We need the brilliant original thought of those who sit on the fringes and make change happen

Whether we are aspirant leaders or currently in leadership positions, most of us have role models whom we either look to for inspiration or against whom we calibrate our own behaviour.

It goes without saying that who we choose to emulate determines just how successful we will be in our quest to be the leaders we aspire to be. So, the million-dollar question is: what should we be looking for in a role model? Perhaps more importantly, the question is, why?

Personally, I admire leaders who have an unshakeable sense of purpose, the vulnerability to reflect on their actions and the ability to admit when they get it wrong – and who get things done.

I respect those leaders who have the incredible humanity to never sacrifice the needs and fears of the ordinary people on the shop floor or the constituency on the altar of their own ambitions. Most of all, the leaders I revere embody hope, which is probably the ultimate warrior attribute of all.

Hopefulness gives you the energy to fight, and keep on fighting for that greater goal. Nelson Mandela is someone who ticks all those boxes. He’s almost over-exposed in his own country, held up as a secular saint across the globe, but he deserves every single accolade because he had a vision, he was unashamedly honest and capable of changing course, and he trademarked the common touch.

There are very few world leaders now who can say the same. Most have the vision of where they want to go, but very few have the profound ability to hold themselves to account and even fewer care anything about the ordinary person in the street – unless it is as a stepping stone to achieving their vanity projects.

Great statesmen and stateswomen understand humanity and never lose sight of it, despite how much their personal experience might conspire against them to harden them and to protect them from further hurt. Another vitally important aspect to a great leader is to generate change; the ability to stretch the continuum of what they and the world around them accept as normal.

As a young man travelling to the US, I was struck by an experience I had on the bus from JFK International into Manhattan. A man on the bus started mouthing off, declaiming and raving, and everyone went about their business as if nothing was happening. As a then-reserved Briton, I was simultaneously aghast at the public spectacle and strangely fascinated because that kind of behaviour was wholly foreign where I came from and would have been immediately condemned out of hand because of that.

Yet sometimes that’s precisely what we need to shake us from our lethargy – to have someone saying the unsayable. Neurodivergence may be a case in point. We need certain behaviours, often a strength of neurodivergent people, to stop us from heading full speed into a brick wall because we are locked in groupthink, and no one wants to be Hans Christian Andersen’s little boy calling out the vain emperor for having no clothes on.

Technological leaps