BEING EFFECTIVE AS A LEADER

Today I was given an opportunity to lead by my team members in an exercise known as Black Swann. I was not too willing to lead because I was not mentally prepared, but couldn't refuse to the task. The challenge was again reading and giving the right instructions and delivering the right message to the group. All this week I was thinking about motivation and getting the people on board. I started the exercise on the same thought. I tried to align my team members to the vision by a energetic smile. The power to create the right environment lies in my hand. So I tried. This was a learning I had from yesterday. Yes the first box tick. I learnt and applied. As per feedback I received, that energetic briefing helped the team to align with the vision. When there is one goal going on in the team, the work of leader becomes easy. All the time this week I was thinking about aligning people and motivating them. After yesterday I thought I have learnt a fair bit. But guess what , a great learning was waiting for me today. Today I was able to reflect on the operational aspect of my leadership. As always there will be some positives and some which are not. I ll talk about the areas of improvement. Yesterday I made a conclusion about reflecting your actions as a leader. Today I applied it but not to the full extent. There was a time when I went into brain fade mode and didn't think about the things going on. Rather I should have reflected on the strategy and suggested the team to develop a new action plan. We did the reflection bit in the first couple of hours but weren't able to do it at the end. My responsibility was to lift up the team spirit. You can never get complacent. It's always about following the PDSA cycle. Resilience is a very important quality to have. Such small instances of energy can have major impact on the outcome.

Another thing is the ability to work under pressure. I know that I can perform under pressure. But it is necessary to think crystal clear under pressure. I was not able to fully achieve it. A calm mind can lead to better decision making. This is something to pick up from the great leaders. They are one step ahead of the game. They have the larger picture in mind when people are involved into tasks. If I could improve it even more further, that calmness can be infectious for the benefit of the whole team. Today's learnings for me were really from an operational point of view. One thing that I am sure about right now is that leadership is about learning daily. More I reflect the more I learn.

It is interesting how the learning points that I concluded yesterday took a practical form for mr today. I have already discussed about the reflection and creating an environment bit. Further, I talked about skill development centres yesterday. I could relate it with the concept of value-based CSR from today's session. I also believe in the social responsibility. I was moved by what Ratan Tata said about CSR, that material benefit is of no good unless it is contributing toward's development of the country.These skill centres can also serve as being responsible towards the society. There has been a lot to take from this module already and still there is one day left. Applying all my learnings today gave me greater satisfaction. To end, I would say that values have become an importnt part of discussion everyday. Somehow or the other I end up thinking about them, be it decision making or CSR. Exploring them further.

Saurabh Kukreja : 17 Jan 2019 23:44 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem