Rethinking Leadership...

I was reading through one of the local newspapers recently and this caption by Jack Ma co-founder and majority shareholder of Chinese firm Ali Baba caught my eye " The world needs new leadership, but the new leadership is about working together." Over the past 10 months or so i have been part of a leadership program which has started me off on a journey self discovery and provoked me to reflect deeply on the subject of leadership as it relates to the work environment, but the lessons and observations i have gathered over this period i believe can be extrapolated and applied in any sphere of life. The reading material has been rich and the faculty has been a blend of individuals from very different backgrounds and experience that have shared their experiences and life lessons that have helped them in their leadership journey.

Back to the caption by Jack Ma it's interesting to hear such a statement coming from such an accomplished business leader of his stature and considering the part of the world he comes from - China. A simple search on Chinese leadership style or management style (I will use the terms leadership and management interchangeably) would bring up words like autocratic, authoritarian and the like. According to www.worldbusinessculture.com "In Confucian philosophy, all relationships are deemed to be unequal....In China,management style tends towards the directive, with the senior manager giving instructions to their direct reports who in turn pass on the instructions down the line." Without reading too much into his statement, his comment is indeed profound by virtue of his cultural and geographical context with regard to leadership. His proposal on the type of leadership that the world needs, which is one where people are working together collaboratively towards a common goal directly conflicts with the view of leadership in his societal context in both practice and belief.

We have too many examples especially on our continent of leadership gone wrong or rogue rather, where it is all about the person at the helm whether you are looking at a country or an organisation and little or nothing about the people being led, the objective at hand to be achieved or the process and environment that's exists to support the achievement of those organisational objectives. Leadership has been used by many people as a means to an end, mostly selfish ends and i would agree with Jack ma that indeed the world does need a new leadership and hence why we need to rethink the concept of leadership as we know it.

The new leadership he espouses in his own words is ...'About working together'....in other words collaborative,shared, conjoint,synergic and lastly the word that comes to mind to best describe this rethink of the concept of leadership is Distributed....Distributed leadership. Distributed leadership according to www.businessballs.com is where "Leadership is more dissociated from designated organisational roles and instead the actions of all individuals at all levels of responsibility are recognised as integral to the organisation and successful functionality of the group or company. leadership is considered a group quality, ignoring binary ideas of leader-follower functionality, where all responsibility lies in the hands of the leader, and all followers are subservient. It can, therefore, facilitate the distribution of responsibility between individuals within an organisation based on expertise, rather than on experience within a role." Another definition of definition of distributed leadership according to www.teachermagazine.com.au is "Distributed leadership is primarily concerned with the practice of leadership rather than specific leadership roles or responsibilities. It equates with shared, collective and extended leadership practice that builds the capacity for change and improvement."

We need to rethink leadership from not just looking at the person with the role or the responsibility at the helm to encouraging the practice or demonstration of leadership at all levels of any organisation or business unit by everyone. Part of the reading material in the leadership program i am currently going through is the book by Robin Sharma - The leader who had no title. The book in nutshell breaks down in great practical detail how regardless of what one does in any organization and their current life circumstances,it brings out a very important fact that everyone at any level has the power to show leadership. The idea that everyone at any level has the capacity to show leadership is profound and is one that can be leveraged on to bring great success in how organisations are run and ultimately has a bearing on the results that those organisations achieve. This perhaps could be formula that Jack Ma employed in running Alibaba, an incredibly successful company by any standard which he helped co-found and is one of the top 10 most valuable companies and is #59 biggest public companies in the world by Global 2000 list. It is quite telling that he has handed over the reins of this company to pursue educational work, in a country where they recently approved the removal of the two-term limit on the presidency, effectively allowing the country's president- Xi Jinping to remain in power for life.

References & Credits:

https://www.worldbusinessculture.com/country-profiles/china/culture/business-management-style/

https://www.businessballs.com/leadership-philosophies/distributed-leadership/

https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/distributed-leadership

https://www.robinsharma.com/book/the-leader-who-had-no-title

https://en.m.wikipedia.org ? wiki ? Alibaba_Group