Leadership is the core driving force of enterprise development, and how to define and improve the level of leadership has always been the focus of entrepreneurs. Shen Xiaobin, founder of Zhi Xing Tao Strategy Management Consulting Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhi Xing Tao Strategy) and chief consultant of Zhi Xing Tao Strategy China Enterprise Leadership Center, created the "6P Enterprise Leadership Model", which provides an effective framework for business leaders to learn, develop and improve their leadership. In view of the changes and challenges faced by leadership in the context of today's times, Shen Xiaobin emphasized that leadership is not only the art of mobilizing the masses to work hard for a common vision, but also needs to pay attention to individual differences and implement situational leadership that is different from person to person, from event to event, and from environment to environment.
Entrepreneur Magazine
Carry forward the entrepreneurial spirit and spread the wisdom of management
Shen Xiaobin
Founder of Zhi Xing Tao Strategy Management Consulting Co., Ltd
01
Times have changed, and so have you
Entrepreneur: Since its establishment 16 years ago, Zhixing Taolu has always been committed to corporate leadership consulting and training, what is your original intention of founding the corporate leadership organization, and what changes have been in corporate leadership in the past 16 years?
Shen Xiaobin: After the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I found that domestic companies faced great challenges in terms of leadership. At that time, there was an urgent need for management and leadership training in domestic enterprises, but there were relatively few truly professional and effective situational leaders.
Corporate leadership has changed dramatically over the past 16 years. The first is the internal changes. At present, the main force in the enterprise is the post-80s, post-90s and post-00s, and their requirements for leadership are different from those of the older generation such as the post-70s. They are more focused on equality, participation, and communication, and they need to not only be self-worthy, but also happy, and have higher expectations of their leaders. The second is the change in the external environment. Today's increasingly competitive and rapid economic development requires leaders to have both management and leadership skills, and be able to lead their teams to cope with uncertainty and adapt quickly to change. Therefore, I think that the enterprise of the future will increasingly need to build an agile and flexible organization, which is also a project-based organization, to respond quickly to market changes. At the same time, leaders need to constantly learn and change to adapt to the requirements of the new era. In doing so, our goal is to help business leaders develop leadership and lead their teams to transform, change and innovate.
Entrepreneur: What is your definition of leadership, and in your opinion, how can you improve your leadership?
Shen Xiaobin: In the book "Leadership", it is written that leadership is the art of mobilizing the masses to work hard for a common vision. There are three keywords involved here: mobilization, vision, and art.
Mobilization. Leaders need to know how to mobilize their teams and motivate them. For example, how to motivate the team to work hard without material rewards. Times are changing, and that will never change. Leaders need to cultivate the values and pragmatism of their team, and leaders who only talk about money are not good leaders.
Vision. The so-called vision refers to the ultimate goal that an enterprise will achieve in the future. Leaders need to establish a clear vision and goals for the team and reach a consensus with the team, so that the future of the enterprise will be inspiring, so that the team will be more motivated and more effective. Therefore, we should develop a common vision and unite people from all over the world.
Art. The art encompasses many factors, which is the highest level of leadership. Leadership is the art of mobilizing people to work towards a common vision. Art varies from person to person, and there is no universal standard. Its significance lies in the fact that good leaders must pay attention to individual differences, need to consider different stages of development, and make it different from person to person, from event to event, and from situation to situation.
In addition, I have built an easy-to-understand leadership model called "One Center, Two Fundamental Points". "One center" refers to the environment, and "two basic points" refers to the leader and the led. From a leader's point of view, leadership is the influence that a leader has over the led. Therefore, we can say that leadership is influence.
02
6P makes leadership harder
Entrepreneur: Has the 6P corporate leadership model in China changed in the context of today's era, and are there any new elements or priorities?
Shen Xiaobin: The biggest pain point of the leadership program is that it is not easy to be measured, and the output results are expressed in numbers. In my opinion, leadership training must start from the practical application of the enterprise, not only the personal leadership of managers. Zhixingtao's 6P enterprise leadership model (see Figure 1) locates corporate leadership, emphasizes leadership behaviors, and provides an effective framework for the improvement of senior leadership in enterprises, helping business leaders learn leadership, develop leadership, and apply leadership. 6P corporate leadership makes leadership more "hard" and more applicable to enterprise management practices.
The 6P Enterprise Leadership Model, through the statistics and analysis of big data, summarizes the most important core elements of corporate leadership from six different dimensions, and helps business leaders transform the theories, ideas, and cases of benchmarking enterprises into practical operation solutions that can be learned and easily applied by enterprises.
P1: Lead yourself. If a leader wants to lead others well, he must first lead himself.
P2: Leadership Vision. As a leader, your most important mission is to lead your team and lead your organization to success.
P3: Leading Change. If an enterprise wants to develop, to develop healthily and sustainably, and to develop with high quality, it is impossible to avoid a topic - how to transform, change and innovate?
P4: Leadership Performance. Performance management is a world-class challenge. Many companies, teams, and leading cadres have made performance management a performance appraisal, which is a particularly big misunderstanding.
Fig.1 6P enterprise leadership model
To do a good job in performance management, we need to cross three ladders: the first level is performance appraisal, the second level is performance leadership, and the third level is performance strategy. Performance is not only for salary increases and bonuses, but also for the implementation and implementation of the organizational strategy of the enterprise through a set of performance mechanisms.
