Table of Contents
Introduction
Being a leader requires more than just being authoritative or giving directions. As Herminia Ibbara puts it, being the first to speak up in group or get involved in it doesn’t necessarily means that that one can provide leadership. As it seems that Herminia Ibbara’s effort is to revolutionize the traditional conception of real leadership, her book “Act like a Leader, Think like a Leader” has received much positive reception from leadership enthusiasts. It is agreeable that one can enhance leadership skills by expanding networks, redefining tasks and experimenting oneself outside the content zone.
Leadership is defined by the way one associate and handles a network of people. The benefits of collaborating with peer staff and other people who share diverse industry knowledge and ideas cannot be gainsaid. The industry provides a wide range of professionals and leaders who have vital information useful for personal development. As a leader, one can get the time to interact in the corporate world through delegation since it creates more time for strategic works. However, in order to achieve the leadership learning goals, a leader is expected to learn and understand his or her corporate realm. This is to facilitate the leadership skills development process.
Of importance also, Herminia Ibbara also suggests adapting leadership style (Ibarra, 2015). The conventional leadership style blocks the minds from self-generation of leadership ideas. She calls this manipulation (Ibarra, 2015).. It is important that one act on what he or she feels is right and if it works, they can adapt it and apply them in their organizations. In order to make leadership part of one’s professional behavior, continuous learning through networking and going out of routine tasks is imperatively required.
Hermiinia Ibbara also touches on the need for adopting the outsight principle (Ibarra, 2015). She believes that leadership can be cultivated through going beyond the content zone by working on external projects. The outsight principle also means that a leader needs to act first before anything else. This means that one has to engage in projects outside the company, interact with industry stakeholders and learning new ways of handling organizational problems. One would agree with this outsight approach because leadership skills cannot be cultivated by simply thinking about what you need to do a s leader. It is what you do every single day both insight and outsight that makes one to develop leadership skills. When it comes to transition or leadership or even career, introspection and thinking should come after an action. The reason is that thinking will always change depending on the experience one has obtained. If you think first before acting, it may become cumbersome to learn and introduce new ways of approaching leadership issues. In fact, introspection always drive us back into the past, thereby making it difficult to incorporate new ideas for the present.
Conclusion
Herminia Ibarra’s book offers an important trend-setting leadership paradigm. It offers potential leaders and leaders a strategic approach towards being true leaders. Owing to the inadequacies of conventional leadership approaches, her book is intuitively crucial in changing the mind-set of acquiring leadership skills. It is simply doing the little continuously to achieve the great. Precisely, real leadership is made by connecting organizational teams to outside world, defining leadership goals and acting first before thinking.
- Ibarra, H. (2015). Act like a leader, think like a leader. Harvard Business Review Press.