Sunday, April 16, 2017

Digital Boards as “Leadership Masters”

The digital boards are also leadership masters who can both walk the talk and talk the walk seamlessly to lift digital leadership effectiveness and maturity.


The board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture style and leadership quintessential. A high mature digital board is like a brighter light tower to guide the business in the right direction and take all these significant responsibilities more “thoughtfully.” Here are three leadership inquiries help digital BoDs sharpen their leadership capabilities and improve their directorship effectiveness.


Is the next generation of leaders stepping up? Who is choosing to lead in these uncertain times? The substance of leadership will never change, it is the vision to make a positive influence, to lead your organization and the world forward, not backward. Leadership is about a clear vision and a planned attitude of the free mind, risk-taking, initiative, and innovation. On one hand, leadership becomes more open and omnipresent in the digital era because the hierarchy of an organization is flatter due to the latest digital disruption. On the other hand, the leadership bar is raised because the leadership reputation cannot be built through certain static credential or a few spotlight moments, the world has become more connected and transparent. Leadership is no longer just about a title or a position or some soft skills only, it is the set of hard capabilities to both connect the minds and touch the hearts. Great leaders today need extraordinary vision and differentiated capabilities, and more importantly how to convey and interpret their vision via creative communication, as well as the ability to lead the team for reaching the vision seamlessly. Hence, from the boardroom to the front line, every authentic leader needs to mind certain gaps and bridge the cognitive difference. First and foremost, remove the filter of your biases in your vision. By doing so, you will be able to perceive the business opportunities and risks more clearly.


Is the current leadership asking for help across the organization? At the industrial age, the ones in leadership positions assume they have all the answers because the business is considerably static and there’s a scarcity of information, and many managers live in their own silo to advocate “we always do things this way,” management practices. However, digital means changes and abundant information, Besides soft quality, the hardcore of leadership is knowledge, insight, and wisdom in order to make sound judgments and solid decisions. Further, at today’s information overloading business dynamic, leaders need to be able to prioritize their work and manage their time more effectively, laser focus on the critical things which really matter; sadly this is one area that is lacking in many areas which then results in a drop in leadership effectiveness. Digital leaders today need to become more inquisitive, creative and informative. Knowledge sharing and understanding organizational culture is a way to start, they should always eager to understand the other side of the coin, complement each other’s skills, finish each other’s sentences, and participate the open conversation for cultivating the culture of learning.


Is the culture of the organization that allows people to lead without authority? Leadership does not mean being followed up by followers based on titles only. To be an inspiring digital leader today, an individual has to prove him/herself of ultra-modern mindset, well-developed professional capabilities, innovative spirit, multi-dimensional intelligence, and risk-tolerance attitude. There is healthy leadership and unhealthy leadership. Healthy leaders seek people who demonstrate the true interest in growing, purpose discovery and contributing to something larger and becoming better at the strengths they possess. Unhealthy leadership practices enforce the industrial silo or focus on “cookie-cutting,” criteria, choose people lacking independent thinking or differentiated leadership capabilities, which may lead to authoritarianism, egotism or even unprofessionalism. You need to clarify and understand that the role of a leader is to create a high-performance environment where success is inevitable. Combined with the role, the purpose of leadership is to cultivate more authentic leaders and awaken possibility in people to deliver extraordinary results. A digital leader creates more authentic leaders, not his/her own copy, but be authentic for their own purposes.

Contemporary digital boards should set the critical tone from leadership grooming to talent/culture development, to ensure the right people are in the right positions for leading digital transformation. The board provides an “outside-in” view of the business and multi-dimensional lenses to oversee and advise business strategy execution and steer business toward the right direction effortlessly. The digital boards are also leadership masters who can both walk the talk and talk the walk seamlessly to lift digital leadership effectiveness and maturity.

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