What is Corporate Leadership? Establishing a Culture of Learning and Growth
What is corporate leadership? I hear and read a lot of debate on the definition of corporate leadership, and what it entails and applies to. Many schools of thought look to corporate leadership as a leadership presence with entrepreneurial gusto, great business wits and excellent skill with monetary management. A business wizard if one will, who can apply these skills to guide a business from a mundane startup to an enterprise of epic scale and success.
Well, when asking, what is corporate leadership, these may well be some of the answers that go into defining someone who personifies the concept, that’s far from the most important thing, and it’s far from all there is to it. Corporate leadership isn’t just about business strategy and financial wits. It’s also very much about cultivating a successful corporate culture with individuals forever in growth, and a company view that never looks assay from the eternal horizon of the future.
So, what do I mean by all that pretentiousness? Well, basically, corporate leadership is also responsible for instilling a growth mentality in employees. Complacency and living in a rut, as many career workers do, is actually a bad mindset, and one that promotes stagnation and misery for all involved.
Corporate leadership should inspire a desire to set goals forever within reach but unending, within one’s personal work life, and within the company which they should feel inalienably integral to.
This primarily involves a state of constant learning, and a desire to acquire knowledge for knowledge’s sake. This is the ability for everyone to see past immediate application and see the lasting benefit of the enrichment new learning and new practice may bring them.
These are the qualities any company, large or small, should instill in their employees, and this is a responsibility that falls squarely on corporate leadership, even if by proxy through department heads or subordinate leadership individuals.
This is of course no small feat as people will be who they plan to be, if skill is not applied in guiding them. This is even more of the truth with adults who feel they do not need guidance beyond instruction on how to do a job. So, it’s on corporate leadership to set the example by themselves being always in learning and always in growth. Show dedication, and show the benefits of general thirst for knowledge. As corporate leadership, you’re a role model, not unlike a big brother, parent or teacher. Your employees look to you in how they perceive expectations of themselves, so use this to your advantage.
Corporate leadership is the ability to do this, organically, so that nobody feels they are being manipulated, when in reality, all of society is just layered, largely benign manipulation.
What is corporate leadership? It’s being not only a role model, but also someone with a sense of how people work, and the dynamics of people and mindset that drive constant business growth and capacity to stay with the times both philosophically and technologically. You know what they say, heavy is the head that wears the crown. I think that phrase was coined for corporate leadership specifically.