Ring in the Year of 2016: Is Integrated Leadership the DIgital Trend?

The digital leadership is more integrated, innovative, influential, and insightful!

There are only minutes away from the New Year - businesses and the world are moving deeper and deeper into the digital world of VUCA -Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, while company boundaries are blurred and the world is so hyper-connected, who leads whom? The inspiring way to characterize the types of leadership needs to dig deeper, hunt for the character, look inside charisma, verify the authenticity, as well as pursuit the purpose: How can leaders make a positive influence? How can they harness the creativity and passion of the workforce in pursuit of competitive advantage & unique difference in the global stage? Is integrated leadership the digital trend? What are the most important ingredients in great leadership?

Collaboration: Integrated leadership isn't one person at the top with prestige and value higher than the subordinates/followers underneath. Integrated leadership isn't looking only at work and the challenges we may encounter currently or locally; rather, integrated leadership includes all the relationship dynamics we have going on the surroundings to include the future perspectives and global community. We're all in this world together. It's basically some form of collaborative leadership, meaning to listen to those around you to help make decisions that (ideally) impact all positively. When collaborating, not dictating, it is with the intention that you respect and value each person as a human being and want to listen to their perspective/input breaking down barriers and working together towards common goals and for the greater good for all.

Wisdom: Knowledge tends to be linear, but wisdom is often multidimensional. Integrated leadership leverages the collective wisdom. The wise mind is not full, but free; not about cleverness, but about humbleness; not about system or boxes, but about out-of-box; not about informativeness, but about openness, not about dictation, but about direction. It is a leader's role to foster a culture of open-mindedness, to the best of their ability, and that may take time and effort, but the long-term results can be very rewarding. Cross-cultural / intercultural integration is about inclusiveness and bringing new thoughts & ways of doing things, and wisdom into an organization

Adaptability: It is characteristic makes someone better at almost anything in an ever changing environment. This doesn't mean changing things for fun or impulse but assessing an environment and adjusting to it (person, thing, event, etc.). Integrated leadership is more about adaptation to change, and flexibility to think alternatives. Adaptive leaders inspire cross-disciplined thinking, iterative communication, and cross-functional collaboration, cultivate and embrace the cognitive diversity that underpins adaptive organizations. They are more insightful to be capable of pulling past, present, and future together to pursue wisdom.

Digital leadership becomes more open and omnipresent in the digital era because the hierarchy of an organization is flatter due to the latest digital disruption, the digital leadership is more integrated, innovative, influential, and insightful! "Leadership is the art of getting someone else do something you need to be done, and they want to do it!" (Eisenhower).

Posted in: Food for Thought,Future of Leadership