In his book, Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, Jonathan Byrnes refers to ambidextrous leadership. By that he means that great leaders need to be able to execute the current day-to-day, and they also need look beyond the day-to-day and find ways to improve upon it.
In other words, management and leadership are closely intertwined – like a leadership sandwich on management bread (my analogy not his!). Execute with a vengeance in the current state while being able to step back and identify significant improvement opportunities, and then finally managing the change efforts necessary to implement the improvements.
Here’s a quote from his book.
“In my experience, the best leaders are also great managers, and the best managers have strong leadership capabilities. To be successful, you must have both a passion for improving your organization and the capability to drive your efforts through to completion.”
So, great leaders need to be able to bring about “paradigmatic change.” Byrnes lists the following characteristics required for doing so which are summarized below.
- Capacity for passion – Without it you will not be able to slog through the difficult change process.
- Perspective – Ability to step back from the day-to-day and realize things can be different/better.
- Creativity – To discover alternative ways of doing things.
- Organizational Skills – Need to know how to execute.
- Teamwork – Can’t do it alone. Need to know how to work with people and have the desire to make things better for them.
- Persistence – Dogged determination is required to carry through on the execution.
- Open-mindedness – Need to be open to new ideas, and comfortable with forging ahead without having all the answers.
- Integrity – You must be motivated by your values to improve the organization. This can’t be faked or people will see right through it.
There you have it. Great leaders are ambidextrous, both doers and a reflectors. Time to get to work on that off hand!
Flickr photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabriirmak/2195784591/sizes/m/in/photostream/
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