In early September, the blog team was highly impressed by a presentation on leadership delivered by our colleague Dajana Damjanovic, Senior Manager for Partner Career and Development. Dajana was one of a few individuals chosen to present their ideas at our annual Management Meeting 2024, which over 1,000 PwC partners, managers, and directors attended.
Courageously taking the stage, Dajana began by instructing everyone to stand up, which they promptly did. She then asked them to stretch, roll their necks, and move their shoulders and legs. Finally, she directed the audience to sit down, and without exception, they followed.
Dajana then posed a thought-provoking question: “I led you through these simple actions and you followed. Does that make me a leader?”
Now, imagine the same audience, a room full of the company’s management, sitting quietly, waiting for her next sentence. What if she asked them to do the same again? Would they do it? Some may have resisted or some not. The point was: human psychology is way too complex. Leadership is more than having a vision and giving directions. So, ready to rethink it?
In this blog, we discuss the benefits of adopting an anthropologist’s perspective—viewing the familiar as strange and the strange as familiar—as one way to understand leadership better and how this inward observation promotes empathy, humility, and creates a conducive environment for greater outcomes.
Let’s take a deeper dive into leadership
Leadership is more than just “leading a group or organisation,” as defined by the Oxford Dictionary. According to John Calvin Maxwell, notable American author and speaker who has authored many books, primarily focusing on leadership, “Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” If this is the case, then anyone can be a leader, regardless of their title. And many people together can move the dial forward more effectively.
True leadership involves understanding and influencing lives beyond titles. Think of someone who influenced you deeply, like a teacher or friend, or even a person you read about in the news who leads an everyday life but does something heroic. Would you call them a leader? Likely, yes. We know we would.
Traditionally, leadership has often been viewed as an attribute tied to titles and positions, hence power and status. We aren’t suggesting here that titles no longer exist. However, this perspective is evolving as we begin to see leadership as more about influence regardless of formal power entitlement. True leadership isn’t confined to the realm of CEOs and managers; it is present in everyday actions and interactions, where empathy, curiosity, presence and listening in order to understand play pivotal roles.
By shifting our focus from authority to influence, or from formally bestowed power to influence regardless of whether the former exists, we can appreciate the subtle yet profound ways in which individuals guide and inspire others, fostering a culture of collective growth and development.
An article we highly recommend is ‘What Is Leadership?’ published by the Centre for Creative Leadership. Within, the author states that, “leadership is defined by three outcomes—direction, alignment, and commitment—and it’s a social process, where individuals work together to produce results that they could never achieve alone.”
What this means is that, while leadership is often described by what a leader does or the capabilities they have, the true meaning of leadership is about what happens when people work together. So, while the skills and behaviours of individual leaders are important, in fact, everyone in an organisation contributes to leadership.
In today’s rapidly changing and complex world, leading an organisation, especially a global one, is increasingly challenging. Good leadership is critical. Dajana highlighted a direct link between leadership development and better financial performance, talent attraction and retention, and employee and client satisfaction.
What is more interesting, according to a study by the Center for Creative Leadership, ‘Driving Performance: How Leadership Development Powers Success’, 86% of companies with strategic leadership development programmes adapt rapidly to changing market conditions, compared to just 52% with less developed leadership programmes.
But we aren’t just talking about cookie-cutter training. Organisations need to go beyond traditional Learning and Development (L&D) programmes and cultivate leadership at every level. To quote the same study, “Leadership development is not just about developing leaders—it is about creating a culture of accountability and performance”. An October 2024 McKinsey and Company report goes even further, proposing that the structure of 21st-century leadership should function as leadership factories. But what kind of leaders?
An anthropological view on (and in) leadership
We can’t say that we, and leaders themselves, need to think like anthropologists if we don’t define what it means at its core. So we went to a classic source, Discover Anthropology.
A first straightforward definition is this one: “Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate, and socialise with one another. The study of anthropology is concerned both with the biological features that make us human (such as physiology, genetic makeup, nutritional history, and evolution) and with social aspects (such as language, culture, politics, family, and religion).”
So, if human resources and leadership are all about people, and anthropology is the study of people, it makes sense that the two go together.
