Good Leaders Encourage Knowledge Sharing

Harvard Business Review published a great post How Poor Leaders Become Good Leaders . It has listed 9 important points what make good leaders, and, interesting enough, knowledge sharing plays an important role in the modern leadership

1. They improved their communication effectiveness.
2. They made an effort to share their knowledge and expertise more widely.
3. They began to encourage others to do more and to be better.
4. They developed a broader perspective.
5. They recognized that they were role models and needed to set a good example.
6. They began to champion their team’s new ideas.
7. They learned to recognize when change was needed.
8. They improved their ability to inspire and motivate others.
9. They began to encourage cooperation rather than competition.

In the Point 2, it mentioned “They made an effort to share their knowledge and expertise more widely“. Only poor leaders are stingy with information and know-how. Apparently, smart leaders are aware that they can develop their know-how further by sharing their knowledge and teaching others. Also, they can start to set examples for other people in the organisations, as Point 5 mentioned.

Of course, a good leader is not only willing to share her knowledge but also keen to build the culture for everyone to share knowledge freely. That is why Point 3 in this article is “They made an effort to share their knowledge and expertise more widely“. It has clearly shown how important Learning and Development is becoming in the modern organisations.

Of course, shaping knowledge sharing culture is not an easy process. People, Process, Technology is one of the best models to implement knowledge management strategy. In point 7 and point 8, the article mentioned good leaders learn to recognize when changes are necessary and find ways to inspire and motivate their people.

When everyone talks about collaboration, this article used “cooperation” in Point 9. What is the difference between collaboration and cooperation? Harold Jarche has some great explanation in his blog:

collaboration means ‘working together’. That’s why you see it in market economies. markets are based on quantity and mass.

cooperation means ’sharing’. That’s why you see it in networks. In networks, the nature of the connection is important; it is not simply about quantity and mass …

It is obvious that cross-department knowledge sharing is extremely important in the modern business world. All the smart leaders are aware of the importance of knowledge sharing and how it can have a positive impact on business performance. As a result, modern organisations really need a right knowledge sharing platform for professionals to easily share knowledge across departments, and for smart leaders to motivate knowledge sharing. Once knowledge sharing has become part of the business process, good leaders can start to see the positive results from great knowledge sharing culture.