Articles / Beyond Command and Control: Redefining Leadership for the Modern Business Landscape
Discover how modern leadership definitions transcend traditional hierarchies to embrace adaptability, emotional intelligence and purpose-driven approaches that drive sustainable business outcomes.
| Heading Level | Section Title |
|---|---|
| H1 | Beyond Command and Control: Redefining Leadership for the Modern Business Landscape |
| H2 | The Evolution of Leadership Paradigms: From Authority to Influence |
| H3 | Historical Perspectives: Tracing Leadership Through the Ages |
| H3 | Contemporary Leadership Challenges in a VUCA World |
| H2 | Deconstructing the Modern Leadership Definition |
| H3 | Core Components of Effective Leadership |
| H4 | Vision Articulation and Strategic Direction |
| H4 | Relationship Cultivation and Trust Building |
| H4 | Decision-Making and Executive Function |
| H2 | Leadership vs. Management: Clarifying the Distinction |
| H3 | Complementary Functions in Organisational Success |
| H3 | When Leadership and Management Must Converge |
| H2 | Emotional Intelligence: The Cornerstone of Contemporary Leadership |
| H3 | Self-Awareness as Leadership Foundation |
| H3 | Empathy as a Strategic Business Advantage |
| H2 | Adaptive Leadership in Times of Disruption and Change |
| H3 | Navigating Uncertainty with Decisive Flexibility |
| H3 | Creating Psychological Safety During Transformation |
| H2 | Purpose-Driven Leadership and Organisational Values |
| H3 | Aligning Business Objectives with Broader Purpose |
| H3 | Translating Values into Operational Reality |
| H2 | Measuring Leadership Effectiveness: Beyond Financial Metrics |
| H3 | Qualitative and Quantitative Leadership Indicators |
| H3 | Long-term Value Creation as Leadership Benchmark |
| H2 | Developing Leadership Capacity: Individual and Organisational Approaches |
| H3 | Personalised Leadership Development Pathways |
| H3 | Creating Leadership Ecosystems Within Organisations |
| H2 | The Future of Leadership: Emerging Trends and Directions |
| H3 | Technology's Impact on Leadership Dynamics |
| H3 | Global Leadership Competencies in an Interconnected World |
| H2 | Frequently Asked Questions About Leadership |
In boardrooms and business schools across the globe, a profound reassessment of leadership is underway. The traditional leadership definition—once comfortably anchored in notions of command, control and hierarchical authority—has been rendered increasingly inadequate by the complex challenges confronting today's organisations. As markets transform at unprecedented velocity, technology reshapes entire industries overnight, and workforces demand greater purpose and autonomy, business leaders find themselves navigating uncharted waters where conventional leadership approaches falter.
"Leadership is no longer about the leader," observes Dame Helena Morrissey, founder of the 30% Club and former CEO of Newton Investment Management. "It's about creating the conditions for others to thrive amidst uncertainty." This sentiment encapsulates the fundamental shift occurring in how we conceptualise leadership effectiveness in contemporary business environments—a shift from leader-centricity toward context creation and enablement.
This article delves into the multifaceted nature of modern leadership, unpacking its essential components, distinguishing it from management, and examining how evolving definitions impact organisational performance. Through rigorous examination of both established research and emerging practices, we aim to provide business leaders with a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing leadership approaches calibrated to today's complex business landscape.
The conceptualisation of leadership has undergone remarkable transformation throughout business history. Early 20th-century definitions heavily emphasised trait theory—the notion that leaders possessed innate characteristics setting them apart from non-leaders. This "Great Man" theory positioned leadership as the natural province of those born with specific qualities: commanding presence, decisive action, and charismatic authority.
By mid-century, behavioural theories shifted focus toward what leaders do rather than who they inherently are. Management theorists like Douglas McGregor, whose seminal "Theory X and Theory Y" framework differentiated between controlling and participative leadership styles, began challenging authoritarian approaches. Leadership definitions expanded to encompass situational adaptability and follower development.
The late 20th century witnessed the emergence of transformational leadership theories pioneered by James MacGregor Burns and later expanded by Bernard Bass. These frameworks redefined leadership as the capacity to inspire followers toward transcending self-interest for collective achievement—marking a significant departure from transactional approaches predicated on reward and punishment dynamics.
