Alia Bojilova: Becoming a modern leader

Industrial psychologist Alia Bojilova Bojilova is keynote at tomorrow's PwC Herald Talks. Photo / supplied

While the basic principles of good leadership are timeless, industrial psychologist Alia Bojilova says world now demands a different approach to its practice.

She says: "It's wrong to think modern circumstances demand management tools and reference points that are completely different from those we needed in the past. The concept of good leadership hasn't shifted. What has changed is the circumstances and the manner in which we have to execute those core principles".

Another change is that in the past there was less transparancy. The information about decision making was either not pubic or not accessible. She says: "These days we have an opportunity with information at our fingertips to research and scrutinise leaders and how they achieve outcomes."

Bojilova, who is the keynote at tomorrow's PwC Herald Talks, says people today have less time for, or even less tolerance of, some of the leadship behaviour that we accepted in the past. "We're becoming critical of leadership. To me this means a modern leader is not a different kind of person, it's more about how that person behaves".

In the past the world was more hierarchical. People had little choice but to defer to leaders.

Bojilova now works as an associate director at Sheffield where she is an organisational development specialist. In the past she was a New Zealand Army officer and was awarded a Meritous Service Medal for the way she handled matters when the Syrian Free Army captured here while acting as a military observer in the Golan Heights.

Despite coming from a background in what is still one of the most hierarchical organisations, she says: "We should never have conceded that a good leader is anything but an enabler for others. This is something that is becoming more obvious these days. Today people are far more educated, are more self aware and have higher expectations of their leaders. The days have gone where we could lead others by virtue of our rank."