Knowledge and Leadership, the 5 Approaches to Be a ‘Knowledge Leader’ – Deltec Bank, Bahamas a knowledge series

Jean Chalopin

In this post, we are going to look briefly at knowledge Leadership and 5 approaches to assist with its direction within the workplace.

What Is a ‘Knowledge Leader’?

The person who may or may not have the title of ‘Chief Knowledge Officer’ (CKO) ‘Head of Knowledge Management ‘or a title fairly similar, is the knowledge champion or leader.

This person is a member of staff who is tasked with moving this concept within the company and developing the direction for Knowledge Management setting the direction for leadership.

Now we understand who may be tasked with leading Knowledge Management, let us take a look below at 5 different Knowledge Leadership approaches.

• The Behavior approach
• The Contingency approach
• The Trait approach
• The Transformational approach
• The Transactional approach

Let us take a closer look below at how these approaches assist with sharing knowledge.

The Behavior Approach

This approach is rooted in change management and also business-process re-engineering. It relates to how knowledge is reflected in management.

The main focus of this approach is:

• Innovation
• Learning
• Creativity

Although Technology is a necessity for knowledge resources, the above criteria are employed alongside. However, the focus here is less on manipulating resources or knowledge creation.

Amongst people, communication, teams, and knowledge is distributed and shared by being embedded in interactions that then allows is to secure the many resources of intelligence.

Now we have looked at the Behavior approach, we can look at how the Contingency approach works.

The Contingency Approach

This way of sharing knowledge is based on the approach that not one way of presenting Knowledge Management works more efficiently than any other. It outlines that there is no best practice to manage or one single more effective approach.

The different types of Knowledge Management approaches are not necessarily to be delivered in isolation and it is not claimed that anyone approach provides better results than another.

This approach advises it is a continual quest to find suitable methods of management and solutions. This approach is also creative and identifies the need for flexibility, which will depend on the context of which it is delivered and the availability of resources.

The Trait Approach

This perspective for employing Knowledge Management has been acquired by closely studying what makes both successful and in successful leaders. A list of traits is compiled and subsequently compared to potential leaders which can effectively assess the prospect of their success or failure.

Successful leaders usually portray more superior traits than those of more inadequate leaders.

This point of view looks to set out core traits which can then go on to anticipate the power of any potential leader in terms of their success.

Let us look below to identify how a transformational slant can be effective when deploying Knowledge Management.

The Transformational Approach

Transformational Leadership affects employees’ perceptions via any returns the company receives in the form of human capital benefits.

According to Jean Chalopin, an entrepreneur “A Transformational Leader can increase those benefits by using them in the Knowledge Management procedure.” Using this approach, an autonomous culture is promoted whereby staff feels secure enough to voice their experiences.

Finally, let us look at the methods a leader using a Transactional Approach will perform.

The Transactional Approach

A leader who practices this method of Knowledge Management has a style which is created by the concept of reward and punishment. Leaders who employ this approach have the belief that the way an employee performs is solely dependent on these two elements.

To Conclude

We hope you found this information useful in your quest for knowledge.  

Disclaimer:  The author of this text, Robin Trehan, has an Undergraduate degree in economics, Masters in international business and finance and MBA in electronic business. Trehan is Senior VP at Deltec International www.deltecbank.com. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this text are solely the views of the author, and not necessarily reflecting the views of Deltec International Group, its subsidiaries and/or employees.

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