What LIE do we tell ourselves about leadership?
In a recent article Nadiem Makarim, the CEO of GO-Jek discusses leadership and the ‘confidence trick’ it can be. Nadiem was co-founder of Go-Jek and he stated in the article produced that as co-founder you can often be swayed to think that you know everything and instinctively you know the right actions to take. Is this always true? Well..
Why is it a ‘confidence trick’?
Well, as Nadiem eloquently states leadership is not statuary. Leadership must continually evolve and change as the business changes and as trends alter. He states in his article that if a leader choses to not ‘evolve their leadership style’ that this will eventually lead to rendering yourself as ‘useless’ very quickly. Powerful individuals such as Nadeim can be fooled into thinking that because they may be one of the original key innovators that they always know best and this just isn’t true. Developing a strong team with disrupters within it, will allow different perspectives to be ingrained into the business.
How will this affect the business?
The backlash of not evolving leadership style has been a reality for the CEO of Uber, who was pushed to resigning after a backlash regarding the style of his leadership. Nadeim has vowed not to let this happen to his firm so has decided to adopt a less autocratic method of leadership and embrace a democratic approach, which centres around collaboration and diversity of thought.
What is the importance of diversity of thought?
It is very important for a co-founder such as Makarim to have staff around him that challenge the decisions that he makes and push him to think outside of the box. Only having individuals that agree with every idea you have and never seek to challenge anything will lead to a narrow, complacent and overall unfruitful business.
“ Diversity of thought and ambitiousness is also important for driving a business forward, explained Makarim, who said he now sees it as his role to draw that out of his staff. ”
How can this be achieved?
Collaboration can be achieved through facilitating discussions and initiating discussions with members of your team from all disciplines. Ingraining in your staff that ambitiousness, diversity and striving for change are vital metrics to success. Giving employees autonomy, as stated by Makarim, gives them the confidence to want to speak out and try new things. It gives them the motivation and passion to strive for more. Delegation is vital and often not executed by leaders properly, it is paramount to efficiency. As a leader you want to be able to give members of your team a task and believe that they can carry that task out as well as you can. Giving autonomy encourages innovation, intuition and decision making.
TAKEAWAYS// Leadership must evolve, value your employees, encourage diversity of thought, encourage ambitiousness, collaborate with your employees, delegate and give autonomy to employees.
Follow us on social media!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wprtechnology
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wpr_technology/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wprtechnology/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wprtechnology/