Tales from the Top

Lessons from local leaders who proved themselves in career-defining moments

Great leaders are as much a product of their time as they are of any innate character traits. Would Winston Churchill, Mackenzie King or even Steve Jobs have led as effectively in any context other than their own?

Modern times call for modern leaders and today “the sort of a stern figure at the front, square-jawed, brave and bold and charging on is less attractive than somebody who’s got a combination of intelligence and charm and a vision for the world that people can buy into,” says Don Safnuk, founder of Corporate Recruiters Ltd. in Vancouver.

Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg—they all share smarts, wisdom and the ability to not only identify a strong mission and vision, but to find the right team to execute it. Those leadership traits are evergreen, but thanks to factors like generational differences and the rise of social media, recruiters and companies are after much more than a leader who can influence others to follow their vision these days.

“Social media and technology have drastically changed leadership,” says Stephen Race, a principal at TalentClick Workforce Solutions in Vancouver. Gone are the days of reputation management when PR, marketing and advertising were used to craft a company’s reputation. What’s being said over Facebook, Twitter and Trip Advisor matters more than the ad copy on a billboard. “The new leaders get that and they want to run the organization in alignment with how they’re portraying themselves on the outside,” Race says. “There’s almost been this forced change by the transparency in our society, but it’s been great because it’s provided the motivation for leaders to do the right thing.”

Today’s leaders must not only respond to the immediacy and transparency of social media, but also have to respond to a broad shift in demographics. Today’s workforce spans millennials all the way up to baby boomers, all of whom have different needs and values. “So now somebody has to be able to manage up to an older demographic and down to a demographic that is younger than they are,” says Safnuk.

Yes, some are born leaders, but those who excel are the ones who can adapt to the challenges of the day. Those might range from a tech startup struggling to break the six-figure revenue plateau to a billion-dollar forestry giant scrambling to restructure on the fly. The pages that follow pull back the curtain to show how local leaders met these and other challenges. —Anne Casselman