Best way to re-invent your leadership Journey. You have to continually re-invent your leadership journey by mapping your skills in the current workplace trend after COVID-19.
MBA degree from any institutes is a business visa with an expiry date it is not a green card for many. It’s not a guarantee certificate of success.
The best way to re-invent your leadership Journey is a constant process. Most people to be rational in their thinking and to look at everything as an equation. That is not how the world is today that future world results matter not degrees.
Most studies on leadership in the early era came from the Armed Forces. Armed forces commanded a huge number of human beings and took them to war. People said that the guy who has commanded troops out there is a good leader.
If you look at the early bunch of CEOs in America a lot of them came from the Armed Forces. When the business school degree started in the 1920s less than 11 percent of CEOs were graduates. Hundred years ago less than 11 percent of CEOs in America were graduates.
I have 10 suggestions to re-invent your leadership journey. These are suggestions. It is not a science I am taking a guess of the future. We all are encountering this experience or problem for the first time in the world.
Re-invent your leadership journey
1-Technology will change every job
So technology is going to create disruption so you have to imbibe your company has to imbibe your team has to imbibe technology and digital so whatever you do like. I would like to share an example of years ago in 2015-16.
After the split of Andhra and Telangana in May similar time frame 4-5 years ago. Chandrababu Naidu who’s the Chief Minister said all cabinet meetings will only be held on the tablet now no paper. 4-5 years ago he did it.
Trust me many companies don’t do that even today you know chief ministers in different states are doing things like this. But surprisingly companies are not doing things like that so we all talk about the need to change the need to innovate things.
A very simple thing is in the jobs you are doing are you innovating with digital and I submit to you 75 percent of the companies are not so that’s your first starting point if you want to be a future leader digitize the way you are working with your people.
2- Be a learning leader and not an all-knowing leader
There’s a big misconception in the industrial era and the knowledge era that leaders must know all the answers. So, you go into a conference room you present the problem to the leaders and they will give you an answer.
It’s absolutely not true anymore, what leaders can do is to learn more than others and hence be able to think about the situation and the problem better than other leaders. Best way to re-invent your leadership Journey.
Those days are over where we could go to our leaders for ideas. Today leaders are just as short of an answer. People who are seeking the answer to be an all learning leader and not an all-knowing leader.
Read this article Benefits of upskilling in corporate e-learning
There is no time to keep poring over reports etc you have to learn as much as you can by using your every single minute. You have to learn and to equip yourself with this new world.
3-Move from a hierarchy to a network
The simplest example they went and did that the new type of a leader. This is a very different leader imagine the conductor of the orchestra plays no instrument. He has a baton in his hand. I have this leader who has his face to his team and is back to the audience.
This leader is a completely different leader it’s not a hierarchy leader it’s a network leader. So, the role of a leader is to build a network continuously. The leader is at the center of this whole thing and its main job is to provide the glue to provide energy that’s all.
Those are the two things a leader needs to do in a future world glue hold the team together, hold the company together, and provide energy. Accordingly, your team marches on so these are the two things that you truly need to do.
4-Stop micro-managing start micro sensing
This is a hierarchy habit most leaders want to micromanage. What do I mean by micro sense? Micro sensing is talked to a lot of people in your company your competitors your trade your ecosystem.
They will tell you more about your company than you will ever know because you’re willing to listen to them so that’s what I try and do so I talk to a lot of people in my company.
So leaders have to dig deep in the organization, pick up the worries and the concerns people have, and feed it to the right people. They have to start managing it, it is not about micromanaging but micro sensing.
In hierarchy organizations, people will not bypass their next level, that’s the danger in a fast-changing world. You cannot wait for levels to respond so the leader has to take the role to dig deep into the company and sense what’s happening.
5-Stop giving answers
The role of a leader in a future world is to ask questions so that there is no more light thrown on the problem. Based on that extra light there is a new direction that comes through the idea is not to give an answer.
What are the options, what’s the range of risk, and what conditions are going to apply ask those good questions? So practice to ask good questions and trust me when you ask great questions you will give a fantastic new direction.
We don’t know, we don’t have, all the answers trust me we can never have all the answers. I should be a better person with questions, so that’s the paradigm shift in future work.
6-Do not throw insignificant data points but seek knowledge and construct wisdom
Our organizations have too much data, and 70% of the data is not used. I am telling you today maybe 60 percent of the reports generated in a company are not used.
In a textiles business when the Sr. Management had a review with the IT guys, found 200 reports are generated in a day. When found most out of all those 200 reports were useless. IT team was asked, Are all those 200 reports are useful? IT teams were speechless, and they don’t have any measurement of the usefulness of the reports.
7. Your current company will not be your last company
Wherever you’re working my simple submission to you be loyal to the company as long as the company is loyal to you. Judging that is difficult, but there are signals. You should only be loyal to a company as long as the company’s loyalty.
The day you sense the company is not loyal to you, you have every right to walk out of the door. So it’s better than we are prepared for it and better than we understand it.
8- In a meeting discuss and debate do not have death by PowerPoint
I have seen a number of leaders who come unprepared for a meeting. 1-hour meeting the team will come with 100 slides, the purpose of the meeting totally defected.
The quantity of slides does not define a successful meeting. The quality of discussion defines a meeting so you as a team leader start a new habit.
9- Go and seek learning v/s expecting learning to come to you
Seek learning every day, go out there listen to it, seek it, practice it, whatever it is. Learning will not come to you, you have to do it yourself, you have to go and seek to learn all the time with experience.
You have to reflect on your day far more carefully, you have to reflect on your timetable far more carefully, and every meeting you need to think and rethink before execution or decisions.
10-Simplify it do not complicate
One of the habits I have seen during my HR professional tenure. People come with their problems to our executives or Manager, most of the time send them back with ten other things. They tend to complicate things they don’t simplify.
During meetings leaders start asking questions that are out of the syllabus, not in a meeting agenda. They will have their own analysis by the time the guys left. Meetings are left simply unanswered.
If you do not think simply and clearly you will complicate the day, you complicate you slow your organization. Your organization is going to lose there is a premium on speed and speed can only come with clear thinking leaders, not with confused leaders.
Conclusion
There is no time to keep poring over reports etc you have to learn self as much as you can by using your every single minute. You have to learn and to equip yourself with this new world.
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Arun
I find your writing and thoughts quite thought provoking .
I really appreciate the contribution you are making .
All the best
Thank you so much dear Melvin.
Regards,