Toward responsible leadership through reconciling dilemmas

Abstract

Leaders in the corporate world today find themselves in a dynamic and complex multicultural business environment in which there is an increasing interconnection between technology, people, organizations, and society. We must develop new models of leadership to serve today’s executives. The authors’ research and consulting demonstrate that competence in reconciling dilemmas is the feature that best differentiates successful from less successful contemporary leaders, and responsible from non-responsible leaders. Leaders, their organizations, and society at large improve and prosper not by choosing one end over the other, but by reconciling both ends. This chapter explores this key competence of responsible leadership, then discusses how to develop responsible leadership characteristics and how to develop the propensity to reconcile with external stakeholders. Finally, it explores the inner path to responsible leadership. Responsible leaders require self-understanding, self-discipline, and self-mastery as well as emotional and ethical abilities that inform relationally intelligent behavior.