The Wise Leader
We need to reinvent leadership around human values instead of profit maximization.
The wise leader is a concept developed by Japanese thinkers Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi that aims to answer the many challenges faced by today's organisations in the new knowledge economy.
It helps ask the question "What is good, right and just for everyone ?" instead of just "What's in it for me ?" in a business setting.
The wise leader symbolizes a morally good leader which takes sound decisions based on three different type of knowledge : explicit, tacit and practical. They recognize every social phenomena, including business, is context-dependend.
The wise leader possesses six abilities :
- Morality : they make decisions that benefit common good based on their personal ethics
- Clairvoyance : they quickly understand the nature of people, things and event and their meaning
- Contextualisation : they create spaces (ba) for people to get together, share, experiment and find solutions
- Communication : they explain complex ideas in simple ways using methaphors and story telling when needed
- Political power : they understand others and know how to make them act
- Mentoring : they pass on their knowledge to others
The wise leader is hence simultaneously a philosopher, a crafstman, an idealist, a politician, a novelist and a teacher.
In Japan a ba (place, space, or field) refers to the context in which relationships are forged and interactions occur.
Source: The Wise Leader by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi.