Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The New Book “Leadership Master" Introduction Chapter 1 Thought Leadership

11:39 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

A Thought Leader is someone who looks at the future and sets a course for others to follow.

As a verb, Thought Leadership can be best offered as a state of mind. Thought Leadership is the ability to assimilate knowledge, to think with knowledge, but transcends to insight and wisdom. At today’s digital dynamic with increasing speed of changes, uncertainty, and hyper-competition, being a thoughtful, mindful and multi-dimensional thinker is more crucial to improve leadership effectiveness. In chapter I of "Leadership Master," we brainstorm the multifaceted Thought Leadership and summarize thirteen flavors of digital leadership.

Who are Thought Leaders? A Thought Leader is someone who looks at the future and sets a course for others to follow. Thought Leaders are often challenging conventional thinking and current best practices, it could be a process, a methodology, a practice, a system, a philosophy, etc. to which the Thought Leader adds a new insight and perspective. Digital leadership is less about “HOW,” more about “WHY,” and “WHAT.” Leadership brand is less about what you look, the stereotypical leadership, and more about what you think - the thought leadership. Thought Leadership is one of the most authentic digital leadership characteristics. Thought leadership by definition is transformative, even if it sometimes requires redefining the old in ways that make things new. Thought Leaders are explorers. Thought Leadership expands the boundaries, calls for the boundaries of current thinking to be challenged in either macro or micro way. Thought Leadership is by nature evolutionary in that it must always be part of an ever-evolving flow.


Authentic Leadership: Authenticity is the most fundamental, but challenging attribute for leadership effectiveness. Great leaders are both nature and nurtured. They may encounter certain life events to inspire them to become leaders, which is the nature way, but in a more nurtured logic, what transforms them is in how they aware, adapt and are able to make changes. And they can perceive, interact, interpret, and are intelligent to understand what makes them exceptional leaders. The authentic leaders with high intelligence have adaptability, consistency, and empathy to master business dynamic and culture differences, also practice thought leadership in a nature way. Great leaders are not afraid to follow as well. If you are leading and not willing to learn, growth and share, and then you are just talking the talk without leadership effectiveness. Leadership is the influence, the authentic leaders make their influence via interpreting vision clearly, make proactive interaction, build differentiated capability, and practice leadership disciple via awareness and adaptability.


Influential competency: The Thought Leaders can amplify leadership influence via sharing vision and insight.The leaders and managers with influential competence will be more flexible and less rigidly tied to top-down, command and control environment. Instead, they encourage open debates and critical thinking and value collective wisdom. Knowledge tends to be linear, but wisdom is often multidimensional.A wise thought leader doesn’t always know everything, but he or she always has the curiosity to understand things deeper or look at things from different angle. Plus an open mind - wisdom is a function of knowing what you don’t know and keeps curiosity to know more.


In this chapter of the book“Leadership Master,” we summarized thirteen types of leadership with unique strength, differentiated capability, and positive influence. Real Thought Leadership is a human capacity with the long-term perspective. Thought Leadership is influential, the Thought Leaders are mostly visionary, trusted advisors, subject matter experts or futurists, and they are change agents and digital transformation champions.

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