Three Characteristics of Transformative Leadership

 Leadership is about the future, it’s about change, it’s about making a difference, a principle and a discipline.

Transformational leadership is the higher level digital leadership. History has shown us that transformational leaders place a high value on human beings within their organization and make sublime achievement of pushing the world forward. Transformational leaders have idealized Influence upon building vision and goals, inspire and motivate more people to commit to their vision. The truly transformational leadership requires leaders to have a deep understanding of themselves, and become conscious of the impact they are having on others. Here are three characteristics of transformative leadership.

Intellectual stimulation: Transformative leaders know how to inspire, woo and persuade various key stakeholders coming along with them on a risk-taking but significantly invigorating venture. They practice open leadership, have a growth mindset, make intellectual stimulation, nurture the culture of learning, enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration, and build a positive working atmosphere. Intellectual stimulation is critical to encourage creativity because people have to let go of “the voices from the past,” deprogram old mindset, break down the outdated customs or traditions, reprogramming collective minds with new values, norms, and attitudes, and keep their creative energy flow frictionlessly. Transformative leaders can empathetically let people know that they are part of something bigger than just keeping the trains running on time. They can make the big differences by exploring who they are, who they want to be, as well as how they can do things differently. A friendly digital working environment is like the melting pot to embrace diversity, inspire creativity, stimulate intellectual curiosity and encourage free thinking & experimenting.

Systematic Insight: Transformative leaders can make the large scale of changes at the individual, relational, and systemic levels simultaneously. In practice though, too often, transformational change is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization. Therefore, often, transformational leaders are the ones who have cross-domain business and personality traits so that they can gain an in-depth understanding of the interconnectivity of systems and relationship dynamics. Transformative leaders desire to listen to the different viewpoint and discover the connectivity and common ground from the difference and shape their own viewpoint. They can gain business insight by learning to create inner space of consciousness and superconsciousness in the storming mind of thoughts, emotions, sensations, imagination, and reasoning. They are able to carry compelling conversations across business domains, speak functional dialects to tailor audiences, and make systematic design to construct a company scope digital transformation. Further, transformative leaders can see the patterns others may not, more specifically, they can see invisible behind visible, perceive hyperconnectivity and interdependence between parts and the whole; learn from the past and ride above the learning curve. Thus, they can engender new perspectives, diagnose the root cause of problems and solve them systematically.

Game-changing: The digital business today is not just working within the industry, but also permeating cross-ecosystem which is dynamic, continuous and interactive. Large or transformative change is not for the fainted heart. It takes a lot of brainstorming and energy to re-focus, kick start or “game-change.” Transformational leadership is based on vision, to connect the dots into the future. Transformational leaders are often driven by a purpose bigger than themselves and, thus, often constructively disruptive, to make the large leap of collective progress. The challenge is to prioritize what you know about and keep an eye open for signs of things you don't know about. Transformational leaders reject conventional thoughts and structures without apology. Rule-breaking or rule-making is part of transformative leadership which demands insight, understanding, patience, persistence, and courage, among other things. It’s a critical step for game-changing. Updated rules are still necessary for framing, setting the standard or safeguarding the status quo. Generally speaking, rule update, mind shift, and culture refreshment are all critical steps for driving game-changing digital transformation.

Digital transformation needs to be led by transformational leaders. Find those who dare to think bigger and thrive on change and innovation. Understanding each executive's authentic leadership traits and capability is where organizations need to start. Leadership is about the future, it’s about change, it’s about making a difference, should you also view digital leadership as a principle and a discipline.