Journal of Management Development

Metaphors for today’s leadership: VUCA world, millennial and “Cloud Leaders”
Alejandro Rodriguez, Yolanda Rodriguez,
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https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-09-2013-0110
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JMD
34,7
Metaphors for today’s
leadership: VUCA world,
millennial and “Cloud Leaders”
854 Alejandro Rodriguez
Received 17 September 2013
Program for Organization and Leadership, University of San Francisco,
Revised 4 June 2014 San Francisco, California, USA, and
4 November 2014
Accepted 1 February 2015 Yolanda Rodriguez
Academic and Enrollment Services, University of Illinois at Chicago,
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Chicago, Illinois, USA

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evidence the scenarios any leader is currently facing in front
of three specific situations: a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world (VUCA); a generation that
is changing the way to form relationships, work and knowledge transfer;and the possibility for a “Cloud
Leadership” to overcome today’s reality of constant change, redirection, new frontiers and formatting.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper seeks one theoretical entailment, so that the world
today presented by Johansen (2012) from four perspectives needs to be considered from the perspective
of leadership.
Findings – The paper views leadership as “a Cloud.” It brings new insights to a social and
organizational analysis of leaders today. The metaphorical language is creative in the formative
accompaniment of the Millennials, it provides and clarifies the orientation in all areas where they interact.
Research limitations/implications – Leaders leading Millennials face challenges with specific
textures: convergence of traits, processes and outcomes with a leadership enriched by schools and
theories immersed in a VUCA world where resiliency is a scarce commodity. Raising, building, taking
advantage of the dynamism that each individual possesses, educating from the positive and toward the
positive, is a benefit of a “Cloud Leader” in a VUCA world where Millennials have a strong presence.
Practical implications – This paper offers a kind of vignette of leadership to illustrate the theories,
skills, abilities and different approaches converging within leaders for these coming years: the
immersion in a VUCA world, leading a workforce with more Millennial copartners present each day
and the metaphors that can help us better understand them, and being a “Cloud Leader.”
Social implications – Leadership is going to be a matter of discovering the positive energy in each
person, to stimulate the best in every individual and develop the potential of everybody because this
“energy” is a small assurance of the future. A leader who attempts to “bring out” the positive in each
person, in every context in which he or she is immersed, a leader who seeks the best interventions
possible according to his or her capabilities and resources, this is a leader we can call “a leader for the
coming future: a Cloud Leader.”
Originality/value – In this paper the author uses metaphors as an interesting method to say
something with multimodal meanings under the “umbrella concepts” of Millennial generation, and
leadership style. It is argued that scientific reasoning does not solely exist in the individual’s head, but
emerges in conjunction with the expressed representations.
Keywords Innovation, Leadership development, Education, Metaphors, Management development,
Ideas generation
Paper type Conceptual paper

