In a crisis, what should leaders do? True leadership that doesn't collapse in a crisis
The tougher the time, the more it will test the strength of founders and leaders.
- Discontinuous crises
What worked in the past may not work today
Without leadership implementation, all so-called business models and strategic planning are on paper.
What is leadership?
Robbins, a famous management expert, said in "Management" that leadership is the ability to influence a team to achieve its goals. The point is: you do what you want to achieve by influencing others.
The traditional way to develop leadership is to give you a set of historically correct answers for you to learn and practice. It is based on the assumption that what worked in the past will work in the future, and the familiar business school case method is a typical application of this philosophy. This method works for consecutive periods. But in this day and age, where changes are so rapid, we are in a discontinuous period. When there is a crisis, what worked in the past may not work today.
Essentially, you face a crisis with certainty not after it happens, but before it happens. Therefore, as early as more than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu said in the Art of War: "The man who wins the temple before the battle is considered a lot." Leaders must be prepared. If your leaders are not prepared, there will still be insurmountable chasms in the future.
The three dimensions of leadership
- Leadership dimension
Many leaders who change roles are often unable to take on new roles.
Nearly 37 percent of leaders were incompetent when they took office, the survey showed.
The reason? You lead a small team of less than 10 people, you lead a company of 100 or tens of thousands, and even that same leader needs to change as the leadership role changes.
Take "talent development" as an example. When you are leading a small team of less than 10 people, the most effective way is to teach by words and deeds, just like a master leads an apprentice, and a big brother leads a younger brother. But once you have a team of 100 people, you can't sleep 24 hours a day, you can't bring one person, and that's how you lead, you have to transition to a "process system for talent development." When you have a large organization, a team of tens of thousands, at the top, and you don't know most of the people below you, that's when you get used to "using organizational culture to develop talent."
Humans are often accustomed to past successful experiences. Even as their role positions changed, their habitual behaviors remained reluctant to change. They especially like to use "my past successes" and end up falling into the "Peter Principle" gap. So, leading your own dimension is essentially turning your experience into a model that serves as your bottom line. Because only the underlying thinking model can withstand the test of time and changes in internal and external factors.
Leading yourself is using mental models to change the mind.
- The dimension of leading others
Society has put many labels on them, and some may not be accurate, but one thing is clear: the post-90s generation is very self-conscious, and traditional authoritative and controlling leadership has little effect on them.
Competent coaching leadership is especially popular with young people, and this type of coaching helps players grow and succeed in a team coaching style, guiding them rather than directing them.
Solution: We must change our mindset from an employer-employee labor relationship to a partnership.
- Leadership business dimension
In the past, many foreign companies could do anything in China, but in this era, there is a problem, because the timeliness of many decisions of global companies is too long, it may take three months, half a year, and then the external market environment changes, when You decide that external conditions no longer exist.
The traditional organization is a pyramid, layer by layer. The boss decides everything. When the boss turns off the phone, the company stops functioning. As long as there is a problem with cooperation between departments, there is no way to cooperate and become a loner. The traditional mechanical age always pursues synergy, but in fact synergy does not exist, because if any link of the pyramid organization fails, the chain will fall.
Leading the business is to optimize the organizational structure to change the efficiency.