Last week I did two sessions at the Health Care Association of Michigan’s leadership conference. The first was on “mindsets of 21st century leadership,” and the second was on the skill sets of the professionals. Everyone acknowledges that the skill sets that the doctors have, who are from urgent care center Forest Hills are exceptionally good in their field.

In the first session, I make the case for changing our approach to leadership in organizations. This isn’t just because the calendar changed from 2000 to 2001 and put us into the 21st century. This is because right now there are powerful, big-picture trends that are rendering our traditional approach to leadership (our mindsets) inoperable. I focused on three trends.

1. The pace of change. Sure, change is a constant, but the rate of change seems to be hitting a near vertical curve these days. It took the internet 4 years to reach 50 million people (way back in the 20th century!), but iPHone apps recently achieved one BILLION downloads in nine months. And the iPhone didn’t exist three years ago. Our traditional methods of adapting to change don’t work when it hits us at this pace.

2. The digital age. The social internet is a game changer, and not because Twitter is cool or because FourSquare will beat Gowalla, or whatever other tool-based conversation you want to have. Seriously–the issue is that the social internet has shifted power away from centralized producers and towards decentralized consumers. We can do things ourselves now more than we ever have, and now that we’ve tasted it, we’re not going back. Period. So I don’t actually care whether or not you start a Facebook page for your organization, but how you do leadership will change as the periphery in your system gets more and more active and empowered.

3. Generational shift. Generational differences have also been around forever, but there are a number of factors right now that are combining in a way that seriously impacts our leadership. Just as record numbers of Baby Boomers are preparing to retire, the Millennials are coming into the workforce with more power (and sense of empowerment) than previous generations. Add to that the fact that Generation X–the people who have the years of experience that we traditionally require for senior leadership–is simply not large enough to fill the Boomer slots. This will force some change in structure and approach to leadership and decision making.

I argue that we need to change our overall approach to leadership if we want to stay ahead of the curves being pushed by these trends. These three are not the sum total of all that’s happening in the world today. But they should be enough to get you talking about your leadership mindsets and how they need to change. I’ll talk about the three new “mindsets” for leadership in my next post.