Journal of Management
Development
The metaphoric language is appealing today because metaphors bring new synapsis
Vol. 34 No. 7, 2015
pp. 854-866
and deploy new meanings (Liu and Owyong, 2011). Ricoeur’s theory notes that each
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited metaphor is an act of imagination which seeks to create meaning that is not yet present,
through the semantic shock of setting out the “is and the is not” at the same time
0262-1711
DOI 10.1108/JMD-09-2013-0110
 (Muldoon, 2002). As Sebald (2011, p. 351) says: “Metaphors are a specific mode of the Metaphors for
permanent processes of uncoupling and recoupling across the borders of provinces of today’s
meaning.” Metaphors are a fundamental mechanism of experience, either on
a pre-predicative or predicative level. According to Sebald (2011, p. 346), “Metaphor
leadership
is some typified remnants of past experiences that are connected to explain a present
and new experience.” It achieves this with a transfer of meaning; a transfer, which
affects both of the original contexts. 855
This paper also offers a kind of vignette of leadership to illustrate the theories, skills,
abilities and different approaches converging within leaders for these coming years: the
immersion in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, leading a
workforce with more Millennial copartners present each day and the metaphors that
can help us better understand them, and being a “Cloud Leader.”
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VUCA world
A VUCA world is conformed by the features of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and
ambiguity. Volatility is accented on the goals and the values that underpin any
personal decision. It seems that any decision and objective today is based more on
emotions than on principles, desires more than securities (Bauman, 2008). A high level
of volatility is perceived in job tenure and loyalty to the employing company with little
security to stay in the same job. Even when qualified, people can be replaced at any
time and at lower cost. Among Millennials, staying in one job is perceived as failure:
they are seeking fast promotions and new challenges. According to Stein (2013,
p. 28) Millennials believe “they should be promoted every two years, regardless of
performance.”
The second characteristic of the VUCA world is uncertainty, reflected in all areas of
individual and social life. We are not certain today that we will stay for long in any
field. The goals for studies, life, job position, cultural immersion, appear clear but the
strategies seem to be emotional (Stein, 2013). Any decision that implies long-term
commitments is considered as “rigid” and hard to maintain because it implies an ethical
position to sustain, a religious believe to practice or a political option to support
(Kinnaman, 2011). It appears that only the “ethical radar” is used to make decisions
intending to avoid unnecessary collusions with other ethical systems (Lanz, 2012).
“Globalization, new technologies, education, travel and immigration are dissolving
many of the bonds that held societies together, fragmenting views and rendering public
opinion more volatile” (Leihan, 2011). Bauman (2008) stated that uncertainty over the
future makes the personal and organizational identity, relationships, and decisions to
be taken as “liquid” and provisional.
The complexity of the VUCA world is evident. The past, present and future are
perceived with confusion, but at the same time are extremely interconnected ( Johansen,
2012). Today society is complex in any field; society defends the posture of uncommon
criteria on personal and collective decisions or actions, because if all paths are equally
true, what results is the perplexity, not a commitment to take one of them (Barrios,
2008). Clarity is not a commodity that is easily gained with thousands of data to digest
every day (Google displays 290,000,000 web pages to consult the word “leadership,” for
instance).
Ambiguity, the fourth feature of the VUCA world, is especially present from the
perspective of ethics and decision making. The wide range of options for any decision
affects the individual’s ethics, the organizational core values, and the way each member
and group perform in society. Today, every decision taken presents a series of
 JMD ambiguous dilemmas ( Johansen, 2012). For example, topics such as the criterion
34,7 in employee transnational benefits where companies have different regulations in
different countries, where exploitation can be “legally” covered, or where a work
contract can contain discretionary clauses, but no social commitment to ethics or to
good business practices.
In a world presented from these four perspectives, “Cloud Leaders” should be guided
856 by a suggestive leadership role of educators and leaders as bearers of promotion,
prevention, hope and meaning, as strategies to deal with challenges and positively
touch the lives of Millennials.

Millennials
The VUCA world is the common ground where different generations – Baby boomers,
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the Generation X, the Millennials – live and relate to each other. Generational diversity
has become the norm in many organizations. According to Kaifi et al. (2012), as Baby
boomers retire and Millennials enter and take over the workforce, it becomes
imperative for leaders to learn more about the personal traits, job satisfaction, and
organizational commitment levels of this generation.
To attempt to delineate the characteristics of any generation is often an unfinished
task, and a risk of reductionism. However, according to Stein (2013), in the case of the
“Millennials,” this worldwide generation is more similar in characteristic features to one
another than other generations within their nations.
An important aspect of theory building research is therefore comparing emergent
concepts, constructs and theories with extent literature (Eisenhardt, 1989). The list
below is a concept list considering metaphorical representations as insights into the
cognitive processes to design a more accurate representation of the Millennial social
group that leaders will have to interact with as they enter the workforce and
educational institutions.