"What's fascinating about leadership's evolution is how each era's definition reflects its broader socioeconomic context," notes Professor Laura Phillips of London Business School. "Today's definitions prioritise adaptability and collaboration precisely because our environment demands these capabilities."
Today's leadership definitions must contend with what military strategists first termed a VUCA environment—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. This framework, originally developed at the U.S. Army War College, aptly describes the business landscape where leaders must formulate strategy and execute decisions.
Volatility manifests in markets that experience rapid, unpredictable fluctuations. Uncertainty permeates decision contexts where past experiences provide insufficient guidance for future outcomes. Complexity emerges from the interconnectedness of global systems where causality becomes difficult to isolate. Ambiguity arises when information yields multiple, often contradictory interpretations.
Within this context, contemporary leadership definitions have necessarily evolved beyond command-and-control paradigms. As Sir Richard Branson articulates: "Leadership is about establishing a direction and motivating others to follow voluntarily, not because they're ordered to, but because they believe in the vision and trust the leader's judgment."
This sentiment reflects the shift toward influence-based conceptions of leadership—where authority stems not from positional power but from the leader's capacity to inspire commitment through vision articulation, relationship cultivation, and trust development.
A comprehensive leadership definition for today's business environment encompasses several interconnected elements that transcend traditional management functions. While no universal definition has achieved complete consensus among scholars and practitioners, certain core components consistently emerge in contemporary frameworks.
At its foundation, leadership involves establishing and communicating a compelling vision that provides strategic direction. This aspect of leadership addresses the fundamental question: "Where are we going?" Effective leaders create mental models of preferable futures that resonate emotionally and intellectually with stakeholders, transforming abstract possibilities into conceivable destinations.
"Vision without execution remains hallucination," cautions former GE CEO Jack Welch. This observation highlights that vision articulation, while necessary, proves insufficient without implementation capability. Contemporary leadership definitions therefore emphasise the translation of aspirational thinking into actionable strategies.
The capacity for strategic direction involves more than declaring destinations; it requires continual recalibration as conditions evolve. When Alan Jope assumed leadership at Unilever, he both affirmed the company's commitment to sustainable business practices while recalibrating implementation approaches to address emerging market realities—demonstrating how vision provides continuity while strategy enables adaptation.
Modern leadership definitions increasingly recognise that influence flows through relationships characterised by mutual trust. The transactional view of leader-follower dynamics has given way to understanding leadership as a relational process dependent upon psychological safety, authentic connection, and earned credibility.
Research from Google's Project Aristotle identified psychological safety—the belief that one won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, or concerns—as the primary characteristic of high-performing teams. This finding underscores how contemporary leadership creates environments where truth-telling becomes normative rather than exceptional.
"The currency of leadership isn't power; it's trust," observes Dame Carolyn McCall, CEO of ITV. "When trust erodes, leadership authority quickly follows." This insight highlights why relationship cultivation has moved from leadership's periphery to its core in modern definitions.
Despite evolving toward more collaborative and distributed models, leadership definitions retain the essential component of decision responsibility. Leaders create decisional frameworks, establish decision rights throughout organisations, and ultimately assume accountability for outcomes.
The quality of leadership decision-making has profound organisational implications. McKinsey research indicates that companies making decisions quickly and effectively are twice as likely to achieve financial returns above industry medians compared to slower, less effective decision-makers.
Contemporary leadership approaches balance decisiveness with deliberation. When faced with the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's former Prime Minister, demonstrated this balance through her "hard and early" approach—making consequential decisions swiftly while explaining rationales thoroughly, exemplifying how modern leadership combines decisional confidence with transparent communication.
The relationship between leadership and management represents one of business literature's most enduring debates. While early distinctions often positioned leadership as superior to management, contemporary understanding recognises these as complementary functions serving different organisational purposes.
Management primarily concerns system optimisation, process coordination, and operational efficiency. Its orientation tends toward present circumstances and known variables. Leadership, conversely, focuses on system transformation, purpose alignment, and adaptive capacity. Its orientation extends toward future possibilities and emerging conditions.
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things," observed management thinker Peter Drucker, capturing the essential distinction between these functions. Management excellence ensures operational integrity; leadership effectiveness enables organisational evolution.
