to implement his ideas. Only organization converts relations between people into an effective power. Many people in the organization act in different ways and leader has to integrate them so that to embody his own energy into smoothly coordinated system of activities. As Garry Jacobs says, the key task of effective leadership is to connect people, to learn from mistakes and to show confidence in other people.

The essence of leadership is individuality. However, individuality does not mean self-centeredness. The true individual identifies himself with the whole society, he acts not for approval but in order to discover his own creativity. Real leader motivates others to act in the same way.

However, not all the leaders act in such way. «We need now more people-centered, sustainable and responsible leadership. But the current education system is a little encouraging for such leadership, – says Alberto Zucconi, Secretary General of the World University Consortium. – Leadership is the ability to co-create, to persuade and to involve everybody in the team. That is why leading educational experts, including World University Consortium, are strongly focusing on the issue of how to develop the education in order to stimulate individuals that would provide effective leadership».

The problem of effective leadership is not limited to the field of entrepreneurship. In modern world facing the need to change the value paradigm civil society and state also require creative and responsible leaders.