Tech-savvy
The Millennials have much familiarity with media and digital technology. The use of
technology is essential and appears to be the key to ensuring knowledge transfer
(Sweeney, 2012). The technology has empowered them to compete against any
organization or individual hackers vs corporations, bloggers vs newspapers, YouTube
videos vs studios (Stein, 2013), the arena is the software and the internet, and the
magnitude of the impact is massive in a worldwide network.

Informed
The amount of information the Millennials get from the internet, mainly social
networks, makes them consider that they must be heard when they speak (Bauerlein,
2011). According to Hewlett et al. (2009) the Millennials are “overconfident in
themselves” (Hartman and McCambridge, 2011, p. 24).

Diverse
Diversity is part of the “natural” environment where the Millennials were born.
It affects their manner of relating among them, they are tolerant to diversity, and they
consider teamwork as key and essential to the goal of pedagogical objectives. Learning
is a product built on an active face-to-face environment but, at the same time they
expect to be involved in a network that provides speed, convenience, flexibility and
power (Sweeney, 2012).
 Multitaskers Metaphors for
The Millennials perform tasks simultaneously and believe their performance excels, today’s
but Watson and Strayer (2010) argue that simultaneous tasks show a loss in efficiency
of ability learning and performance compared with independent tasks performance.
leadership
Their way of processing new knowledge tends to be more practical and oriented to
“hands-on” (Bauerlein, 2011). According to Sweeney (2012), the Millennials prefer an
environment that replicates a virtual environment and social networks because these 857
resources provide little penalty for their trial and error learning.

Autonomous
Because they rely on structures, Millennials are autonomous. They trust people to
make a path and plan for them (Howe and Strauss, 2000). When they encounter difficult
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people, they become uncomfortable and expect those in authority to protect them
(Lancaster and Stillman, 2010). They have even less respect for hierarchical structures
in workplaces, particularly if actions are not well structured or supported by a safety
net (Howe and Strauss, 2000). The Millennials prefer to sacrifice high incomes for
leisure time or health.
On the other hand, less positive traits this generation presents are as follows.

Plaintiffs
Reward for participating in activities rather than reward for achievement is an
expectation of the Millennials (Tolbzie, 2008). Immediate gratification is an issue
demanded, like a birthright. They show interest in the allocation of tasks to complete as
a team but the level of commitment among members is very shallow (Twenge, 2013).

Lighting speed
The Millennials have no tolerance for delays. They expect information, feedback,
results, teamwork achievements, personal promotions, and interpersonal relationships
in the fastest way possible (Immerwahr, 2009). Instant gratification permeates
practically anything. Skipping process, agreements, group decisions, courtesies, and
ethical issues are tolerated behaviors (Sweeney, 2012).

Over-watched
The Millennials has been meticulously planned from birth (Howe and Strauss, 2000); the
agenda during childhood was planned, including free time, study time, and profession.
According to Kerins and Matrangola (2012), this generation is pressed to surpass the goals
of their parents who are shown in an attitude of “helicopter-parenting” ( p. 82). Lack of
perseverance and organization of the own agenda, no order, no method, dependency on
somebody external to them to decide what to do and to specifically explain things to them
are characteristics of the Millennials (Schneider and Stevenson, 1999).

Grasshoppers
“Jumping from one side to another,” like a grasshopper, indicates that the Millennials
are skeptical of any long-term commitment. Millennials remain on one side
(organization, group, relationship) for short periods of time because staying would
mean losing other opportunities. According to Sweeney (2012) they only expect to
spend 18 months to two years in their first job. The relationships are short in duration
but intense emotionally. They want to “time and place shift” their tasks and
commitments, where and when they are ready.
 JMD Sailboats
34,7 The Millennials show a level of critical thinking that is questioned because even
if they are capable of doing multiple tasks simultaneously and outstanding
presentations using the newest software, they show a lack of profoundness in
knowledge and interdisciplinary synthesis, and mid-level skills for reading and
synthesis (Immerwahr, 2009; Sweeney, 2012). Their capacity to assimilate and manage
858 knowledge does not appear different from other generations. Young people read e-mails
and short bits of text on web pages much more regularly than they read books
(Twenge, 2013).