This complementarity becomes evident in how organisations navigate change initiatives. Management capabilities ensure implementation fidelity and resource optimisation during change processes. Leadership capabilities establish change rationales and create psychological readiness for transformation. Neither function alone proves sufficient for sustainable organisational success.
Despite their conceptual distinctions, leadership and management frequently converge in practice. Organisational complexity increasingly requires individuals to exercise both sets of capabilities situationally rather than specialising exclusively in either domain.
Crisis contexts particularly demand this convergence. When Satya Nadella assumed Microsoft's leadership amid declining market position, he simultaneously articulated transformative vision (leadership) while implementing structural reorganisation (management). This integrated approach—combining aspirational direction with operational reconfiguration—enabled Microsoft's remarkable revitalisation.
"The artificial separation between leadership and management creates unnecessary organisational fragmentation," argues Professor Henry Mintzberg of McGill University. "Effective organisations need not heroic leaders and competent managers occupying separate spheres, but integrated capabilities deployed contextually."
This integrated perspective increasingly informs contemporary leadership development approaches, which focus on cultivating complementary capabilities rather than elevating leadership at management's expense.
Emotional intelligence—the capacity to recognise, understand, and manage emotions in oneself and others—has transitioned from leadership theory's periphery to its centre over recent decades. Research increasingly confirms that technical expertise alone proves insufficient for leadership effectiveness in complex organisational environments.
Self-awareness constitutes emotional intelligence's foundational component and serves as a critical leadership prerequisite. It encompasses accurate understanding of one's emotional states, strengths, limitations, values, and impact on others. Research from Cornell University indicates that high self-awareness correlates with stronger overall leadership performance and organisational profitability.
"The capacity for honest self-assessment represents the single greatest predictor of leadership success I've observed across industries," notes Herminia Ibarra, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. "Leaders lacking self-awareness typically overestimate their effectiveness by significant margins."
This observation aligns with findings that leadership derailment—instances where promising executives fail unexpectedly—most frequently results from self-awareness deficits rather than technical incompetence. Contemporary leadership development consequently prioritises reflective practices, feedback mechanisms, and metacognitive techniques that enhance accurate self-perception.
Beyond self-awareness, empathy—the ability to understand others' perspectives and emotional experiences—increasingly features in leadership definitions as a strategic capability rather than merely a desirable interpersonal trait. This evolution reflects recognition that empathic understanding enables more effective stakeholder engagement, team cohesion, and customer insight.
Microsoft's transformation under Satya Nadella illustrates empathy's strategic application. By prioritising understanding of customer and employee experiences, Microsoft fundamentally reoriented its product development approach from technology-centred to user-centred—resulting in significantly improved market positioning.
"Empathy isn't soft; it's strategic," argues Jacqueline de Rojas, president of techUK. "Leaders who understand their stakeholders' emotional realities make better decisions because they possess more accurate informational inputs."
Neurological research supports this assertion, demonstrating that empathic capacity enhances predictive accuracy regarding others' behaviours and preferences. For leaders navigating complex human systems, this predictive advantage translates into more effective influence strategies and higher-quality decisions.
Adaptive leadership—the capacity to respond effectively to conditions characterised by uncertainty, complexity, and discontinuity—has become increasingly central to contemporary leadership definitions. This approach, pioneered by Harvard's Ronald Heifetz, emphasises leadership as an evolutionary activity rather than a positional attribute.
"Adaptation requires distinguishing between technical problems, where existing expertise suffices, and adaptive challenges, where prevailing approaches prove inadequate," explains Heifetz. This distinction proves crucial because leadership approaches effective for technical problem-solving often fail when applied to adaptive challenges requiring systemic reconfiguration.
The COVID-19 pandemic exemplified this distinction as organisations encountered unprecedented disruption demanding rapid adaptation. Leaders who approached the pandemic as a technical problem—applying established crisis management protocols without recognising fundamental discontinuity—typically experienced poorer outcomes than those who recognised the adaptive challenge requiring novel approaches and mindset shifts.
Decisive flexibility—the seemingly paradoxical combination of decisive action and flexible adaptation—characterises effective adaptive leadership. Pascal Soriot demonstrated this quality at AstraZeneca during vaccine development, making rapid commitments while continuously adjusting implementation based on emerging information—illustrating how contemporary leadership balances direction-setting with responsive adaptation.
