Some researchers prefer to move the focus away from the leader altogether and to examine instead what makes others prepared to follow these individuals. In 1988, an important article published in the Harvard Business Review, entitled “In Praise of Followers” began to shift attention away from the machismo of leadership to the less glamorous side of the same equation – the role of ‘followership’.

What the advocates of followership recognized was that to become an effective leader, most people first had to learn how to be good followers. With few exceptions, this is as true of the corporate world as it is of military and political leaders. Aristotle noted “He who has never learnt to obey cannot be a good commander.”

More than ever, today, business executives have to operate as both leader and follower in the daily rounds of their job. Those who study leadership begin to take more interest in the ‘psychological contract’ between leader and followers. In other words, they began to ask what makes people prepared to follow one leader and unwilling to follow another.

These ideas are now changing both the way we think about leadership and the style of our leaders. This is in tune with other social and organizational developments, including the move to more participative management and the rise of industrial democracy.

Other new ideas are also gaining ground. For example, only now is the notion of ‘emotional intelligence’ becoming widely understood. For the leaders of the future, it is likely to be as important as a high IQ.

In his ground-breaking 1996 book, “Emotional Intelligence”, the American psychologist Daniel Goleman explored the issue of personal and professional effectiveness. He argued that in a business world too often obsessed by cold analysis, the emotional climate is more important to the success of a leader than previously recognized. At senior levels, ‘emotional intelligence’, rather than ‘rational intelligence’, marks out the true leader – “The qualities of leadership and the quality of the heart are largely the same”. This may explain why someone like Branson, who twice failed his elementary mathematics exam, can make a better leader than someone with a degree from Harvard Business School. Branson’s ‘emotional intelligence’ – his ‘people radar’ – is more keenly developed.

According to Goleman, studies of outstanding performers in organisations show that about two thirds of the abilities, that set star performers apart in the leadership stakes, are based on emotional intelligence. Only a third of the skills that matter relate to raw intelligence (as measured by IQ) and technical expertise.

“Our emotions are hardwired into our being” Goleman explained. “The very architecture of the brain gives feelings priority over thought.”

There is a sign in Harvard’s rat lab that says: “Rats under carefully controlled conditions will do any damned thing they please”. The same is true of human beings – leaders ignore emotions at their perils.

Most important of all, the role of leaders in developing the next generation has too often been neglected. If we are to grow as a society, this must be the priority for the future. As Sir Adrian Cadbury, the former Head of Cadbury Schweppes has observed: “Good leaders grow people, bad leaders stunt them. Good leaders serve their followers, bad leaders enslave them.”

Leadership was once about hard skills, such as planning, finance and business analysis. When command and control ruled the corporate world, the leaders were heroic rationalists who moved people around like pawns and fought like stags. When they spoke, the company employees jumped. Now, if the gurus and experts are right, leadership is increasingly concerned with soft skills – teamwork, communication and motivation.

The trouble is that for many executives, the soft skills remain the hardest to understand, let alone master. After all, hard skills have traditionally been the ones which enabled you to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. The entire career system in some organizations is based on using hard functional skills to progress. But when executives reach the top of the organization many different skills are required. Corporate leaders may find that, although they can do the financial analysis and the strategic planning, they are poor at communicating ideas to employees or colleagues or have little insight into how to motivate people. The modern Chief Executive requires an array of skills.

Some suggest that we expect too much of leaders. Indeed “renaissance” men and women are rare.

Leadership in a modern organization is highly complex and it is increasingly difficult – sometimes impossible – to find all the necessary traits in a single person. Among the most crucial skills is the ability to capture your audience – you will be competing with lots of other people for their attention. Leaders of the future will also have to be emotionally efficient. They will promote variation, rather than promoting people in their own likeness. They will encourage experimentation and enable people to learn from failure. They will build and develop people.

Is it too much to expect of one person? I think it probably is. In the future, we will see leadership groups, rather than individual leaders.

This change in emphasis from individuals towards groups has been charted by the leadership guru Warren Bennis. His work “Organizing Genius” concentrates on famous ground-breaking groups, rather than individual leaders. It focuses, for example, on the achievements of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre, the group behind the 1992 Clinton campaign, and the Manhattan Project which delivered the atomic bomb. “None of us is as smart as all of us” says Professor Bennis. “The Lone Ranger is dead. Instead of the individual problem-solver, we have a new model for creative achievement. People like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney headed groups and found their own greatness in them.”

Professor Bennis provides a blueprint for the new model leader. “He or she is a pragmatic dreamer, a person with an original but attainable vision. Inevitably, the leader has to invent a style that suits the group. The standard models, especially command and control, simply don’t work. The heads of groups have to act decisively, but never arbitrarily. They have to make decisions without limiting the perceived autonomy of the other participants. Devising an atmosphere, in which others can put a dent in the universe, is the leader’s creative act.”

However, the role of the new model leader is ridden with contradictions. Robert Sharrock, of YSC, psychologists who cater to senior business personnel, says: “Paradox and uncertainty are increasingly at the heart of leading organisations. A lot of leaders don’t like ambiguity, so they try to shape the environment to resolve the ambiguity. This might involve collecting more data or narrowing things down. These may not be the best things to do. The most effective leaders are flexible, responsive to new situations. If they are adept at hard skills, they surround themselves with people who are proficient with soft skills. They strike a balance.”

While flexibility is important in this new leadership model, it should not be interpreted as weakness. The two most lauded corporate chiefs of the past decade, Percy Barnevik, of Asea Brown Boveri, and Jack Welch, of General Electric, dismantled bureaucratic structures using both soft and hard skills. They coach and cajole, as well as command and control.

The “leader as coach” is yet another phrase more often seen in business books than in the real world. Acting as a coach to a colleague is not something that comes easily to many executives. It is increasingly common for executives to need mentoring. They need to talk through decisions and to think through the impact of their behavior on others in the organization.

In the macho era, support was for failures, but now there is a growing realization that leaders are human after all, and that leadership is as much a human art as a rational science.

Today’s leaders don’t follow rigid role models but prefer to nurture their own leadership style. They do not do people’s jobs for them or put their faith in developing a personality cult. They regard leadership as drawing people and disparate parts of the organization together in ways that makes individuals and the organization more effective.