Parked
Many of the Millennials are dependent on their parents even when they reach
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adulthood. In some countries they have been categorized as generation “not-not.” They
neither work nor study and many of them show little desire for independence that is
easily sacrificed for convenience (Pembecioğlu, 2012).

Fragile
The Millennial are perceived as emotionally illiterate (Immerwahr, 2009; Twenge, 2013).
Their ability to recover from failures and faults appears to have a lower level of
tolerance than past generations, and their emotional experiences are lived at a
superficial level (Bland et al., 2012; Soares et al., 2012). According to Stein (2013) the
Millennials “are great for getting a job or hooking up at a bar but not so great keeping a
job or a relationship” ( p. 28)
These “umbrella concepts” as metaphors are provocative because they are not
exhaustible as a source of meaning (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). These concepts allow
more ways in which each relationship and leadership can be construed. “Meanings
always remain to be found” (Worsley, 2012, p. 309). In response to these umbrella
concepts and the issues facing the Millennials, “Cloud Leadership” should be
considered so as to illuminate the being and doing of a leader.

Leadership from the Millennials … to the Millennials

Leadership today is a contextual and temporal process of learning and practice. It must
adapt from context to context, group to group, and from individual to individual (Porter
and McLaughlin, 2006). As noted by Day (2000), the distinction between developing
leaders and developing leadership is potentially an important one. Leader development
focusses on developing individual leaders whereas leadership development focusses on
a process of development that inherently involves multiple individuals (e.g. leaders and
followers or among peers in a self-managed work team).
People develop fastest when they assume responsibility for their own progress over
time, not only during encapsulated events (Petrie, 2014). Leader development evolves
over the professional experience and a lifetime (Day, 2012; Kegan and Lahey, 2010).
Leadership development is inherently multilevel and longitudinal (Day, 2011). This
longitudinal, multilevel focus means that intrapersonal and interpersonal processes are
central to leadership development over time.
Facing complex, global, competitive, unpredictable, volatile, and ambiguous
environments and contexts, a leader’s capacities must develop and adapt to fit the
social and situational contexts of their various roles, assignments, and organizations.
Leaders will need to understand complex dynamics to determine that a collective
process must be spread throughout networks of people.
 Any leadership theory or leadership development must be a collaborative reflection Metaphors for
of knowledge passing from just the “horizontal” way of doing and thinking today’s
(competencies, skills, abilities), to the “vertical” way of understanding and developing
leadership: self-knowledge, self-awareness, personal motivations, core values; from an
leadership
external impulse of development to the own responsible development; from an
individual recipe of leadership to a collective process throughout networks; from
singular theories to complex convergences of diverse methodology, ideas and 859
experiences (Day and Sin, 2011; White, 2011). Focussing on the Millennials’
characteristics, “Cloud Leadership” is a theoretical proposal that pretends to become
an acceptable way to understand, and to lead this new generation present in every
organization and workplace.
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“Cloud Leadership”
The leader for these coming years, using a metaphorical language, must be a “Cloud.”
Treviranus (2011, p. 37) comments that “[cloud] means that you can have your screen
reader, alternative keyboard, magnification, captioning, description […] with you
wherever you go, without carrying anything but a password, a digital ring or a smart
card.” “Cloud” expresses the mentality of convergence required by all leadership today
(Erl et al., 2013). The “Cloud Leader” is also concerned with principles that guide how
individuals gain understanding of themselves and the external world, principles that
conduce any decision-making process, principles that involves the change from one
order of development to another, usually a higher one, driven by new environmental
challenges that demand more complex sense-making abilities in qualitatively different
patterns and criteria (Day et al., 2014; Drath et al., 2008).
The Millennial require information in a lighting speed using the latest gadgets and
apps with flexibility and diversity. A “Cloud Leader” shows availability “to be accessed”
with an open schedule for personal encounters and gains respect and ascendency by
