Cooking Up Change: The 3rd Ingredient of Effective Global Leadership
This is part three of the Cooking Up Change Series where Kevin shares the three ingredients that most leadership models and global leaders have in common. Check out previous posts:
Leadership is a lot like cooking. It’s all in the ingredients. Like a master chef, an accomplished leader knows just how much of each ingredient to add at what time, in just the right amount.
Production: Cooking the Dish
A final ingredient that experts have identified in effective global leaders is the ability to produce results. This ability springs not from a technique, but from a way of thinking. Successful leaders take risks and innovate. They maintain an attitude of curiosity that often leads them to pioneer new initiatives and methods.
Leaders love to birth new ideas, grow existing organizations, and improve what is already there. However, they are not necessarily original. They simply bring value to what already exists and leverage the power of teamwork to create new products, services or enhancements. 1 Research shows that effective leaders, with their people, “intend real changes.” 2 Global leaders have a bias toward action. Rather than seeking perfection, they take action when the initiative is ready.
Global leaders who successfully navigate change management have a strong sense of curiosity that produces willingness on the part of the leaders to innovate and take risks. Bird identified "inquisitiveness" as a dominant quality found in his global leader competency research subjects. 3
Curiosity is one of your best friends as a leader, and it manifests itself through questions. I once worked with a senior colleague who said; “You know the quality of the leader by the quality of the questions he asks, not the answers he gives you.” Albert Einstein famously stated, “I have no special talent—I am only passionately curious." 4 It is essential that leaders maintain an attitude of curiosity and wonder. Leaders are learners, and the learning process must never end.
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This quality of curiosity is important because the more curious the leader is, the more effective he or she is as a visionary and as a manager of the day-to-day. “Curiosity truly educates a leader's perspective, and it supports two essential visions—one, a sense of how to move forward, and two, a peripheral vision that alerts a leader to the surprises that lurk around the corner. Surprise is a leader's greatest enemy, and curiosity can be the greatest resource.” 5
Stay curious and keep asking questions. Take nothing for granted. Leaders are learners, and you don’t learn if you don’t ask. You never know when a fresh burst of creativity or revelation will come to you because you kept questioning.
The Blend: Presentation of the Dish
The ingredients of successful global leadership cannot be taken for granted. If any of the three major items are missing, the leadership “dish” we cook will lack flavor. There are no shortcuts to exceptional results.
As you blend these three key ingredients of leadership, you will produce an environment where dreams are accomplished and the blend of your leadership feeds those you lead. May you become a visionary, relational, and productive leadership “chef”.
1 Ibid. p18
2 Ibid. p20
3 A. Bird, Mapping the content domain of global leadership. (Global leadership: Research, practice, and development, 2013). p 80-86.
4 Albert Einstein, Letter to Carl Seelig. (1952, March 11) (39-013) . Einstein Archives.
5 C. Johnson, C. (2014). Reflections on Leadership. Naval War College Review , 67 (1), p 124-144.