Humanise: Why Human-Centred Leadership is the Key to the 21st Century

Conclusion: Human-Centred Leaders Change the World

The conversation during dinner with Anders ranged across trends and transitions, politics and the planet, leaders and leadership.

Low-level anxiety has been a constant companion through his life, and now shapes his views and outlook. While alert and engaged, his physical and emotional bearing display the tiredness that comes from a long life lived under constant threats and responses to those threats.

Anders grew up in Northern Europe in the shadow of the Russian bear and, as he described it, fear of an imminent atomic strike. As this peril faded a new planetary threat emerged in the shape of environmental degradation. He despairs about the future and has little confidence that humanity has the ability to avoid a looming catastrophe. This distress is compounded by a foreboding that today's youth will blame him and his generation for their poor decisions, that the world will descend into anarchy and he could find himself a target of the ensuing violence.

Although Anders is doing tremendous work to marshal people to action, his words and demeanour over dinner implied defeat and despair. His prognosis of a dystopian near future is influenced by a view that destructive forces are well organised, well funded and unstoppable in their relentless quest for profit or power at any cost. On the other hand, he believes any positive efforts for good are disorganised, disparate and generally discouraged. They lack leadership.

On this point ...