A couple of thoughts on leadership. I was listening to a presentation about transformation and one of the speaker’s points was the leadership needed to transform.
The speaker listed four qualities of exceptional leaders. These qualities align with my personal beliefs on leadership.
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Simplify complexity and operationalize it
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Drive ambition for the entire organization
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Play well on teams you don’t lead
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Build leaders
Leaders vs. Drivers
I also was listening to some people discuss leaders of people and drivers of people. The above characteristics define leaders rather than drivers to me. I must admit that drivers are sometimes effective. An example is Steve Jobs. The people I know who worked for him had great respect for him and you can’t argue with Apple’s results. However, none of them liked him nor would they work for him again. If you remember the book Primal Leadership which I summarized last year, their position was that the “driving” leadership styles worked for the short term and under certain conditions. Leaders that drove their teams hard and kept decision-making to themselves tended to burn people out and not prepare the team to succeed without them.
Art vs. Science
Our environment doesn’t have life-or-death consequences but there are situations where there are big impacts that must be dealt with quickly. There are also times when we have inexperienced team members or our people are over-stretching themselves. Being directive, pushing yourself and your team are not only acceptable but required in circumstances.like these The key is identifying the right situations. Leadership is both art and science. We get better by studying science and better at art through experience.
Leaderships Role in Privacy
Privacy is a leadership challenge we all face. As IT leaders at NYU we are not just responsible for ones and zeros, but for also helping our community to leverage the technology we provide. Take the time to understand privacy and when appropriate help others to understand privacy at NYU. Know what can be shared and what should be shared. I’ve come across many examples of information being withheld unnecessarily that people could use to do their jobs better. We have an important responsibility to protect the privacy of our community and we also have a responsibility to help NYU be more data driven. Defining the what, where, where, and who of sharing data is a core ongoing initiative.
Privacy is everyone’s responsibility. We have a duty to protect the NYU data entrusted to us. Below are tips to safeguard personal information.
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Only collect, use, share, and maintain the data you need to achieve its specified purpose
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Maintain and dispose of data in accordance with NYU’s Retention & Disposal of Records policy. This ensures we maintain data in accordance with the minimum necessary principle
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Provide appropriate and timely access to data based on an individual’s role
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Don’t share your unique password. Learn more about securing your password
If you have questions about data privacy, I have good news: there’s a whole team, Global Privacy and Data Strategy, to support you.