Transformation initiatives frequently falter not from strategic deficiencies but from implementation failures stemming from psychological resistance. Contemporary leadership definitions consequently emphasise creating psychological safety—environments where individuals feel secure taking interpersonal risks—as essential for navigating disruptive change.
"During transformation, people don't resist change per se; they resist vulnerability," observes Brené Brown, researcher and author on leadership vulnerability. "Leadership that acknowledges legitimate fears while maintaining confidence in collective capability creates conditions where people willingly engage with uncertainty."
This insight explains why technically sound transformation initiatives often fail despite logical rationales and robust implementation plans. Without psychological safety, organisational members withhold crucial information, avoid creative risk-taking, and comply superficially rather than commit authentically—undermining transformation effectiveness regardless of strategic soundness.
Leaders who successfully navigate transformation consequently attend to emotional dynamics alongside technical requirements. When Anne Boden founded Starling Bank, challenging established financial institutions, she prioritised creating environments where team members could acknowledge uncertainty without undermining confidence—exemplifying how psychological safety enables adaptive capacity during transformative undertakings.
Purpose-driven leadership—orienting organisational activity toward meaningful contribution beyond profit generation—has transitioned from idealistic philosophy to strategic imperative. Contemporary leadership definitions increasingly emphasise purpose articulation and alignment as core leadership functions rather than optional enhancements.
This evolution reflects growing evidence that purpose orientation correlates with superior financial performance. Research from EY and Harvard Business Review found that companies with clearly articulated and activated purpose achieved annual growth rates 10% higher than competitors lacking such orientation. Similar findings from Jim Collins' "Built to Last" research demonstrated that visionary companies driven by core purpose outperformed comparison companies by six times over a 15-year period.
"The profit-purpose dichotomy represents false opposition," asserts Paul Polman, former Unilever CEO and purpose-driven leadership advocate. "Enduring profitability increasingly depends upon authentic purpose alignment rather than existing despite it."
Unilever's experience substantiates this assertion. Under Polman's leadership, the company's Sustainable Living brands—those with clear purpose alignment—grew 69% faster than the remainder of the business, demonstrating how purpose orientation creates rather than compromises commercial advantage.
While purpose provides directional guidance, values establish behavioural boundaries and decision criteria within that direction. Contemporary leadership definitions consequently emphasise not merely declaring organisational values but operationalising them through consistent application to consequential decisions.
"Values statements without operational manifestation create cynicism rather than commitment," observes Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia founder. This insight explains why many organisations experience disconnect between espoused values and organisational reality—leadership fails to translate abstract principles into concrete decision criteria.
Effective values activation requires three leadership practices: embedding values in decision frameworks, recognising and rewarding values-congruent behaviours, and applying values consistently during difficult tradeoffs. When Patagonia rejected cost-saving opportunities that compromised environmental standards despite profit implications, they demonstrated how values operate as genuine decision constraints rather than aspirational statements.
This approach contrasts markedly with organisations where values function primarily as marketing assets without operational influence. Contemporary leadership definitions consequently distinguish between values articulation (necessary but insufficient) and values operationalisation (the defining characteristic of authentic purpose-driven leadership).
Defining leadership necessarily implicates how leadership effectiveness gets measured. Traditional approaches heavily emphasised financial outcomes—profit margins, market share, shareholder returns—as primary leadership effectiveness indicators. While these metrics retain importance, contemporary frameworks incorporate broader measurement dimensions reflecting leadership's multifaceted nature.
Balanced scorecard approaches developed by Kaplan and Norton represent early efforts to expand measurement beyond financial indicators. These frameworks incorporate customer perspectives, internal process metrics, and learning/growth measures alongside financial outcomes—providing more comprehensive leadership effectiveness assessment.
Contemporary approaches further expand measurement through qualitative indicators including employee engagement, psychological safety levels, innovation capacity, and purpose alignment. These measures acknowledge leadership's role in creating conditions for sustainable performance rather than merely driving short-term results.
"What you measure inevitably shapes what you achieve," notes Frances Frei, Harvard Business School professor specialising in leadership measurement. "Limited measurement frameworks produce limited leadership behaviours." This observation explains why organisations expanding leadership metrics beyond financial indicators typically experience corresponding expansion in leadership effectiveness across multiple dimensions.
