The "+ Shaped" Leader
Learned from the best, I’ve been developing “T-Shaped“ leaders like telephone poles. Strong, reliable, T-shaped. Go deep on SME expertise, then go wide on horizon and collaboration.
Learned from the best, I’ve been developing leaders like telephone poles - the “T-shaped” model.
First, you built the vertical bar, forging a rising talent into the undisputed subject matter expert (SME). This deep foundation gave them the ownership and credibility to become the go-to person. With that secure, you built the horizontal bar, where they learned to connect across the structure, creating resilience.
It was a reliable, uniform model, perfectly engineered for a world where the wires of business rarely changed.
That world is gone. Today’s landscape is a dynamic, ever-changing ecosystem. A static pole isn’t just insufficient; it’s a liability. We don’t need more telephone poles destined to snap in the first storm. We need living trees.
It’s time to stop manufacturing leaders for a static grid and start cultivating them as adaptive, living systems. The architectural model for this new era isn’t the “T.”
It’s the “+” - the natural, resilient form of a tree.
The “+ shaped” leader operates as a dynamic, integrated system. At its center, the heartwood where all vectors connect, lies the one irreplaceable element: your Human Point of View (POV).
Now - I always say we need a strong POV. If you don’t have one, that means either 1) You do not know well enough or 2) You do not care enough.
That said, it isn’t just about judgment; it’s the unique synthesis of your experience, ethics, and strategic intuition. This new model honors the critical importance of deep roots (downward vertical) while demanding the growth of a canopy (upward vertical) and a broad network of branches (horizontal). The core mandate has changed: your deep expertise is your foundation, but your value is now determined by how effectively you can translate it upwards into the canopy and outwards through your branches.
The Vertical Axis of the “+”
This is the lifeblood of the modern leader, a continuous flow between deep nourishment and active engagement with the AI-driven environment.
The Root System (Downward Vector): Anchored in Deep Expertise
This is the non-negotiable foundation. The roots represent the traditional T-shaped depth - the rich, tacit knowledge in a specific domain that provides stability and the context a machine fundamentally lacks. You must still go deep. This is the source of your credibility and the soil from which your Human POV grows. Without strong roots, the rest of the tree is just decoration.
The Canopy (Upward Vector): Activating Expertise with AI
If the roots are your stored value, the canopy is how you convert that value into energy and growth. This is the new, equally critical vector: your ability to make your deep expertise legible and scalable through AI. It’s about translating your knowledge into a frequency AI can understand and amplify.
This requires three things:
Cultivate Domain-Specific AI Literacy: You don’t just “learn AI.” You master how AI reshapes your specific domain. Your deep expertise allows you to see the opportunities for augmentation and automation that a generalist cannot.
Develop Architectural Judgment: With your expert context, you must form a strong POV on where to deploy AI for the highest leverage and, critically, when your human intuition must override the algorithm. You become the architect of your own AI-augmented workflows.
Create the Feedback Loop: The canopy feeds the roots. You must use the outputs from AI—successes and failures alike—as a feedback loop to challenge your assumptions, refine your POV, and deepen your core expertise.
The Horizontal Axis: The Network of Branches
The branches are how the tree connects to the wider forest, drawing on the ecosystem and providing value to it. This is the evolution of the traditional T-shaped horizontal bar, now more critical than ever. It’s your knowledge of adjacent domains where you are not the SME.
This network is essential now for three reasons:
It Builds Empathy: Understanding the challenges and language of other teams is crucial for effective collaboration.
It Provides Context: Your branches give you the perspective to see how your deep expertise (your roots) fits into the bigger picture.
It Guides Your Tools: This network - knowing who to talk to and what questions to ask - is vital. You use this broad knowledge to guide your human team and provide the necessary context for your AI tools to be truly effective. It informs the “Architectural Judgment” you exercise in your canopy.
Focus on the Cultivation System
You don’t command a tree to grow; you create the conditions for its growth. The same is true for “+ shaped” leaders. Your organization’s talent systems must evolve from manufacturing poles to cultivating a forest.
This means providing:
Rich Soil: A skills-based framework that values flexible capabilities over rigid job descriptions.
Sunlight & Water: A continuous learning infrastructure where upskilling is an ambient, always-on utility.
Strategic Pruning: The use of predictive talent analytics to identify and cultivate the skills your ecosystem will need in the future.
Are You a Pole or a Tree?
The old T-shaped model produced reliable telephone poles for a static world. They did their job, but they don’t grow, adapt, or create an ecosystem around them. The future belongs to leaders who operate as living trees - deeply rooted in expertise, reaching for the sky with AI-enabled leverage, and broadly connected to the world around them.
The challenge for every leader is no longer just to deepen your roots, but to grow your canopy and extend your branches.
So, how are you cultivating your own growth?
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