The Six Abilities of Wise Business Leaders
Finding a clear path forward through a global pandemic requires wise business leaders. Where do we turn for models?
As I wrote in my last post, wise leadership is a combination of elements, including intelligence, self-awareness, acknowledgement of personal limitations, humility, patience, and emotional resilience. The best resource for growing wise leadership is in the Book of Proverbs, God says if you ask you will receive. If you are looking for wise leadership and the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience and understanding in making good decisions look closely at the Word of God.
Even the world acknowledges the need for wisdom, according to psychologist Dr. Robert J. Sternberg, “leaders are much more likely to fail because they are unwise or unethical than because they lack knowledge of general intelligence.”
Six Abilities of Wise Business Leaders
Professors Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi shared their research on the six abilities of wise leaders in the Harvard Business Review article, “The Big Idea: The Wise Leader.” They found that it isn’t just uncertainty that challenges leaders, rather, it’s leading people to adhere to values and ethics. As a coach, I have found this to be true. The six essential abilities are required and real and
1. In complex situations, wise leaders quickly perceive the true nature of the reality; the underlying issues for people, things, and events taking place now, and projections for future consequences. Their explicit and tacit knowledge (honed by a love for learning), perspective (broadened by open-mindedness and their habit of asking “why?”), and creativity allows them to envision a future before jumping to decisions.
2. Wise leaders practice moral discernment: they make decisions about what is good for the organization and society, and act on it. They strengthen their discernment with:
a. Experience (especially facing adversity and overcoming failure)
b. Adherence to values/ethics (self-awareness of values and ethics, which are modeled in business and organizations)
c. Pursuit of excellence (not to be confused with perfection)
d. Learning (a breadth and depth of subjects, including history, philosophy, literature, and fine arts.)
3. They enable symbiotic learning by providing opportunities to interact closely with—and between—others; wise leaders develop relationships, and the spaces to nurture them. Today, that may mean more virtual meetings and the development of new groups, teams, and networks, as well as technology skills.
4. Wise leaders use applicable metaphors and stories to communicate their experience and understanding into tacit knowledge that all can understand. Great stories describe relationships (between people, places, times, or things). They don’t have to be long, but the right story, at the right time, can call others to take right action.
5. They nurture wisdom in others through mentoring, apprenticeship, and distributed leadership. Mentoring focuses on learning to achieve competence, proficiency, skill, know-how and wisdom. Apprenticeship focuses on sharing experiences, contexts, and time.
6. Wise leaders bring people together and inspire them to take action. They understand and consider differing points of view, emotions, needs, and the element of timing. Wise leaders embrace the paradoxes of life; they refrain from either/or thinking, and cultivate a both/and mindset.
All six essentials are areas to target for every leader. Understanding the impact is important but knowing the source is most important.
What do you think? Where do you see the model of wise leadership in your organization? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me here marc@moleadershipcoaching.com and on LinkedIn
If you are committed to following Jesus and have a passion for work, I would love to connect. My work focuses on Family Enterprises where the family roles and enterprise roles often create chaos. Let’s connect for a quick call to see if we might help one another at Marc’s Calendar