“Leadership is an action, not a position." said Donald McGannon – one of the biggest influencers and advocates of social responsibility in the broadcasting industry.

Hierarchy is the world of the past. Today’s organisations belong to the people who work in them (notice the word IN them, not FOR them). Each and every person, no matter levels, because today everyone is empowered and has the tools to speak up, be heard and drive change.

We’ve been seeing this happen more and more over the past few years, so it’s no surprise that this is one of the main findings of this year’s Leadership Communication Monitor by Ketchum –leadership no longer comes from CEOs only, but from everyone in the organisation.

This is the era of title-less, shared leadership.

In a recent podcast by the Harvard Business School, Richard Edelman – CEO of the largest PR consultancy in the world – talks about four main factors that affect trust in business. One of them is leadership, which in itself is not that surprising, however what’s interesting is that CEO trust, which was recovering from a low point in 2008 up to 2011, has gone backwards substantially.

As the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer has found, focusing extensively on operations and making a lot of money is no longer key – it doesn’t earn you a better reputation anymore, nor any credibility.

According to Richard Edelman it is engagement and integrity that really matter – engagement related to absolute transparency and sharing of data and information, and integrity related to putting customers ahead of profits, treating employees well and making the supply chain good.

For business, Edelman has found that trust is built through specific attributes, organised into five performance clusters and ranked by importance with integrity and engagement leading the pack, followed by products and services, purpose and operations.

What all these have in common is that they evolve around people. Trust is about them, not you.

The key to successful leadership lies in being human. That's what Unilver's CEO Paul Polman deeply believes in. You wouldn't really expect that to be the most important attribute for one of the world's most influential leaders and especially for a male executive, considering how the general perception of a great leader is the domineering, command-and-control and know-it-all male.

But with the increasing requirement for full transparency, interconnectivity and a values-led approach, it seems that there's something missing in today's prevailing leadership style.

A "female" touch.

We all know about the many opportunities and substantial value social media provides for communications, marketing and for business overall, at least you should if you've been following my blog. What's still a grey area though is the adoption or rather acceptance of social media by the highest hierarchical level (if we can call it that way) in an organisation - the C-Suite.

One of the very fundamental things about social media is that conversations happen all the time, no matter whether you are listening, participating or ignoring them. This means that even if senior management is not following or engaging on platforms such Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. people are still talking and are by driving the conversation about the brand. Those conversations are often so powerful that they even manage to shape the brand's story and significantly influence corporate reputation. Isn't that a reason enough for CEOs to join the conversation and share their voices?

Apparently, for many it is not.

Lately women, leadership and career has been a growing topic of interest and media coverage, especially promoted by Facebook COO’s Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling and eye-opening book Lean In (which I wholeheartedly recommend and will blog about it very soon).

Unfortunately, women have a long way to go until gender inequality, pay gaps and stereotypes are solved (if ever!) and until it becomes normal for the C-Suite to be 50% female.

But, as research suggests, we are making progress – especially women in Germany (where I live) and in communications (the field I work in and want to make a career in).

The PR industry has traditionally been dominated by women; however mainly so at the lower executive or mid-level. When it comes to the managerial and the C-level though, the majority of the top positions are predominantly held by men. A study on the feminisation of PR in Germany just confirms this. As the research has found, women:

• consistently earn less than men regardless of their level of education and years of work experience;
• face much stronger salary discrimination when deciding to start a family;
• receive less recognition for their performance;