‘There are all sorts of platitudes about leadership,’ says Albert Wang, general counsel (GC) for Asia-Pacific at 3M. ‘You hear them all the time: walk the talk, lead from the front, lead with integrity, and be authentic. They’re platitudes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true. When I think about the leaders that have inspired me, all of those qualities resonate.’
Another platitude GCs slip into when discussing leadership is ‘talking the language of business’. This strikes a chord with the Shanghai-based Wang. ‘We have a very engineering and science-focused culture, and engineers talk in data. We used to see PowerPoint presentations that ran to hundreds of slides with overflow of information. There is now a trend to strip that detail out and simplify it into pictures or ideas or to develop a dialogue rather than a one-way presentation. It’s not about being updated, it’s about identifying problems and working out how the business can solve them. That, in essence, is talking the language of business.’
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