The Mastery Mind: To Celebrate the 1000th ‘Blog - Digital is the Age of Mastery

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.  -Lao Tzu 

Here comes the 1000^th blog, the significant milestone to discover, share, grow and master. Just like running a thousand miles, indeed, it takes dedication, hard-working, deep-thinking, heart-touching and dot-connection; just like growing a tree with 1000 nature and nurtured fruits on it, perhaps not every one of them is tasty, still, the harvest of the food for thought, the blossom of the idea flowers, the color of fresh points & leaves, the strength of system trunks, and the theme of topic branches will not just decorate the surrounding, but to create the oxygen and make the positive influence on its ecosystems; just like telling a thousand stories, even it is not as entertaining as famous ‘One Thousand and One Nights” tales, but the goal to maintain such professional blog is to be inspirational, educational, experimental, intellectual and influential, to touch the very hearts and minds of global or net citizens; just like drinking a thousand cups of coffee or tea, sometimes you feel energetic, at the other time life tastes bitter, still, time is flowing….. Some say, Digital is the age of MASTERY, as a blogger, author, entrepreneur, visioneer, thought leader, subject expert or digital master, what can we learn and grow by blogging?   

1. Continue to Discover Who We are

Writing the blogs, just like creating a dynamic book, the intention is to discover who we are, where we are going to be, whatever the state of awareness we arrive at, there is always a deeper state. We have the opportunity to continue learning and sharing.  As thought leaders, we know that the key to transforming from good to great is to continue to look for the connection between ourselves, others and a higher power. The more we grow, the more confident and humbled we become, the more capable we are of sharing wisdom better, understanding others and inspiring those around us.

Know thyself. There’s no easy undertaking, and it perhaps the ultimate challenge of life-long learning. Self-Actualization is the ultimate goal one wants to satisfy as per Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory. Self -actualization is realizing oneself. Normally, a leader is born when he or she asks one or all of the following questions at a compelling situation. 
-Who am I? 
-Where did I come from?
-Where am I heading for? 
-Who else is with me? 
-What do I want in my life? 
-Why was I born? 

Follow the heart and mind: We cannot know what we want before we know who we are. We are meant to discover ourselves and then rediscover who we have become. Leaders, who are mostly self-actualized persons, tend to often ask further questions at testing times to lead themselves and others as well. At that point in time called, "moment of truth", the highest need is triggered and all other needs become secondary. 

        Challenge-intellectually challenged

     Purpose-inspired by a higher calling when they can see a direct correlation between their contribution and a positive impact on their organization or better yet, the world, they are inspired to lead and discover relentlessly.     
     Growth-provided with opportunities for growth and advancement 

         Character –The ability to contemplate, self-reflect and focus on the big picture 

       Consistency – Inspiration, not just aspiration. The ability to never lose focus on the ultimate goal. The ability to inspire people.  

  2.   The Age of Mastery     

Digital is the age of mastery, digital technologies amplify talent’s voice and leadership influence, track net citizens’ digital footprint and knowledge fluency, innovation now is everyone’s game and collective wisdom is the power of the crowd. The digital leaders have to consume, comment and create the content in mastering the subject matter and connect, collect and collaborate in practicing management discipline.

Between awareness and leadership, there is the phase of “self-becomeness”. A potential leader travels his or her leadership journey, getting interested or intrigued by what happens in his or her surrounding at any time. The blog is perhaps the perfect dairy for interacting, learning, becoming aware of oneself in the new situations, unconsciously shaping next step in accordance with inner values consistently.

Three core elements of motivational factors: The author of 'Drive', Pink summarizes in a thorough way with a body of evidence suggests that a few simple, motivational factors govern the reasons we work and the reasons we work "willingly and well". He divides these motivational factors into three core elements: 
- Autonomy: People need autonomy over the task, time, team and technique elements of their work 
- Mastery: This can be boiled down to engagement and mastery or "flow". More specifically, the need to constantly build upon and improve one’s skills and use them in a work setting. 
- Purpose: The humans love to feel what we do is for the purpose of something that is greater than ourselves, the inner force to harmonize and unify. 

The mastery is more as flow than dominance. The true mastery doesn’t mean dominance over, but where we flow with, and yet manipulate to our desire and higher best interest. This is a place where we "get it" via self-direction, we understand the nature of nature and abide with how it works, at the same time fulfill our dreams. It's mastery by each individual when time permits and a singular purpose that involves the immediate. This is the path to cognitive surplus and self-mastery.

    3.  Practice Thought Leadership

The world becomes flatter, hyper-connected and over-complex, but leadership shouldn't be flat, it has to reach the mountain top and dive into valley deep, formal education (either ivy style or metropolitan flavor) alone is not sufficient enough to prepare for the leaders of future, and leadership innovation becomes everyone’s high calling and daily practice, as knowledge life cycle is shortened, and information has to be continually analyzed and synthesized into deep insight and fresh foresight; culture is not static, but can be shaped on purpose, to push the human world forward, and the future of talent management has to leverage the new digital pipelines for discovering the rough diamond or raw intelligence

Open minded: Blogging is the open-minded way to learn, reflect, grow and share. Willing to accept change, change is inevitable; digital means change, what you think and what you believe last week may have changed by now, the speed of changes both in market condition as well as technology across the globe maybe too fast for you to grasp. If you can not accept change or be in denial, then your leadership will be challenged and possibly your myopic view can cause your downfall. So when a leader thinks and decides, it has to be open-minded and impartial as the world continues to evolve. An open- minded people seek out and hear the contrary opinion so that decisions can be made with the best of all available information. It takes courage to surround her/him self with people even smarter than she/he is and know that her/his role is to inspire them to greatness.

Humility: Effective leaders realize they don't have all the answers and aren't good at everything. They are aware of their strengths and open to asking for help from others whose strengths compliment theirs. Whenever you think you have all the answers, you have stopped asking questions. The digital leaders crowdsource, share the knowledge and always open for the collective insight. Sometimes the process flows easily when you are allowing it to flow and at other times as you struggle through varying issues. Digital leaders demonstrate their understanding that we are all connected and we need each other to survive and evolve, thus sustaining the growth of the business and world for all, expresses from wisdom with empathy, not through the power of command and control. 

Persistence and Principle: It takes persistence to run a thousand miles or writing a thousand blogs; it takes persistence to continue learning and mastery. It takes principles to guide through the leadership journey: Sailing the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, but the ability to track according to the winds and current. It is important for the leader to communicate the principles that guide his/her decision making because the path will not be linear. Becoming a leader, one goes through many hurdles, hardship and sometimes failure or dejection. A human with an untiring persistence to reach his/her goal will enable a mentor to turn that rough diamond into a complete leader. 

It is the 1000^th blog milestone, but the story is not ending yet, and there’re still quite a few miles to reach millions of professional audience. There’re some which have been said, but there’re even more need to share, the journey is continuously on!

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. -Winston Churchill

Posted in: Food for Thought,Future of Leadership