The era of corporate monkeys is over.

The employee of the future is a hybrid of a team player and a lone fighter.

But how much freedom can the corporate monkey, who leads him, tolerate? The way we collaborate is undergoing radical change. Flatter hierarchies, a lot of self-determination, high levels of personal responsibility. The employees of the future want and are allowed to participate. They organize themselves as communities – highly flexible, results-oriented, and not always predictable. With Daimler, a heavyweight of the German economy is now taking a decisive step in this direction: The CEO in jeans and sneakers, Dieter Zetsche, has just initiated a fundamental change in the corporate culture at Daimler. He announced that he wants to place more trust in the employees and less in hierarchies. The goal: to ensure the company's innovation power. This development demands new answers to the question of how teamwork functions. If the leadership of a company misses the boat on this construction site, the foundation for future success becomes shaky. Leadership is there to get the right people in the right place with the right challenge revved up. Good leadership, good teamwork – this equation is quite simple. And crucial for the future. Daimler has recognized this. And others will follow. An announcement by someone like Dieter Zetsche is symbolic: the signs of the times point to more freedom for the employees. But there is a problem: Not every manager is prepared to let their employees run and be creative on their own.

Welcome to Monkey Business

Most of us have learned leadership in a different way – as a system of dependencies, controlled with the tool of control. For some, this tendency is more pronounced than for others. In every company, there is this very special species of control freaks: managers who feel quite comfortable in the coercive corset of dependencies. They wear the right suit. They more or less elegantly climb the career ladder. They kiss the right butts in passing. They always seem to have the right instincts when it comes to their coconut – their own advantage. But actually, everything they do and say is irrelevant. This species has a name: they are the Corporate Monkeys, or COMOs for short. And if we are honest: a little COMO is in each of us. The COMO in us is like the slow left hand of the leader in us. And he's not very good with the freedoms that are crucial in the future world of work. For him, things are actually quite fine as they are.

Warning, Dissatisfied Employees!

A current survey shows that there is already quite a bit of movement in German companies regarding teamwork. But above all, it shows that leadership and employees have very different impressions of how far we have already come on the path to the future. The largest group among the managers (33 percent) believes that the collaboration in their area of responsibility is already organized in the form of "agile networks." Strangely, however, only just under a fifth of the employees share this view. Many more, namely 41 percent of them, believe that they are still being led in a very classic top-down manner. The perceived degree of freedom differs significantly between managers and employees. Particularly noteworthy is the connection between the top-down principle underlying Monkey Business and employee satisfaction. A whole 63 percent of employees who describe themselves as dissatisfied state that they are led in this way. So, the dissatisfied employee sees a COMO. The COMO looks in the mirror and is satisfied. This won't work for the future: If employees and managers do not pull together, our companies will soon be playing Champions League matches in front of empty stands.

The Teamwork of the Future

The employee, and even more so the leader of the future as their role model, is a hybrid of a team player and a lone fighter: creative, empowered, and at the same time highly integrative. A contradiction that only freedom as a leadership principle can resolve: fewer dependencies in leadership, more freedom for the individual. I am convinced that the formula V⁴ is the way to this future: Trust, Responsibility, Role Model, Commitment. A leader who does not trust their employees will have employees who don't dare to do anything. If I want my employees to act and decide independently, I must lead by example. If I expect them to take responsibility for shared goals, I must show myself as a responsible boss and feel committed to the greater "we." The four Vs are the pillars of freedom. Those who do not respect them will collapse under the freedom of the new world of work. The pressure for change is enormous. After all, we don't want to lose our best employees to competitors who give them the necessary freedoms – because we can't. Therefore, we should take the connection between dissatisfaction and leadership culture very seriously. Because precisely the employees who demand more freedoms are the ones we need in our teams of the future. A leader who tries to lead free people as an unfree leader will fail. Article by Carsten K. Rath. He is one of the Top100 speakers. Find his profile here! Book Recommendation: Author Carsten K. Rath COMO, the Corporate Monkey, is overwhelmed. Like many managers, he is stuck in the coercive corset of everyday leadership. In a completely new work and life environment, his dependency threatens to be his downfall. Employees are looking for new challenges, customers have new demands. COMO is not prepared for this. What now? How should things continue? 24.90€ To Amazon: