Categories: Articles

Building Leaders

Part of my passion in the recent year has been the concept of leadership. Partly for business, but mostly within community. I have this radical concept that most people in leadership development or in middle-management on any kind of “fast track” are not really learning to become leaders, but they are learning to become followers. This concept is covered in Tom Peters’ latest, Re-Imagine. Meanwhile, while surfing his site, I came across an interesting snippet about building leaders called, Developing Your Leadership Pipeline. You view it here. I believe that if community injected many of these concepts into people who already are taking leadership roles within an organization, instead of ear-marking people that they “hope” will become leaders, we can build a strong community. After all, it’s just a matter of time before we’re replaced by technology, so we may as well help each other, do some good and build a better life for all of us. My rose-colored glasses are officially on for this Blog segment.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.