Saturday, July 16, 2016

"Leadership Master" Book Tuning VI: Three Identities to Harness Leadership Maturity

11:51 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Digital leadership is the "hard-core" capability, not just the soft skill.

 Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way businesses are conducted and the society is running. Digital is a disruption with rapidly increasing speed to break down silos and rigid hierarchy. It starts with leadership innovation. Because leadership is about CHANGE. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and set the right direction for advancement. Digital also raises the bar for leadership effectiveness. Here are three “leadership identities” to verify leadership authenticity and harness leadership maturity.
Vision as your signature: As a citizen of any nation, the signature is one of the most important identities to verify when dealing with business partners in presenting your authenticity at the daily life. Metaphorically, vision is like the signature of your leadership, it’s what you stand for -A vision is how you see the future unfolding, how you dream about what the future will look like from your standpoint. The vision is every day that change is constant, there is always something to learn anytime, but one must be present at the place and at the right position to improve vision every day time. The clear leadership vision helps organizations to navigate through the uncharted water and across the blurred business territories. Vision is where to go, the strategy is how to get there. Vision is the visual interpretation of your finest dream of, or what you desire to become. Which inspires you and your followers and stakeholders. Vision must be translated into personal behavior from leaders to the rest of the team, but also in business structure, to provide for coherence to the organization in order to build up confidence for all stakeholders involved.
Capability as your drive license: The goal of leadership is also about steering toward the right direction,with abilities to reach the destination. Leadership is like driving but requires many more complex capabilities and skillsets, such as influencing, problem-solving, creativity, communication, execution, etc. And like driving, effective leadership have to identify the blind spots and know when to drive straight, and when to take the turn. Leadership is about turning around the tough situations, and enjoy the challenges of complex problem-solving. It’s not about taking the shortcut, but selecting the optimal path to achieve the goals and fulfill the vision. Leadership has to lead self, as well as others, by developing the human capital in terms of capacity building and adapting to the dynamism of the turbulent socio-economic and political global trend, and by identifying the human values and helping talent to implement them, and by developing their critical thinking skills in updating knowledge and solving complex problems.
Multidimensional intelligence as your passport: Today’s leaders must present multidimensional intelligence, as both businesses and the world becomes over-complex and hyper-competitive. Intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply wisdom to the knowledge you are exposed to. Beside conventional IQ and EQ, you need to have the strategic intelligence to bring the long-term perspective; the paradoxical intelligence to see the “both side of the coin,” the system intelligence to understand the interrelationship between parts and the whole; the judgmental intelligence to make a sound judgment, the cultural wisdom to gain empathy, and the creative wisdom to think differently. Just like your passport, allow you visiting a new place and open your eyes, leadership intelligence enables you to open mind and lead more effectively. Our intelligence with regard to any given type of information is a function of our capacity to recognize and interpret patterns, and also our consequent ability to use the perceived information to make effective decisions and sound judgment. With multidimensional intelligence, you can think through multi-dimensional angles to gain cognizance and capture leadership wisdom.
To deal with today’s digital dynamic and business complexity, leaders must have these crucial identities in order to lead effectively and effortlessly. At today’s digital dynamic, you have to envision for gaining a long-term perspective, you have to apply multi-dimensional intelligence (creative thinking, critical thinking, strategic thinking and system thinking, etc.) that goes into problem identification as well as solution discovering, and you have to build a set of differentiated capabilities, not just soft skills, to make leadership a “hard-core” capability and discipline.





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