Perhaps the most significant evolution in leadership effectiveness measurement involves timeframe extension. Traditional approaches heavily weighted short-term outcomes, creating incentives for leadership decisions optimising immediate results potentially at longer-term expense. Contemporary frameworks increasingly incorporate extended time horizons reflecting leadership's responsibility for sustainable value creation.
This evolution aligns with research demonstrating that excessive short-term orientation frequently undermines enduring organisational performance. A landmark study from McKinsey and FCLT Global found that companies making decisions with longer time horizons outperformed peers on nearly all financial metrics including revenue growth, earnings, economic profit, and market capitalisation.
"Leadership effectiveness ultimately manifests in organisations that thrive beyond individual leadership tenures," argues Sarah Friar, former CFO of Square and current CEO of Nextdoor. This perspective positions intergenerational value creation—building organisations that prosper across leadership transitions—as the definitive leadership effectiveness benchmark.
This measurement approach represents profound redefinition of leadership itself—from achievement within tenure to capability development that enables achievement beyond tenure. It fundamentally shifts leadership focus from performance extraction to capacity creation, from resource exploitation to system regeneration.
As leadership definitions have evolved from trait-based to capacity-based frameworks, development approaches have similarly transformed. Contemporary methodologies recognise that leadership development requires personalised pathways rather than standardised programmes—reflecting the diverse contexts in which leadership manifests.
This personalisation operates through development approaches targeting specific capability gaps rather than generic competency models. Using robust assessment processes, development initiatives identify individual growth edges—areas where capability enhancement would most significantly improve leadership effectiveness—and design interventions accordingly.
"The most effective leadership development doesn't teach generic leadership; it develops the leader's authentic expression of leadership principles," observes Herminia Ibarra, whose research demonstrates that effective development occurs through experimentation with provisional leadership identities rather than prescriptive instruction in predefined approaches.
This insight explains why programmatic leadership development often yields disappointing results despite substantial investment. When development approaches fail to account for individual starting points, learning styles, and contextual requirements, they produce homogenised leadership behaviours ill-suited to diverse organisational challenges.
Beyond individual development, contemporary approaches increasingly focus on cultivating leadership ecosystems—organisational environments that systematically develop leadership capacity throughout the system rather than exclusively among designated leaders.
This ecosystem approach recognises that leadership effectiveness depends significantly on organisational context. Research from Harvard's Linda Hill demonstrates that innovative organisations distribute leadership functions across multiple levels rather than concentrating them exclusively at hierarchical peaks—creating what she terms "collective genius."
"Organisations need fewer heroic leaders and more leadership-conducive environments," argues Gary Hamel, management innovation expert. This perspective shifts development focus from creating exceptional individuals toward establishing conditions where leadership naturally emerges from multiple organisational locations.
Such environments share several characteristics: psychological safety that encourages initiative, decision clarity that establishes authority boundaries, information transparency that enables informed judgment, and learning orientation that values growth through experimentation. When these conditions exist, leadership capacity develops organically rather than exclusively through formal development programmes.
Technological advancement continues reshaping leadership requirements in profound ways. Artificial intelligence, automation, and digital transformation simultaneously eliminate certain leadership functions while creating entirely new leadership imperatives.
Algorithmic decision-making increasingly handles routine decisions previously requiring leadership judgment. Workplace automation reduces direct supervision requirements while increasing coordination complexity. Digital collaboration tools enable distributed work arrangements that challenge traditional presence-based leadership approaches.
"Tomorrow's leaders must navigate the boundary between human judgment and algorithmic recommendation," observes Satya Nadella, addressing how AI integration alters leadership dynamics. This observation highlights emerging leadership capabilities including algorithm oversight, augmented decision-making, and human-machine collaboration facilitation.
Research from MIT's Center for Information Systems Research identifies "digital savviness" among leadership teams as the single strongest predictor of organisational performance in digitally disrupted industries. This finding suggests that future leadership definitions will increasingly incorporate technological fluency alongside traditional leadership capabilities.
