Leadership 2.0

I have been following a discussion on LinkedIn about Leadership 2.0 where Janet Monk, IT Executive, ITIL Service Manager hit the nail on the head when she posed her question; “how do we get back to the original design that leadership was meant for?” I believe that in doing so, just as times have changed so must the outlook for the very fabric and defined meaning of leadership itself. I don’t believe that we have to develop Leadership 2.0, but execute a significant “behavioral rewiring” that instills an “us” vs. “I and me” perspective to life and through people. As a U.S. Marine turned business educator, I have always believed that leadership is too one dimensional (probably looked at as Leadership 1.0).

My team and I are currently facing this new paradigm by instructing others on the influences that military stratagem has on the effects of leadership and team building. What we think people need to realize is that leadership is tested in the military/leadership laboratories to define the effects it has on strategic thinking (decision-making) and the ability to execute flawlessly. This perspective and their outcomes offer significant findings and are often overlooked for the absolute wrong reasons – if there is a civilian who has not begun to think of war from a different perspective than war itself, then this current global economic crisis has to make them aware of the effects the current war we are all facing, economically, has on ALL people, everywhere (i.e. The Tragedy of Competition).

Teaching what we have come to realize is only a single step forward in rewiring behaviors, using military stratagem, we’ve come to understand leadership as a multi-dimensional set of influences that achieves a state of Personal Proficiency and Professional Mastery; “The Six Levels of Leadership: Military Stratagem meets the New World Order – of Business!”

Examining the Six Levels of Leadership: Pinpoint the effects of applying an “adaptive” leadership style through an interactive session with lessons learned from yesterday to create a better tomorrow.

Charting-off: Leadership Levels 1 & 2: Establish your Leadership Signature and increase your level of Emotional Intelligence – clarify and critique the attributes of emerging leadership.

Plotting the Course: Leadership Levels 3 & 4: Understand how-to experience a “Breakthrough” to begin your “Break-with” and increase your level of leadership, performance and execution.

Raising the Sails: Leadership Level 5: Learn to lead teams into qualitative team building maneuvers that prevails over the challenge of change at a time that change is definitely required in most organizations – explore expansive influence, leadership multiplication and cohesiveness.

Into the Wind: Leadership Level 6: Learn to employ organizational strategic execution tactics (The OrgSx Paradigm) to permeate enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will – and the disciplines of “strategic agility and flawless execution (debriefing) with a modest approach and an unwavering commitment to higher standards, and NOT forgetting how we got here in the first place…

Success TRAPS: Understanding How-to Answer the Four Questions to Heal the Pains and Strengthen your Future Picture. This discussion works to help participants understand “accountability:” Why am I hurting? What is it about “me” that influences the hurt? How do I prevent re-injury – although I know that it will be re-visited? And, how do I change my circumstances, current and future?

Basically, looking at the last 18 months have been the most trying in decades for business leaders. The conditions that normally make running an organization of any type – a business unit or a team rewarding is market expansion, revenue growth, rising pay, and incentives – have been absent for most, replaced by the unrelenting tasks of survival, retrenchment, and cost cutting. So, it comes down to a single question: “what must leaders do in this depressed environment and what must they do not to return?”

We argue that the first task of leadership is to identify the default future, discuss it, and analyze it, and then go about re-imagining – and, in effect, rewriting the future. It has to be about Flawless and Strategic execution by teams!

Leaders must learn to overcome the daunting task of facing the future alone by teaching them to rewrite the future that leads to real business transformation with profitable growth for everyone, while eliminating the domino effects of failure.

And the lessons must be just as applicable to individuals. Here’s my bottom line, people and organizations have been leading, both poorly and with great outcomes, for centuries. Nothing new and surely nothing unique can be developed to change leadership. Leadership 2.0; why not get back to the original design that leadership was meant for, but look at it through a different lens using the lessons learned from yesterday? Leadership 2.0 does not warrant the time and effort to develop – stay with what works, only with a few tweaks!