Leadership is about developing people; senior leaders have a personal and moral obligation to develop more leadership and improve leadership maturity.
Rapid change, frequent disruptions and fierce disruptions are the new normal, today’s digital companies need to be organized in keeping synchronized, emphasize participation, relationships, communication. They should realize that they will need to renew themselves periodically to cope with change effectively and have a fluid structure that responds effectively to their function at the moment.
Senior leaders should focus on the holistic big picture, without getting distracted by trivial details: In the senior position, top leaders stay on strategic focus rather than just the tactical details. Senior leaders need to be strategic thinkers -“keeping the ends in mind”; embrace diverse viewpoints by listening and telling empathetically; see both the forest and the trees without “losing the big picture.” Holistic view helps to fix the misperception by exploring multiple thought processes; understand the interaction and interrelationship dynamic, diagnose the root cause of problems, to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of parts.
When you only want to see things from your own point of view, see what you want to see, or hear what you want to hear, often you miss the point to understand the real problem holistically as well as how to solve it systematically. People, especially those in the senior leadership position leave outdated thoughts and standards to seek additional knowledge and experience, they are stepping outside that box into unfamiliar territory, enhancing holistic understanding and leadership effectiveness.
Senior leaders play a critical role in setting principles and policies to drive desired changes: Unlike restricted rules fitting in certain time frame or circumstances, principles are general guidelines based on your business value and strategy to instruct mindset, attitude, and behaviors. Principle, Purpose, and Progress are interrelated with each other to help the business make progress and fulfill the purpose.
In particular, principles and policies are a key element in successful strategy governance. It would be desirable to look at it proactively and make a right set of “policies,” and set policies in the language understood by stakeholders, to encourage positive mindset and constructive behavior, catalyze changes and improve problem-solving effectiveness.
Senior leadership is less about the status quo based on the steep hierarchy, more about the depth of insight and high level of leadership maturity: Knowledge is limited, often in the box; can be out of date shortly, but insight is more transcendent as it is thinking into the box after thinking out of the box. Leadership is an influence. Insightful leaders can make a deep influence because their unique observation, interdisciplinary knowledge and clear discernment can shape mindsets and make sound judgements. With overloading information and a shortened knowledge lifecycle, senior leaders are able to ask right questions to capture collective insight and come up with premium solutions.
Top leaders today should have a certain level of ambiguity tolerance to inspire a culture of risk-taking, appreciate different perspectives, and different ways to frame a set of issues, take different paths for experimenting, exploring, and solving problems creatively. The insightful leaders have the ability to influence peers as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving the issues such as strategy, branding, technologic vision, finance, talent management. They practice the power of acute observation and deduction, questioning, connection, penetration, discernment, perception to solve problems effectively.
Leadership is about developing people; senior leaders have a personal and moral obligation to develop more leadership and improve leadership maturity. Leaders need to observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces that define and influence the way we do business these days. It takes time and effort to build core leadership competency and maintain a consistent reputation.
