Future Leadership: Need to Breed Enlightened Leaders-06.10.25

by Peter A. Arthur-Smith

“As the prospects for AI/AGI become more realistic, where we won’t be replacing leaders by robots, it’s clear that humans will still have key roles to play.”

As humans become natural partners to AI/AGI, they will inherently still be looking toward effective human leaders to bring out their optimum talents and commitment. Within the overall leader genre, enlightened leadership (EL) offers significant promise to meet that challenge. Its five continuously evolving phases can bring a whole host of natural leadership capability to so many situations.

It includes the capability to envision the way forward and to effectively position-prepare for what’s needed to move onward. Additionally, it promises to more fully engage your people to optimize their contributions, as well as optimally collaborate with others to funnel vital resources and assists to your “contributors”/teams. Furthermore, it naturally builds momentum as its ELs orchestrate the many forces/resources at their team/venture’s disposal. Ultimately, it keeps evolving and widening its influence and impact as it continuously cycles onward toward its ongoing journey and successes.

Unfortunately, there are a relatively small number of enlightened leaders (ELs) – maybe up to twelve percent – based upon our natural human distribution curve, across all walks of life within society at large. They are somewhat quiet and resourceful, who bring great success within their chosen fields and don’t seek the public limelight unless their family/friends, workplace teams, or society are in serious trouble or danger. More often than not, they’re sound decision makers and possess qualities like vision, integrity, courage and humility. They are also considered pretty wise, thoughtful and not necessarily the life and soul of any party.

So how do we breed more of such people? There is likely a wider cohort of up to around thirty-eight percent – topping out fifty percent of our natural human distribution curve – that are disposed toward EL to varying degrees. That means they are potentially available to be converted to an EL approach either through direct mentoring by our natural ELs or intense coaching/mentoring by other experts or colleagues. However, they always need to be reinserted back into an EL environment so they can flourish – rather like putting fish back into a fresh bowl of water in order to thrive. The inspiration they gain from practical, everyday EL success will also help keep them on track until they optimally convert.

What happens to the other fifty percent? Well, they fall within the conventional management (CM) spectrum owing to their personalities, work experiences and upbringing. That people spectrum is more disposed toward pursuing certain numbers and profits, as well as planning, organizing, directing and controlling everything until they realize those numbers. They are naturally more interested in compliance and what works in their own best interests. They often succumb to a degree of shortsightedness because their overriding mantra is more oriented toward maximizing numbers than people. They reinforce society’s split between givers and takers of which they often belong to the latter.

As ELs become more commonplace there will inevitably be clashes between these two societal sectors, but that’s human nature. The ELs will aim to find accommodations while the CMs will demand their chosen slice of the cake. The best we can hope for is that ELs continue building and orchestrating their faction and encourage some of their less intense CM counterparts to pursue strategies better suited to society’s overall well-being. Maybe some of them will begin to appreciate another point of view, if we’re lucky.

In the meantime, it’s time to expose larger people segments toward enlightened leadership (EL) and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps it’s now time for natural ELs to come out of the shadows and set the pace in a more fruitful, exciting and collegial way of life and turn the computer revolution into a positive human potential evolution instead? Since Einstein proposed that we as humans only utilize about ten percent of brainpower in our lifetimes, it sounds as though we have a lot more to give!