But it’s this second definition, from the Harvard Department of Anthropology, that we think provides an extra patina of added value: “Anthropology is the study of human diversity in the distant past and the present and teaches us to recognise the remarkable array of circumstances in which human beings live their lives and make meaning from them.”
However, anthropology is more than just a catalogue of diversity. There is an oft-cited phrase that anthropology “makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.” What does this mean? At the very least, it means stepping back and seeing ourselves the way others might see us—a shift in perspective that is foundational to human empathy and humility.” It’s not just the science of humans; it’s the science of what makes us human.
We appreciate this statement because there has been a shift in leadership styles toward empathy and curiosity. Over the decades, business leaders are making the move from an “I know everything” mindset to one where mature leadership comes from raising self-awareness. This introspection fosters personal growth, which is essential for developing as a leader.
In fact, McKinsey research on effective leadership showed that for an organisation to get new lasting levels of value for its stakeholders, it needs leaders who look inward with genuine curiosity that brings shifts in themselves and their lives.
Why talk about leadership now? Well, for businesses, in today’s volatile and mutating environment, with a new crisis potentially around the next corner, strong leadership is the differentiator. Companies like PwC recognise this and are committed to developing leadership qualities at all levels (if they weren’t they wouldn’t give space to people like Dajana to get up on stage and question what leadership means, so there is clearly an openness that exists already).
More to the point, in a world whose most notable trait is that it’s constantly changing, effective leadership has to begin with self-awareness, continuous curiosity, and the courage to be vulnerable. It’s this very courage that fuels personal and professional growth, and it is curiosity that makes organisations agile and innovative—and if companies want to thrive instead of just survive, they need to innovate.
Back as far as March 2014, Donna Lanclos, an anthropologist working in academic libraries, spoke to an audience at a university about how the presence of anthropologists in industry and institutional settings creates a liminal space, which in turn is an opportunity for change and innovation.
In his article, ‘You Need To Become A Leadership Anthropologist’, author and professor David Ulrich explains that his passion for analysing organisations led to a Ph.D. in numerical taxonomy (statistics) and dozens of major research projects where his colleagues theorised, collected data, analysed results, and offered advice on practices. In that process, he realised that, even more than spreadsheets, big data, or traditional statistical analyses, much of what he learned about organisations comes from good old careful observation—that is the anthropological approach.
“The most successful leaders and [Human Resources] HR professionals go beyond the structured data and appreciate and rely even more on unstructured data. They look out the window at what is visible but not often seen. These leaders become organisational anthropologists who seek ambiguity and are constantly exploring questions that are not yet or not easily answered,” wrote David Ulrich.
“So, what do these leadership anthropologists do in studying the unstructured data that make them more effective?” he asked. According to him:
- They listen for things that seem counterintuitive.
For example, in one case a new HR head realised that while his team excelled in talent management, the real challenge lay in shaping the organisational culture. Dave’s team saw that by adopting an anthropological approach, leaders can better understand and address emerging cultural demands within their organisations.
- They surround themselves with people who see things differently.
A favourite leadership coaching question for leaders to ask others is, “What do you think?” This encourages others to offer ideas on problems they may see and helps to build a creative environment. Effective leaders seek diverse perspectives and encourage new ideas by asking others for their opinions. This approach fosters creativity and helps leaders identify necessary personal and organisational changes.
- They experiment, with a willingness to fail and learn.
As anthropologists, leaders are constantly observing what people do, then testing if these experiments are generalisable. Leaders should embrace failure as a learning opportunity to foster innovation. By thinking big, testing small, failing fast, and learning always, organisations can enhance their capacity to innovate. Asking reflective questions about past experiences helps leaders and their teams to continuously learn and improve.
- They continually navigate paradox.
The next key to effective leadership is navigating paradoxes, which involves embracing contradictory activities and emphasising “and/also” thinking rather than “either/or.” This approach requires leaders to ask questions, consider multiple perspectives, and combine ideas to achieve success. A leader might encourage paradox navigation by asking, “What are other options?” or “How else might we approach this problem?”
Leadership is a many-changing thing
One thing is for sure, you won’t get a 100% global consensus on what leadership is or how it should look, and different situations can call for different leaders. But it’s hard to argue we don’t need them as they are a natural extension of primates and humanity.
