Emergent leadership is a type of leadership in which a group member is not appointed or elected to the leadership role; rather, leadership develops over time as a result of the group's interaction. The most successful companies are focused on this new type of leader to add value to their organizations.

Two writers for The New York Times interviewed Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google. Adam Bryant and Thomas Friedman shared with readers what Google learned about traits for success among its 48,000 employees. Bock used Big Data analytics to determine that continuous learning, the art of leadership, collaboration and intellectual humility are the characteristics of successful employees.

Google analyzes what works and doesn't work in recruiting, management and leadership. Bock is clear about the importance of trust in performing these analyses: "We treat the data with great respect. You need to construct this really powerful tent of trust in the people gathering the data and how they use it."