showing updated, pertinent and condensed information. Easy accessibility with open,
clear, and direct communication will be skills highly valued by Millennials. Leadership for
Millennials implies the art of positive leadership development by putting forward what is
good through appropriate experiences of immersion which call for the involvement of the
new leader. These experiences are attractive because of their challenges, adequate context
and accompaniment by a constant and cordial presence; the art of producing growth in
young leaders “from within” by appealing to their inner freedom to oppose external
conditioning and formalism by a gradual insistence with revision and encouragement; the
art of winning the heart of new leaders and people (aspirations, sense of values, home
condition, models, tensions, goals, life ambitions), bringing out the best they have within
them, and preparing them for the future by means of a solid formation (Vigano, 1979;
Vecchi, 2001).
The Millennials are multitaskers who accomplish tasks with autonomy that brings
the opportunity for any leader to help them align the process of information and
personal communication (Hartman and McCambridge, 2011). The cloud describes a
system where human and technological resources converge and users can connect to a
vast network of computing resources, data and servers that reside somewhere “out
there.” Similarly for leaders, this synchronization means a resilient attitude of support
and a secure environment where every individual is able to transfer information and
communicate comfortably, fast, through open channels for communication. Cloud
Leaders will provide immediate consultation with versatility in times and gadgets
(Vassilaras and Yovanof, 2011). It highlights the importance of leaders creating positive
 JMD learning environments in which learning about other groups occurs, innovation is
34,7 supported, and cultural communication competence is encouraged. Such processes
involve clarity of the self-system, with intrapersonal, developmental, interpersonal, and
pragmatic aspects affecting the improvement of veritable, sustainable performance
between leaders and followers (Avolio and Gardner, 2005; Chan, 2005). Capacities like
collaboration, contribution, vicarious facilitation/coaching, using personal assets and
860 social networks to attract supporters, and entrusting others to enhance a shared vision,
intrinsic cooperative behavior, and fluency in multiple perspectives (Fowler, 2006;
Ospina and Yaroni, 2003).
A “Cloud Leader” strengthens the protective factors of an “accompaniment net”
using technology in a bi-directional way for community, team, society and individuals.
This net consolidates the sense of meaning and hope, bringing a sense of belonging,
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nurturing an environment that values individuality and diversity, and reduces the
feeling of mobility typical of the “grasshopper.” Avolio and Gardner (2005) noted that
authentic leadership development involves “ongoing processes whereby leaders and
followers gain self-awareness and establish open, transparent, trusting and genuine
relationships” ( p. 322). Michie and Gooty (2005) support this notion of a genuine self in
relation with others with their central thesis, which states that positive directed
emotions (e.g. gratitude, appreciation) motivate leaders to behave in ways that reflect
self-transcendent values (e.g. honesty, loyalty, equality). According to O’Connell (2014),
the leader for the next generation is the individual whose “authenticity” is a belief in
continuous discovery and understanding of one’s identity and one’s convictions,
accompanied by a clear expression and acknowledgement of the genuine self in
interpersonal communications and behaviors.
A “Cloud Leader” has a strong online identity and a compelling in-person presence
because “younger people are more likely to have strong online identities, since they grew
up with the web” ( Johansen, 2012, p. 154). A “Cloud Leader” can develop advanced
capacities of self-awareness, self-regulation, internalized moral perspective, balanced
processing, positive modeling, relational transparency, and authentic behavior or action
(Avolio and Gardner, 2005). Through the course of development, identity progresses from
the individual level, in which the self is defined in terms of uniqueness from others, to the
relational level, in which the self is defined in terms of roles and relationships, to the
collective level, in which the self is defined in terms of group or organizational affiliations
(Lord and Hall, 2005). Communication gives a sense of guidance and ongoing formation
reducing the fragility and the “parking” of Millennials.
When chaos appears as the logic of the social universe, without order or reason for
decisions and options, instead of big plans and global decisions, all that matters
is a small change at an appropriate leverage point ( Jemsek, 2008). A “Cloud Leader” is
