An Influential Corporate Board

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. 

People tend to make leadership very complex, but in its most simple form, leadership is an influence. With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, the command control style of management is gradually losing its steam. Digital leadership needs to be highly intelligent and influential, to lead through influence, not brute force. The corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars must influence and exemplify progressive leadership and help to shape an ultra-modern digital organization effortlessly.

Influential Intelligence: A mindset could be called influential intelligence if it can discover the patterns of inter-relationship among different disciplines, understand the mindsets of all members of the group. The insightful board leaders has the ability to influence peers or management team as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving issues such as strategy, performance, branding, technological vision, finance, talent management, etc. They do not dominate discussions, instead, they encourage open critical debates, encourage fresh perspectives, and appreciate the collective insight from peer board directors as well as various stakeholders. To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. With influential intelligence, the contemporary corporate board can inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, exemplify, encourage, and orchestrate change. The corporate board leaders with influential intelligence have adaptability, consistency, profundity, and empathy to steer the business in the right directions under business dynamic and lead the business forward smoothly.

Expertise influence: Top board leaders need to have broader business acumen, deep expertise, transdisciplinary knowledge, cross-functional experience, and leadership skills. As a senior leadership role, corporate board directors should be the specialized generalists with “T” shaped expertise, and they are able to embrace the seemingly paradoxical point of views in order to gain a deep understanding of varying strategic topics holistically. Most of the board directors are top seasoned executives with decades of experience. Collectively, the digital board with a blend of expertise and capabilities can foster a culture of innovation and improve boardroom decision effectiveness and leadership maturity. To reach the state of knowledge proficiency and spread expertise influence, it is also important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight in the boardroom. Board directors are not just the follower to chase the tidal waves blindly, but able to capture the invaluable business insight to make sound judgments and effective decisions in a consistent way.

World class leadership influence: The ultimate criterion of "high-influential leadership," is the ability to create more leaders, to spread leadership, or more precisely, to groom more authentic leaders with the ability to think differently, independently, and innovatively. To amplify leadership influence, digital leaders including corporate board directors need to be constantly visible by sharing vision and enabling others to share it. Their leadership influence is made based on the leadership substances such as vision and purpose with effective digital leadership styles such as participation, coaching or delegation. The corporate board’s global leadership influence is based on their world-class leadership competencies such as self-regulation, social judgment skills, empathy, motivation to work in a global environment, cultural cognition, acceptance of complexity and its contradictions, the tolerance of ambiguity, flexibility, and learning agility. Their leadership influence must be built on the foundation of the moral competencies such as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. Open leadership, humble attitude, adaptability, creativity, sound judgment, inclusiveness, and fact-driven communication, are digital leadership traits to make profound leadership influence. Highly influential leaders understand themselves and have a story to tell, they develop an authentic leadership brand, and encourage others to do the same.

Posted in: Board Room,Future of Leadership,Leadership Master