Globalisation's progression continues expanding leadership complexity beyond national and cultural boundaries. Contemporary leadership increasingly operates across geographical, cultural, regulatory, and temporal divides—requiring capabilities transcending traditional leadership approaches optimised for homogeneous contexts.
"Global leadership differs qualitatively from domestic leadership scaled larger," explains Erin Meyer, whose research on cultural dimensions identifies how leadership practices effective in one cultural context often prove counterproductive in others. This insight explains why leadership approaches frequently fail when transported across cultural boundaries without contextual adaptation.
Future leadership definitions consequently emphasise cross-cultural intelligence, contextual adaptability, and integrative thinking. These capabilities enable leaders to recognise different cultural operating systems, adapt behavioural approaches accordingly, and integrate diverse perspectives into cohesive direction—essentials for leadership effectiveness in globally interconnected contexts.
The progression toward distributed organisations operating across multiple regulatory environments further compounds this complexity. Future leaders must navigate not merely cultural variation but regulatory divergence, developing what legal scholar Gillian Hadfield terms "rules thinking"—the capacity to recognise and adapt to different rule structures across jurisdictions.
1. How does leadership differ from management? Leadership primarily concerns establishing direction, aligning people, and inspiring commitment, while management focuses on planning, organising, and ensuring operational execution. Both functions prove essential for organisational success, with leadership creating the conditions for transformation and management ensuring systematic implementation. Effective organisations require integrated deployment of both capabilities rather than treating them as separate domains.
2. Can leadership be developed, or are leaders born? Contemporary research conclusively demonstrates that leadership capabilities can be developed through deliberate practice, experiential learning, and reflective feedback. While certain personality traits may facilitate specific leadership approaches, the core capabilities comprising effective leadership—including emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and adaptive capacity—can be systematically enhanced through developmental processes tailored to individual starting points and contexts.
3. How is leadership effectiveness best measured? Comprehensive leadership measurement incorporates both quantitative metrics (financial performance, operational indicators) and qualitative assessments (employee engagement, psychological safety, innovation capacity). Balanced approaches consider multiple stakeholder perspectives and evaluate outcomes across varying time horizons, prioritising sustainable value creation over short-term optimisation. Effective measurement frameworks align assessment methods with specifically defined leadership priorities.
4. What distinguishes effective leadership during crisis situations? Crisis leadership effectiveness combines decisive action with transparent communication, emotional steadiness with situational adaptability. Research indicates that leaders who acknowledge reality candidly while maintaining confidence in collective capability typically navigate crises most effectively. Additional factors include rapid information processing, clear decision rights establishment, and maintaining connection between immediate crisis response and longer-term organisational direction.
5. How does purpose-driven leadership impact organisational performance? Evidence increasingly demonstrates positive correlation between purpose orientation and financial performance. Organisations with clearly articulated and authentically activated purpose typically experience higher growth rates, superior talent attraction/retention, greater customer loyalty, and enhanced innovation capacity compared to purpose-deficient counterparts. These advantages derive from stronger stakeholder engagement, clearer strategic filtering, and enhanced intrinsic motivation throughout the organisation.
6. What leadership attributes are most crucial in leading diverse teams? Leading diverse teams effectively requires heightened cultural intelligence, perspective-taking capacity, and inclusive communication practices. Research indicates that leaders demonstrating genuine curiosity about different viewpoints, creating psychological safety for divergent expression, and establishing common purpose across difference achieve superior outcomes from diverse teams. Additional success factors include transparent decision processes, equitable resource allocation, and recognition approaches accommodating cultural variation.
7. How should leadership development balance standardisation with personalisation? Effective leadership development combines standardised foundational elements addressing universal leadership principles with personalised components targeting individual growth edges. Research demonstrates that development impact increases significantly when approaches account for learner context, experience level, learning style, and specific capability requirements. Blending standardised conceptual frameworks with personalised application opportunities optimises development outcomes across diverse leadership populations.
8. How is technology changing leadership requirements? Technological advancement simultaneously eliminates certain traditional leadership functions while creating entirely new leadership imperatives. Artificial intelligence increasingly handles routine decisions previously requiring leadership judgment, while creating new requirements for augmented decision-making, algorithmic oversight, and human-machine collaboration facilitation. Additional emerging requirements include digital transformation leadership, remote team engagement, and navigating increasingly porous organisational boundaries.