Initiateleadershipasbridge ~ Future of CIO

Leadership is the bridge between today and tomorrow by shaping advanced thinking and profound understanding: Uncertainty in the business or in any situation brings both opportunities and risks for organizations to survive in the direction of achieving strategic goals. We cannot predict everything beforehand but can imagine with many experiences involved in the present or in the past. Leaders envision a better future, in their sphere of calling. Their role is then, to crystallize the vision and mobilize resources towards its purposes.

Leadership is an influence; heterogeneous leadership is needed in today’s dynamic working environment and workforces to bridge cognitive differences. Collective advancement can be accelerated when we follow the most advanced mindsets in global society, evolving into advanced activities and movements in a consistent way. Real societal advancement is made through the work of forwarding-looking minds, updating knowledge, and progressive activities. From leadership perception, if you can understand how people think, express, behave, what they desire and what their fears are, you are better shaped to manage them in order to gain their support.

Leadership is the bridge between defining a problem and facilitating different solutions: In face of “VUCA” reality, problem-solving is complex; the dynamic business and global environment keeps throwing a new set of situations to deal with. Business information is the very clue to understanding emerging trends, people, processes, or potential risks the businesses might encounter. Business leaders with a discerning mindset can leverage quality information to understand issues or each other; improve cognitive, relational and assertive actions they take on a day to day basis. They are able to develop their own language, make the proper framing in order to bridge problems and solutions with innovation and profundity.

Insightful leaders bridge the multitude of viewpoints, put the emphasis on coordinating and integrating multiple perspectives to foster human development and advancing human society deliberately. The leader then encourages followers to explore different possibilities and think in new, innovative ways. The powerful collaborative platforms and tools enable problem-solving brainstorming, social behaviors to take place online, endowing those interactions with scale, speed, and encourage mass collaboration to co-solve difficult problems facing businesses or human society. Those bridge-like leaders are not only influencers but also experts, who can integrate their professional competency with leadership vision and influence to create a ripple effect and make a high societal impact.

Great leadership bridges the world of differences via thoughtful questioning and answering: As we steadily move into the deep digital reality, it is the time to bridge the gaps of global knowledge, culture, innovation, and influence. In a dynamic global business environment, open communication generates a digital vibe to inspire change, engage the variety of audience to bridge the world of differences. In many traditional organizations, the audience is often the homogeneous group who gets used to hierarchical style of communication with an oxymoron tone. So silo or bureaucracy turns out to be part of the cultural tone. Innovative leaders are in strong demand to ask thought-provoking questions, stimulate creativity and close the gap; rejuvenate the learning agile culture and renew creative energy.

We are all part of global society with enriched knowledge and cultural heritage. Most people are culture followers; some are culture irritators, only very few can make an influence on shaping an innovative, progressive and high performance culture. Top leaders need to make cultural influence by asking tough questions: What are the beliefs and unspoken rules that everybody in the company knows and shares? Which core values you need to promote to propel the organization forward in line with the strategic perspectives? Influential leaders not only ask questions, but they also need to assist in providing answers, bridge the gap between questions and answers, make global influence based on unique observation, clear discernment, interdisciplinary knowledge and intellectual empathy.

Leadership influence comes from an advanced mindset or progressive act. The beauty of the digital landscape is fresh insight into the businesses across vertical industries. The evolution is a quest for things to be better for humanity, in a hyper-connected business working environment with interdependent global dynamic, hybrid talent pools and organizational structure; The bridge-like leadership is able to groom more authentic leaders and unleash collective potential with advanced mindset, differentiated professional competency, strong logic and discipline to make influence coherently.