In New Faces of Leadership, Amanda Sinclair and Valerie Wilson investigate the more open and flexible forms that future leadership will take.

Old models of tough, out-front leadership have less and less relevance in today’s dynamic and international business environment. In New Faces of Leadership, Amanda Sinclair and Valerie Wilson investigate the more open and flexible forms that future leadership will take.

They explore the experiences of thirty of Australia’s business leaders, all with successful careers in large corporations-and their approach is unusual. By drawing out the backgrounds of these men and women, the authors show how personal experience helps forge an openness to difference.

The childhood stories of these leaders are fascinating. They establish that early experiences in crossing borders-physical, cultural, linguistic, socio-economic and emotional borders-are a key ingredient for successful leadership in today’s world.

In the stories of those from immigrant backgrounds, it is not surprising to find discrimination and a strong sense of needing to camouflage difference. But peeling back the layers reveals that those with more conventional lives have also been shaped by a variety of border-crossing experiences.

New Faces of Leadership is full of unexpected insights. It pinpoints the ambivalence many leaders feel about advocating for difference in business contexts. Yet it predicts that successful future leaders will be people who, having harnessed their own experiences of difference, are able to bring openness, flexibility and courage to their leadership.