P5: Leadership team. Why is it becoming more and more difficult to lead the team? Because with the progress of society, there are more and more needs of people, both material needs and spiritual needs. How to do a good job of team leadership that varies from person to person is the key.
P6: Leadership decision-making. Nobel laureate economist Herbert Alexander Simon famously said that management is decision-making. A very important part of a business leader's job in a business is to make decisions. Most of the time, the reason why business leaders feel difficult is that the decision is not right or wrong, how to make the right and difficult decision, there are extremely high requirements for the leader, the leader must not only have a high IQ, but also have a high emotional intelligence, in order to grasp the development trend and law of the industry, make the right decision.
Although the 6P model is static, the content is dynamic. With the development of the times, the 6P model also needs to keep pace with the times. Enterprises should grasp the current new technology, maintain innovation, and maintain healthy and sustainable development in operation and management. The key to reducing costs and increasing efficiency lies in innovation, such as the shift of traditional fuel vehicles to new energy, the shift of computer networks to cloud networks and mobile networks, and the transformation of production and manufacturing to artificial intelligence, which are all innovative ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Entrepreneur: What do you think are the core elements of successful business transformation, and what are the key strategies or approaches that can help companies successfully transform in your experience?
Shen Xiaobin: Enterprise transformation involves all aspects: from strategy to business model, from mechanism to process, from culture to behavior, from technology to management, from management to leadership...... Behind all the transformation, first of all, is the transformation of people, the transformation of people's ideology, and the transformation of people's behavior and habits. We can use the "iceberg model" to understand that the top half of the iceberg is things, including strategy, business model, technology, products and markets, and the bottom half is people. Enterprise transformation often involves two aspects: the transformation of things and the transformation of people. Human transformation means that leaders need to take the lead. According to the law of performance, behind the performance is the team, and behind the team is the leader. The success of an enterprise is inseparable from the efforts of the team, and the success of the team depends on the ability of the leader. That's why, no matter what industry you're in, for a business to be successful, it's important to elevate the leadership of your leaders. The competence of leaders needs to be strengthened in both hard (professional) and soft (non-professional) skills, and both the hard power of leaders (positional power) and the soft power of leaders (non-positional power) need to be developed. Therefore, leaders need to develop their soft and hard skills in an all-round way, which is the core element of today's successful transformation.
Leaders must go through three transformations: first, the transition from technology to management, second, the transition from management to leadership, and third, the transformation from leadership to strategy. When an organization transforms, it needs a business leader with a sense of purpose. Leaders must have a sense of crisis and a desire for change in their hearts. In the transition period, the more difficult the challenging environment, the more necessary it is for a leader to lead the team out of the predicament and promote the team to continuously transform and innovate. This strength comes from a strong sense of purpose and motivation within the leader. Therefore, enterprise transformation requires a business leader with a sense of mission, and the key strategy of transformation is to think clearly, write out, and do it.
03
Learn from yourself, learn from others, and learn by doing
Entrepreneur: In the face of an environment that wants, wants, wants, and more, what kind of organizational structure and culture does an enterprise need to create, and what kind of leadership does it need?
Shen Xiaobin: In the environment of both, want, and, more, leaders need to have entrepreneurial thinking, think from the perspective of the enterprise, the pressure of customers, the market, and competitors force us to work hard, and an enterprise must survive without obvious shortcomings, otherwise it will be eliminated.
In order to be a leader, we must answer two questions about what kind of thinking height and what kind of strategic view we should have from the perspective of a leader. First, what is changing? Second, what is constant? Many people only focus on what is changing: the market is changing, the technology is changing, the customer is changing, the leadership is changing, and the leader can't just focus on the change. A truly good leader should not only pay attention to what changes, but also grasp what is constant, so as to respond to all changes.
For example, there must be customers in an enterprise, customers need good products and services, and good products and services need a good team, and behind a good team, an excellent leader is needed, and this law will never change.
Entrepreneur: What are the key qualities and skills needed to be an effective leader, and what do you think are the key development paths or approaches that can help leaders improve their effectiveness and impact?
Shen Xiaobin: The five key behaviors to enhance leadership include: leading by example, sharing a vision, challenging the status quo, enabling others to do something, and inspiring people. There are two paths to these behaviors. First, develop leadership. Leadership is talented, but it can also be cultivated. Second, follow the "721" rule to improve leadership: 70% learn from work, 20% learn from role models around them, and 10% participate in training and learning. To put it simply, it is to learn from yourself, learn from others, and learn from practice, which is an effective path and method to improve leadership.
Entrepreneur: After 15 years of development, what do you think are the new changes in leadership?
Shen Xiaobin: First, leadership was a luxury in the past, but it is a necessity now, and second, everyone is a leader.
In the future, the discipline of leadership will become more refined, more specialized, more technological, and more enterprise-oriented. Leadership is not just a discipline or an art, leadership will become a necessity for enterprises, and a good enterprise must be led. For a future-oriented leader, the leadership skills that need to be learned and mastered include: strategic leadership, change leadership, innovation leadership, transformation leadership, performance leadership, situational leadership, project leadership, virtual team leadership, etc. We need to think about how to professionalize these segmented leadership, which will be the cornerstone of the company's future success.
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