Saturday, May 23, 2015

Shall you View Digital Leadership as a Principle

Leadership is about focus. It is about providing direction, both for oneself and others.


 Leadership comes in many shades of character and degree. The culture provides the latitude of influence and the magnitude of power, the potential that exists within the cultural beliefs and values that can be exploited or manipulated that leadership can exploit, whether it’s corporate or public. All leaders have some handle on this. You need to understand the context and interests to appreciate what type of leadership will come from it. It is no wonder that leadership is such a contentious issue and full of portentous exemplars of deployment. Leadership is about the future, it’s about change, it’s about making a difference, shall you also view digital leadership as a principle?


It is sometimes useful to view leadership as a principle and process, not a hierarchy. Leadership is about focus. It is about providing direction, both for oneself and others. It is also about alignment and integration. Effective Leadership finds the leader and followers in the voluntary and productive 'overlap.' There is an agreement in the selected vision, values, purpose and plan. Things get done with effective Leadership. Of course, there is frustration in the process of leadership. Such frustration may come from an element of dissonance or disagreement between leader and followers. "Leadership Sucks" is a good eye-catcher, but digital leadership is not about religion or servitude. It is about the good that is created when one leads with deliberate care and vision. Any sacrifices made are rewarded with more bounty than imaginable, so as long as the leadership is healthy (balanced, inclusive, and not self-serving) and effective (innovative, progressive and harmonized). Leadership comes in all ages, forms, and styles. To put simply, leadership is to bridge, not to divide; leadership is to adapt, not too rigid; leadership is to move forward, not backward.


Leadership as making your people grow is a tough call. Even more, when you have to deal with so many different personalities and diversity of cultures. However, this is a beautiful challenge of adapting to others so that they trust you, listen to your team, and manage to show them clear paths, communicate with them and guide them so that they can solve problems in a much more effective way, show them results at the same time, they improve their soft skills through the leader's feedback for personal and professional growth. However, much what passes for leadership today is either 'survival managing' or "status quo." Survival managing is when an organization's leaders say they want leadership at all levels, but what they really want and expect is performance management and production on their terms. “Status quo” means when leaders lead, not for a cause or an idea, but to gain the status quo. Everyone can see when leaders are leading that way - and what people want and need is a reason, a cause, a goal to be led toward. That's where the idea of 'transformational leadership' connects.


Leadership is a contextual phenomenon, that portents the state of the potential. There are many ways to realize the possibilities and demeanor to employ in making cause for the will to take root in the belief that a leader fosters from their followers. There are those who seek the justification of leadership via virtuous qualities, but its reality is a cultural sanctioning of a mean to an end. Is such a lack of consensus, due to mediocre judgment or poor communication/mentoring skills of the leader? Or is it due to different values of the followers? Leadership is about the respect and understanding of people - transforming a crowd into a workable collective. This is the most elegant, interesting and challenging art.


The transformative digital leader is the natural leader and would seem to satisfy the notion that leadership is a consequence of ecology. Talent development of such leadership tends to occur on an ad hoc basis and is dependent upon the emergence and recognition of these native talents. Still, leadership is both nature and nurtured, an effective leader has to have a growth mind with learning agility in order to build a strong team or business which can grow and mature with a dynamic continuum.

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