A fascinating article, ‘How Great Leaders Evolved’, written by Meredith F. Small, for LiveScience (it’s worth a read), puts forth an irrefutable argument for leadership. “Humans are creatures who need leaders. Like most primates, that is lemurs, monkeys and apes, humans live in social groups, and these groups are essential for our survival. We don’t just stand around in a herd, pushing and shoving each other to get into the middle and away from preying lions. Instead, for us, a social group is all about connecting with other primates. In fact, our interpersonal connections are so extensive and complicated that we need rules to govern the way we interact; without these rules there would be chaos. And so, we primates usually form rank hierarchies, and we need someone to take the lead.”
It’s this rigid concept of hierarchy and dominance (and for thousands of years largely male) that has existed exclusively to this day. Think of how much time we all spend at work, in social groups, in a company or an organisation, which all have a leader, as well as leadership. This authoritarian leadership has historically and virtually always been the norm, and when women first entered the workforce, they found that their only way to the “top,” if they even had a chance to get there, was to mimic this style of behaviour.
But times have changed. Whether it has been partly influenced by women, society at large, growing intellectualism or for whatever reason, society and therefore business have developed in a new more empathetic way (just look at millennials who, it’s currently estimate, make up 35% of the global workforce and who are projected to represent 75% of the global workforce by 2025—they literally reek of empathy.)
We are further seeing the emergence of aspects such as servant leadership and transformational leadership. Servant leadership has emerged as a powerful model, focusing on the growth and well-being of followers and the communities to which they belong. This style prioritises the needs of others and encourages leaders to serve first, transforming the traditional power dynamic.
Similarly, transformational leadership inspires and motivates followers to exceed their own expectations and achieve extraordinary outcomes. By fostering an environment of trust, innovation, and shared vision, these modern leadership paradigms are reshaping the way organisations operate and thrive in today’s world.
What we see in these modern incarnations of leadership is a social process that enables individuals to achieve more together than they could alone. It creates space where everyone can be a leader. It promotes the development of leadership qualities at all levels within an organisation and often defies the traditional notion of an all-powerful, always-right person at the very top of the hierarchy.
This approach to leadership focuses on building and managing relationships at work, both horizontally and vertically. The outcome is an organisation that can not only achieve more but also create a greater impact. This broad scope is particularly important in today’s volatile business environment, where strong leadership is crucial for adaptation and sustainability.
Let’s look at some notable modern leaders who exemplify influence and collaboration
Case Study 1: Simone Biles – Learning to soar by daring to be vulnerable
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Case Study 2: Malala Yousafzai – Leading through advocacy and courage
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Case Study 3: Satya Nadella – Driving innovation through empathy and continuous learning
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Observing these people, and considering leadership in this new light, here are some practical tips we can offer so we can all embrace true leadership:
- Let’s be leaders regardless of our title.
- Let’s focus on building relationships and trust.
- Let’s listen to understand, not just to respond.
- Let’s observe and think like anthropologists for better informed decisions.
- Let’s look inward, (re)discover who we are, and how we lead.
- Let’s encourage inclusive participation, and team engagement.
- Let’s stay curious, be adaptable and open to new ideas.
- Let’s be brave enough to be vulnerable.
Conclusion
We agree with Dajana. True leadership transcends titles and formal positions. Great leaders often act like anthropologists—they observe carefully to understand the dynamics around them. Using these observations, they don’t rush to judgement but instead ask insightful questions and facilitate meaningful relationships.
Truly inspirational leaders are persistent in self-reflection, fostering their development. They embrace their inner “devil’s advocate”. They are humble and embody empathy to guide their team. Effective leadership means leading with curiosity and vulnerability, which fosters innovation and success, creating an inclusive, empowering environment. This approach leads to more sustainable and impactful outcomes for everyone involved.
What we think
Great leadership is about continuously adapting to different circumstances, relationships, and diverse people—swimming above and below the waterline to navigate both the obvious and the subtle. It means being grounded in your own strength and standing firm in your values, while also having the courage to be vulnerable. And how do you get there? By giving yourself permission to let go of perfection while still striving to become a better version of yourself, by observing more and reacting less, and by embracing our shared humanity.