An increasing percentage of today’s work depends on the kindness of strangers. Your success as a leader hinges on your ability to entice people—many of whom you may never meet—to go the extra mile. Discretionary effort is the life blood of today’s economy.  As we move toward business models that depend on innovation, collaboration, and individual expertise and craft, we must move away from traditional concepts regarding the key responsibilities of senior executives.

            Looking back over my many years of research, one conclusion stands apart: You can’t make anybody collaborate and innovate. There is no correlation between traditional “push” management techniques, and people’s willingness to tackle the challenges they face with greater creativity, energy and pride.

            Today, encouraging a greater number of people to go just a little bit farther is a leader’s essential job. Long gone is the time when our primary management challenge was to ensure that workers performed tasks consistently and reliably. Now we need “pull” approaches, geared to encourage individuals to share their ideas more widely and constructively, to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

            Statistics tell a striking story. The number of total goods-producing jobs has declined sharply in the US, from 36 percent of all jobs 50 years ago to 15 percent today. Education and health-related jobs have gone from 5 percent of the US economy in 1959 to 14 percent today; professional and business services, from 7 percent to 13 percent.

            Since most manufacturing jobs require employees to be in the same place at the same time, in-process activities can be easily inspected by a supervisor. Knowledge-based work, on the other hand, is often done virtually and asynchronously, making it difficult to judge an individual’s performance. Quality is often assessed only after completion. We count on individuals to give their very best while their work is in progress.

            Consider your leadership approach against these changing dynamics. Is your style likely to engage the kindness of strangers? What would a leader be like who could entice others to contribute greater levels of discretionary effort?

            Here are three characteristics I’d put at the top of my list:

             Interesting and intriguing: able to capture people’s imagination and create excitement.

             Tolerant of ambiguity: open to considering a wide range of ideas and respectful of divergent points of view.

             Authentic: offering a consistent deal and delivering on commitments reliably.

Tammy Erickson is the McKinsey Award-winning author of Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation and Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent.