The high-mature senior leadership is based on vision, learning agility, influential intelligence, and a high level of intellectual and emotional maturity.
The digital era upon us is about abundant information and high velocity. Top leaders go beyond a senior title, their leadership competency is based on their bigger, wider, and deeper thinking box, to shape multidimensional views and enable them to develop a far-sighted vision. Their leadership influence is based on their ability to inspire, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, uniqueness to bridge, and competency to turn around.
Abstract view: Abstraction and insight reinforce each other by capturing the essence of issues and stepping back from the details. Senior leaders play a critical role in setting principles and policies. Hence, abstract thinking, views or communications styles help them differentiate substance from style, grasp the quintessential from overwhelming growth of information. The art of abstraction is to imagine- allow your audience and followers to develop their version of perceptions, methods or practice to understand issues; the science of abstraction is to unify - sum up the core problems by discovering patterns, developing inferential logic, and embracing contextualization for getting the more objective truth and building common trust between heterogeneous groups.
As a matter of fact, abstraction is an important senior leadership skill because it’s the ability to clarify and simplify; it means to eliminate the unnecessary hassles so that the necessary can speak out; shape a holistic view to overcome the symptom of”lost in translation." Usually the top leadership roles such as board directors or senior executives need to spend significant time on making strategic decisions on a daily basis, they are able to capture profound insight, frame the right problems by asking the right questions, facilitate the scope of answers and constraints for solving problems smoothly.
Strategic view: Senior leaders should have strategic views to “keep the end” in mind, forward-looking and goal driven. Strategic thinking is specified as being conceptual, systems-oriented, directional, linking the future with the past and opportunistic. Statistically, less than seven percent of people are strategic thinkers. Nowadays, Strategic thinkers are interdisciplinary influencers because thinking and logical reasoning are not based on linear domain knowledge, it needs to work crossdisciplinarly for getting the big picture and setting directions to drive progressive & transformative changes. To put it briefly, strategic practitioners can think multi-dimensionally without getting lost in mundane detail. Strategic leaders have a role to play in balancing, not only leveling the internal playing field, but also leveraging different lenses -you build the best strategy based on the circumstances that will allow the highest probability of success and control risk.
A strategic business leader can create or grasp new opportunities and strike the delicate balance in the dynamics of the business enterprise; create a blue ocean for his/her organization which will provide a competitive advantage in the long run. Many of large scale problems today are complex and interdependent, to solve them strategically, senior leaders should oversee the circumstances structurally, collect relevant and quality information, capture holistic business insight, learn how to strike a balance between managing complex issues today and predicting the uncertain issues of tomorrow, delegate to the right people to solve the right problems, and oversee a premium solution without causing more problems later on.
Innovative view: Innovation is the light every organization is pursuing to deal with frequent disruptions and fierce competitions. Being innovative is the state of mind to think and do things from a new angle and develop a unique view to commercialize novel ideas for achieving their value. Senior leaders should have an innovative perspective to pursue diverse opinions and alternative solutions for reimagining the future and orchestrating an innovative organization. When people have the courage to leave inside box thoughts and standards to seek fresh point of views, additional resources, updated knowledge, and new experiences, they are open for change, stepping outside that box into unfamiliar territories to generate a broad view and able to see innovative landscapes vividly.
In fact, the essence of innovative leadership is to be open, show flexibility, break down outdated rules, deploy new ideas, optimized processes, or new ventures. The spirit of the organization comes from the top. Senior leaders’ innovative views set an innovative working climate by encouraging fresh thinking and unleashing creative energy; encouraging creativity and advocating changes. Many well established organizations get stale or stagnated and gradually become irrelevant in face of rapid change. Senior leaders should create and enforce the culture - the collective mindsets of creativity through practicing intrapreneurship and encouraging learning and experimenting. They are able to lead boldly by asking “Why not,” to articulate the strategic rationale and boost creative energy; they are like a conductor leading the orchestra with a not yet completely written digital innovation symphony.
From top down, leadership is the ability to influence the values, mindsets, decisions, and actions undertaken by others. Senior leadership is neither equal to seniority nor a big title. The high-mature senior leadership is based on vision, learning agility, influential intelligence, and a high level of intellectual and emotional maturity.
From top down, leadership is the ability to influence the values, mindsets, decisions, and actions undertaken by others. Senior leadership is neither equal to seniority nor a big title. The high-mature senior leadership is based on vision, learning agility, influential intelligence, and a high level of intellectual and emotional maturity.
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