Guiding the Tide: The Call for Agency in 21st Century Business Leaders

In a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, leadership needs to move beyond the "agile" approach that dominated organizational leadership practices at the end of the 20th century. What is required now for successful leaders is a skillful juxtaposition of proactivity and humility, which we call "guiding the tide."

Successful leaders of today must demonstrate personal agency in order to guide the tide of events around them rather than have the tide of events sweep them along. The "tide," like a river within an ocean akin to a gulf stream, is a unique, ever-changing stream of business systems, technology, consumers, and competitors.

This book uses storytelling, examples, and clear, everyday language to blend leading-edge psychological research and leadership practices with the authors’ own work in coaching, assessing, and developing leaders for three decades around the world. The book takes the reader on a journey through three major learnings:

First, the authors describe the nature of the tide and the demands on leaders to move beyond a reactionary, agile approach toward the forward-leaning, active stance of personal agency.

Second, they describe three critical practices to successfully lead with agency and guide the tide:

• Honest Engagement – the practice of dealing with others from a place of openness, honesty, and a willingness to be vulnerable.
• Addressing Reality – the practice of seeing the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be, the ability to separate fact from fiction and data from desire.
• Adaptive Impact – the practice of driving the organization, team, and oneself forward in a way that creates results-beyond- results, that is, delivering goals while building followership, sustainability and "Humanocity" – the integration of human creativity and judgment with the efficiency of digital automation.

Third, they offer leaders a practical path to achieving the personal agency to successfully guide their organization through the tide that shapes their world.

Jonathan Donner is an internationally recognized expert in senior leadership development, Jonathan Donner has led leadership development efforts at some of the world’s most successful global enterprises including Amazon, the UN World Food Programme, Unilever, Altria, and Marks & Spencer.

Frank Guglielmo is an award-winning educator, consultant, and coach. He has created and led executive development programs around the world for over two decades. Currently, he is Managing Director of Park Consulting, a firm he founded, focusing on helping organizations deal with the leadership and talent management requirements of the “post-information age” – a competitive environment defined by connections driven through digital media and socially created information.

Prior to this, Frank was Senior Vice President of leadership and Organizational Development at the Interpublic Group of Companies, a Fortune 500 company and one of the world's leading marketing and advertising firms. In this role Frank was accountable for internal development and talent management strategies across Interpublic’s global agency networks and was directly accountable for the company’s executive development and succession management efforts.

Frank has also been Director of Management and Organizational Development at Altria Corporate Services Inc. and Vice President, Branch Management Selection and Development at Prudential Securities. In both of these roles, Frank was accountable for leading efforts in management selection and development, high-potential development, and succession management. He began his career as a Senior Consultant at Applied Research Corp., a consulting firm specializing in management assessment and development. Frank holds both an MS and a Ph.D. in organizational psychology. He has conducted training programs and organizational interventions in Europe and Latin America as well as the U.S. He is a member of the American Psychological Association and the Metropolitan New York Association for Applied Psychology. Specialties: Leadership Development, Succession Planning, Change Management, Executive Coaching, HR Strategy.

Sudhanshu Palsule is an award-winning educator, CEO advisor, and leadership coach, Sudhanshu Palsule is regarded as one of the leading thinkers in the field of transformative leadership. He teaches at Duke Corporate Education and is a Fellow at Cambridge University. His clients include several Fortune 100 companies, governments, and the UN.