My understanding of how to help senior leaders grow their leadership has grown leaps and bounds since my first leadership workshop in 2008. Though some primal instincts remains valid, I have learned the profound power of uncovering the whole person and leader inside of an executive, especially when we can tie that intimately to their context.   I am humbled to witness a profound coming out in some individuals commensurate to the depth of challenges they need to tackle.

Enliven senior leader realities, and build their capacity to learn to deal with those realities

In 2008, I discovered my innate talent for designing leadership Programs when I had to replace a team who struggled to get on the same wavelength as a challenging HR executive of an Indian company.  I intuitively understand that going global and managing regulators were the learning edges for the High power executives.  A spark of inspiration struck me:  what if I could bring alive similar situation for them, get them to tackle it, and hence discover what they do well versus struggle?  My first leadership simulation was born, probably still one of my best.   Through test runs with the client and the actual program, highly assured leaders bordering on arrogance were confronted with their own limitations, and reflected on it.  We had achieved the most difficult threshold for helping senior leaders expand their leadership: getting them into a learning and growth mindset.   With such a mindset, they will figure out the rest.

Another way we enliven senior leadership realities is to invite Chairman and CEOs to share privately their journey and what goes on in the Board room and C-suite.

Uncover the whole person inside, and hook that up to challenges in the leader’s context

Fast forward 11 years, with the L3 journey for 22 senior leaders from some of Singapore’s largest and most prestigious companies, getting them into a learning and growth mindset remains a starting challenge, but there is more.  We set ourselves an ambitious goal, far more than the one off workshop in 2008: make these 22 leaders whole leaders, with 20-30% increase in leadership effectiveness.  Most of them start as lopsided leaders, strong in some dimensions but missing other dimensions.  The most common example is task masters, people who focus on getting the job done, achieving KPIs, with little attention to relationships and people impact of what or how they do things. This is okay for BAU but not Transformation.  Transformation needs path blazers, evolved Task masters who has uncovered their capacity to relate, care and be compassionate.   I know this well because I was a Task master 🙂

Role of the counselor:  inspire, challenge and support leaders to discover his (her) own compass and courage

It has taken time to uncover my whole and unique self to the mission of helping people to uncover the leader in themselves.  I am not warm Nor fuzzy. I love to challenge, direct, and judge quickly.  I have had to reign these instincts back to a healthy level, and uncover the care and compassion needed balance my natural capacity to offer high challenge.   What has been constant is my ability to be a compass, to stand for what is good, necessary, sacrifices and hard decisions that must be made.   However, before I didn’t know how to influence others with my compass.  I have learned from Tsun-yan Hsieh, our Chairman and my mentor, how to get people to discover their own compass, and the courage to act according to the compass.

Ultimately, we must all soul search as who we want to be, what we want our society, companies, our planet do be.  Another part of Linhart’s Mission is to awaken this engaged leader in executives, to encourage them to make a positive difference beyond performance.

June 28, 2019

Huijin Kong

Principal, LinHart Group

Journey Dean for L3