Effective Leadership for Emerging Technologies
Servant leadership for innovation and moving fast
CEO salaries are translucent. But how much does a director or VP make in Meta, Google, and other competing companies? The range is typically from $1.2 million to $8 million, excluding equity increases. That’s almost double or triple that of many other companies at the same level. What makes a difference?
Now, it’s imperative to harness emerging technologies to transform organizations and infuse them into products for competitive markets. What skills are required to be an effective leader?
Situational Leadership
A decade ago, I was an engineering leader at Microsoft. At that time, we had been trained for situational leadership. It is still valid to lead teams across disciplines at different levels. Later, we were influenced by Satya Nadella’s growth mindset, strengthening relationships with the teams and delivering success through empowerment and accountability. Each leader is expected to model culture and value in actions, coach teams to define objectives, adapt and learn, and care deeply for their employees, understanding their capabilities and ambitions and investing in their growth.
Situational leaders learn to present four core and critical leadership competencies: diagnose, adapt, influence, and advance.
By diagnosing team members’ performance against commitment and competence, leaders adapt self-behavior and influence their understanding. Then progress towards higher team performance through directing, coaching, supporting, or delegating.
The situational leader looks like a doctor, influencer, coach, and partner other than a manager.
Situational leaders look like doctors, influencers, coaches, and partners other than managers. It should be the first time to distinguish between leader and manager in the industry to motivate team members to be an effective team.
Two Leadership Principles for Emerging Technologies
AI/ML, data cloud, fintech, robotics, web3/NFT, metaverse/MR/AR/VR, LEO satellites, coding by ML, space rockets, L4/L5 automatic vehicles, quantum computing, neurotechnology, nanotechnology, gene therapy, cancer vaccines, etc. We are blessed to live in great decades. There are countless emerging new technologies.
These technologies are phenomenal and can dramatically increase productivity or change the way we live. Undoubtedly, they need exceptional teams to research, develop, and advance. Their leaders should be visionary, inspiring, innovative, influential, of integrity, inclusive and diverse, empathetic, self-aware, grateful, etc. However, there are two critical leadership principles that leaders need to cultivate in such teams: innovation and moving fast.
Innovation: Amazon is a customer-obsessed company. Innovation and reinvention keep it growing from bookseller to worldwide largest online seller, AWS, global fulfillment network, Alexa/Echo, and advertising, and it hasn’t stopped yet. Innovation can demonstrate its power for sustainable companies and high-performing teams.
Moving fast: Moving fast may be the top priority for any fast-growing startup. Speed is the key to emerging technologies for iterating rapidly and going to market timely.
Innovation and moving fast are not about the leaders but the self-motivated teams by the leaders.
Key Elements of Servant Leadership
Several years ago, I grew up as an executive leader and learned to be a servant leader. It’s a different leadership mindset.
A servant leader is an enabler, not a controller or people manager.
Servant leaders are enablers, not controllers or managers. They are also situational leaders who understand the teams very well, enabling them to achieve more while inspiring and encouraging them behind the scenes.
Building trust and psychological safety is key to a servant leadership culture. Trust cannot be obtained overnight. But it can be established through genuine care for the team, active communication with the team and individuals, shared celebration of achievements, and growth opportunities.
Servant leadership can effectively unleash the innovative potential of teams, enabling them to be self-motivated and move fast. The leaders behave as team servants to cultivate self-motivated, efficient, creative teams.
Exceptions may not be good examples!
Meta (aka Facebook) is one of the companies encouraging servant leadership. But you may be shocked by Meta’s cumbersome management chain as its management system looks like its new company name. This isn’t an excellent example of effective leadership or management. Don’t be misled because it’s Meta. It is a legacy due to its painful lesson in mass manager resignations years ago.
JD.com is China’s largest online retailer and the country’s biggest internet company by revenue. JD promotes a big-boss accountable culture with servant leadership without titles internally. But it has an infamous policy: employees cannot recommend their previous colleagues for hire. It seems weird since many companies are hungry for talent. The reason is that an executive once hired a dozen of his former colleagues who later dominated a team at JD. Then, the company instituted a bizarre policy.
TL;DR
Be bold. Be servant. Be innovative!
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