Category: Leadership

Leadership

Trusting Adults to Behave like Adults

I read a post on Nature.com which talks about lessons to be learned by governments about communications and trusting the public with hard truth. You can read the entire post titled “Covid Lessons: Trust the Public with hard Truths” here. I believe that the lessons are as much valid for business leaders as much for the governments and the public. Bureaucracy is usually a result of not trusting our employees to do the right thing in any given situation. Every time we see an employee make a mistake, the tendency is to create a policy around it so that, that […]

Leadership

Nature of Work has Changed, Now Leaders Need to Respond

I am super impressed by the ability of Seth Godin to observe what is going on below the surface around him. Earlier today, he shared another one of his brilliant insight about the nature of work and how it has changed in the recent past – from being clearly defined, measurable and manageable chunks; to ambiguous, requiring applied creativity, needs initiative on the part of the employee and being led than being managed. You can read his post here. So, as a leader or manager, what do we need to do differently? Here is a list to get started: Make […]

Ideas, Leadership

Unlocking the Power of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is on top of every organisation – social or entrepreneurial and every leader worth their salt is thinking about how to make their culture more inclusive and equitable for all members of the tribe.  In this blog I want to warn leaders about the risk of ignoring one or more of the trinity of values (Diversity, Inclusion & Equity) in favor of the others.  I was talking to one of my friends yesterday. He leads a large team and said that he was hiring and wanted to check with me if I knew someone for the […]

Ancient Wisdom, Leadership, Personal Growth

Life Lessons from The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch

This was the title of the last lecture delivered by Randy Pausch at the Carnegie Mellon University lecture hall. He was terminally ill and only had a few days to live. If you have not watched this video, I would strongly encourage you to spend the hour and 15 mins that it takes to watch the video and while you do so, please do have a notebook close to you and take notes. In his humorous talk, he shares some great wisdom on life and how to live a life worth living. You can watch the video here. When there […]

Leadership

Being a Leader is Like Being an Improv Actor

One of the skills that all of us need to develop as we want to be and behave like a leader is to develop the skills of an improv actor. The foundational aspect of any improv actor is the ability to be fully present in the moment and respond to their stimuli. As leaders, we need to be able to do that as well. So, if our stimuli requires us to be a coach, we need to be able to channel our inner coach. If our stimuli needs us to be a manager and give clear instruction to someone on […]