“a concrete and intelligible unity-identity-whole, characterized by acts of sensing,
perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping the
unconditioned, and judging” (Lonergan, 1992, pp. 343-344). These methodological
aspects allow understanding leadership through self-identity and self-schema, with
the related skills of heightened self-awareness, metacognition, self-regulation, and
self-motivation (Chan et al., 2005; Lord and Hall, 2005). Leaders’ and followers’
developmental trajectories and life experiences become important stepping stones, with
leader development firmly embedded in the spiral of ongoing adult development
(O’Connell, 2014; Wenger, 2009). The reality of a volatile world makes clarity an
expression of leadership. Clarity does not mean certainty ( Johansen, 2012). Clarity
seeks goals and a shared vision; meanwhile certainty looks for stability. Leaders today
 must be clear where they are going in expectations, goals, challenges and requirements, Metaphors for
but very flexible how they get there. Millennials aim for clarity in roles, promotions, today’s
goals and rules.
To be effective in varied organizational, team, and social contexts, “Cloud Leaders”
leadership
need to develop capacities for shared sense making, learning from shared experiences,
collective tasks, network development, self-regulation, and synthesis of cognitions and
emotions in contexts ranging from stability to crisis, dynamic equilibrium, or chaos 861
(Drath et al., 2008). In a similar way, when O’Connell (2014) explained the twenty-first
century leader capacities, she proposed that a leader with “purpose” shows an
engagement in personal mission, passion, and beneficial contributions to others in the
form of roles, work, and service throughout the career and life spans. According to
Hirst et al. (2004), leaders “learn from challenging work, from solving complex
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problems, and from leading a team, and that they use this knowledge to foster team
communication and enhance team performance” ( p. 321). A positive modeling used by
leaders to influence others and to generate well-being can be considered as a positive
outcome of authenticity. In this sense emphasis is given to the horizons that the various
areas of knowledge open to human reality, and the attitudes of mind and heart they
create (Vigano, 1993b).
Facing the over-watched reality among Millennials, it is important to recover the
contact, assimilation, and identification of the intrapersonal and interpersonal reality of
every person developing certain psychological processes (e.g. self-knowledge,
interpersonal skills, communication competence, and cultural competence) and
contextual influences (e.g. organizational climate/culture, group/organizational
composition, economic environment, and organizational support for diversity), as
Scandura and Lankau (1996) have affirmed. Complementing this idea, O’Connell (2014)
speaks of the “reverence as belief,” which means the “acceptance, understanding, and
incorporation of the needs and identities of everyone, everywhere, with honor and awe
of every person and every culture’s unique contributions and capacities” ( p. 194). The
needs of the others is an ethical starting point that calls to response with a valid
concept of human existence, and with a scale of values and a global vision of the human
being, of his history and of the world (Vigano, 1993a).
Autonomy is a right inviolable for Millennials. Autonomy means uniqueness and
creativity, and through the respect of the autonomy of individuals the “Cloud Leader”
must also bring out outcomes like trust, engagement, group citizenship, resiliency,
positive psychological capital, sustainable workplace well-being, efficacy, compassion,
passion or purpose, values-based behavior, relational connectedness, and disciplined
behavioral consistency (Gardner et al., 2005; George, 2003; Walumbwa et al., 2010). The
“Cloud Leader” nurtures and takes care of an organizational environment in which
team members need to learn to negotiate a social order and shared decisions, engage in
mutual influence, and evolve meaning, goals, contexts, and agreements over time
(Wassenaar and Pearce, 2012).
The landscape for leadership theory and development is fraught in discontinuity,
disequilibrium, blurring of boundaries, need of reinvention, innovation and knowledge
sharing with continuous new information to evaluate and re-evaluate and does not
yield a “final” analysis with a clear end (Bennis, 2012; O’Connell, 2014). Every leader
needs to have a hopeful future. The human being, according to Ricoeur (2004), requires
this openness to the possibilities, to interconnections to the social environment, and this
presence of others beyond the self that cannot be understood without seeing it in
relationship: what we are today affects the future we want.
