A major theme throughout this book has been that leadership is
about relationships, and because social technologies are changing
relationships, leadership also needs to change. Empowered customers
and employees will not sit by the sidelines and accept business as
usual. There are also systemic changes that are causing leadership
to change - the recent economic recession has seen a marked decline
in business confidence, causing company CEOs to promise greater
transparency in operations and company financials to build customer
and investor trust.
All of this leads to a critical juncture in leadership. Yet many of
the executives I speak with refuse to acknowledge that any change
is needed. They believe that in times of crisis and change, greater
leadership from the top is needed. Thus they insist on sticking
with their traditional command-and-control leadership style of
limiting information sharing and decision making.
I wish them luck, because they will need it.
I have no problem with a command-and-control approach, as long as
open leadership options have been examined, considered, and
strategically rejected. What I strongly warn leaders against is the
wholesale dismissal of a powerful new way of building relationships
with your most engaged and potentially most valuable customers and
employees, especially when simple elements of open leadership such
as listening and learning are easy to adopt.
One of the biggest reasons why open leadership is feared and
avoided is the concern that the leader will lose all semblance of
control. I advocate a disciplined approach to an open strategy. In
the same vein, open leadership requires forethought, planning, and
structure. In fact, it requires that a leader be both open and in
control.
Thus open leadership is not about simply being warm, fuzzy,
authentic, transparent, or "real." It's more than simply sharing
anecdotes from your personal life or tidbits from professional
meetings. Rather, it's a mixture of mindset, temperament, learned
behaviors, and skills that build on and amplify good leadership
skills. Leadership takes on a different dimension in a connected,
networked world - that of being a catalyst for change both outside
and inside the organization.
So how are you supposed to lead in this new world? To start, open
leadership is defined by two specific mindsets, and the leadership
traits that accompany these mindsets. You'll also need an
assessment tool to identify what kind of open leader you are - and
to understand how open you need to be to accomplish your open
strategy goals. Conducting the assessment on yourself as well as
your top leaders can help you to understand your collective
personal approaches to open leadership and thus to create a
leadership plan for your overall strategy.
The dimensions of open leadership
In my research and interviews, there are two mindsets that define
and determine how open you are as a leader. The first is your view
of people - in general, are you optimistic or pessimistic about
people's intentions? No one is completely optimistic nor completely
pessimistic - and, like an open strategy, this often depends on the
situation at hand. But in general, open leaders believe in
"win-win" situations, in which when people act in their
self-interest it also turns out to be in the best interest of the
organization. A pessimistic mindset, in contrast, believes that
greater openness, sharing, and collaboration cannot come to a good
end - that there is an inherent give-and-take, and that the risk to
the organization of being open is too great.
Optimism allows open leaders to be more open with information, both
in sharing it with a greater audience and in gathering it from
different sources. If a key component of your open strategy
involves more open information sharing, then you will need to have
leaders who are more optimistic than pessimistic in their mindsets.
The second mindset is your view of your successes: as either coming
primarily from your efforts as an individual or stemming from the
efforts of a team. A good leader always has elements of both views,
but in tough times, where do you draw your strength from as a
leader - yourself or the people around you? Open leaders recognize
their limitations and are quick to collaborate with others, whereas
individualistic leaders turn inward and rely first on their own
strength and ability to prevail.
If your open strategy requires more distributed decision making,
then having leaders who are comfortable with collaboration will be
crucial. This is not to say that individualistic leaders can't be
successful, but they are less likely to be able to use open
strategies to tap into collaborative advantages such as speed and
quality.