Wharton Online Biz Journal Discusses Engaging Leaders

The Wharton School‘s online business journal, Knowledge@Wharton, recently interviewed Charlene Li, CEO and founder of Altimeter Group on the importance of leaders direct connecting with those they lead. Li is the author of the book, “The Engaged Leader: A Strategy for Your Digital Transformation.” The book focuses on the importance of social technologies for leaders in order to connect with customers and employees.  

The Wharton interview begins with Li explaining how a leader can be a leader, with out being engaged with employees and customers. “Today so many leaders are completely absent from the digital and social channels where their customers and employees are,” Li said. “They are not engaged at all. They feel like they need to be, but they don’t really want to be. They don’t know how to do it.” Li explains that she wrote the book because “t’s time for them to actually figure out how to do this, why to do it and how to be successful at it.”

The interview moves on to discussing how leaders make use of big data to be engaged and effective leaders. Knowledge@Wharton asked Li, “how do you figure out how to use data and ask the right questions?” Li responded with, “the hard part is asking the right questions, so you know what data to get and also, what are the things that you’re hoping to answer. Those questions are driven by your strategic goals.”

Li also comments that leaders should engage in social technologies, such as Twitter, to achieve a strategic goal, whether that is breaking into a new marketing or targeting a new audience. She said that using these technologies to reach a strategic goal creates the difference between a leader using the tools and a person.

You can read the rest of the Knowledge@Wharton interview here. Find out more about The Wharton School, at metromba.com.

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