 JMD Concluding considerations
34,7 All life is a risk. Every moment must be lived as the first and the last at the same time,
every experience reports information, and every stimulus brings new insights. Leaders
leading Millennials face challenges with specific textures: convergence of traits,
processes and outcomes with a leadership enriched by schools and theories immersed
in a VUCA world where resiliency is a scarce commodity.
862 Raising, building, taking advantage of the dynamism that each individual
possesses, educating from the positive and toward the positive, is a benefit of a “Cloud
Leader” in a VUCA world where Millennials have a strong presence. A “Cloud Leader”
can have lifelong impact in people, which will shape the type of leaders they become.
Although there is still much research and reflection to be done in regards to the actual
impact of leadership programs in universities, “Cloud Leadership” should start being
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considered as an optimal option to engage with young people, and it is worth exploring
further trends of leaders and leadership development – vertical development, each
person owns their development, collective leadership, innovative leadership
development methods – (Petrie, 2014).
Therefore, traditional forms of leadership, based on what Bennis (2007) termed the
tripod form, “leaders, followers, and a common goal they want to achieve” ( p. 3), and
more recent theories, will need to advocate for a fuller and more integrative focus that is
multilevel, multicomponent, and interdisciplinary and that recognizes that the process
of leadership involves an innermost nurturing and feedforward accompaniment of the
leader, those being led, into the complexity of the VUCA context (Day et al., 2014). Two
principles also must be taken into account, the innermost-nurturing principle and the
feed-forward principle, because when they are applied in convergence, they bring to
any leader meta competencies such as learning agility and self-awareness making
sense of the world in a more complex and inclusive way setting new directions, and
leading change continually.
Another proposed theory along the lines of “Cloud Leadership” to consider is that of
Preventive Leadership (Rodriguez, 2014). This theoretical proposal provides a basis for
adapting leader thinking and acting to the infinite set of contingencies and contexts
they will encounter in the twenty-first century global workplace and social context
(Gardner, 1990). The Preventive Leadership development proposal is an individuality-
focussed framework, but it requires simultaneous development of the autonomy,
adaptability, and interdependency required in complex collective endeavors (Uhl-Bien
et al., 2007). The Preventive Leadership methodology encourages development of
genuine and original leader thinking and acting while learning to perform multiple
roles and exhibit opposite behaviors with credibility in different organizational,
environmental, and group contexts (Gardner et al., 2005). Continuous attention to the
method of leadership development, to the formative developmental proposal, and
to the set of principles guiding the behavior and decisions allows the leader to develop
a set of distinctive capacities by which his/her leadership will be defined and their
journey will be fulfilled.
Leadership is going to be a matter of discovering the positive energy in each person,
to stimulate the best in every individual and develop the potential of everybody
because this “energy” is a small assurance of the future. A leader who attempts to
“bring out” the positive in each person, in every context in which he or she is immersed,
a leader who seeks the best interventions possible according to his or her capabilities
and resources, this is a leader we can call “a leader for the coming future: a ‘Cloud
Leader’.”
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About the authors

Alejandro Rodriguez is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of San Francisco in the
Organization and Leadership Program. The topic of this paper and his interest in organization
and leadership has emerged from his past experiences. He worked for several years among
college students as a Professor, as the Dean of the School of Philosophy and as the President of
the Salesian University in Mexico City. Alejandro Rodriguez is the corresponding author and can
be contacted at: arrsdb@gmail.com
Yolanda Rodriguez is the Associate Director of Operations for the Office of the Vice Provost
for Academic and Enrollment Services at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). In 2011,
she received a Master of Education in Youth Development from UIC. The topic of this paper has
emerged from her past experiences as a volunteer and intern with youth focussed organizations
in the city of Chicago.

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