Ideas, Leadership

The Role of a Leader – Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable

This is a picture that I had clicked some time back. This was a street art and at that time, it rang true for what it said, from the perspective of an artist (and yes, I do consider myself as an artist who works with words). When I was going through my instagram feed and stumbled on to this picture again, I realised that this is exactly what a leader is to do – to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. Leaders comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable – Mukesh gupta Comforting the disturbed: One of the […]

Creativity, Innovation, Leadership

To me more Creative, Be open to being Bored!

This is probably the best explanation that I have come across in a long time for the power of boredom. The current zeitgeist is all about shunning boredom. People do not want to feel the boredom. The moment they are alone with their thoughts, out comes the phone or the tablet and we get lost in the world of social media or the imaginary world of audio/video content. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. However, everyday, I slow down and observe what is around me, look for beauty in the surroundings and try to enjoy it. Sometimes, […]

Leadership

What Kind of a Leader Are You?

Early today, when I opened up my LinkedIn feed, I saw a poll set up by Dr. Nirmalya Kumar. He is Lee Kong Chian Professor of Marketing at Singapore Management University and Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute. In the poll he talks about the three kinds of meetings that he has seen CEO’s run. You can access this poll and cast your vote here. Essentially, the options he shares are not just relevant for CEO’s and their meetings, but to all leaders and the kinds of culture we create and promote within our teams. So, here are the […]

Leadership

Creating a 5 Star Employee On-boarding Experience is a Leader’s Responsibility

The responsibility of onboarding the employees we hire squarely falls on us as the leaders of the business unit. The number of times this process is delegated to some HR business partner or sometimes even to some HR executive is not a joke. The on-boarding process is our opportunity to start moulding the new hire in such a way that they can become fully productive and functional members of our team as quickly as possible. In a talk that I gave sometime back, to a HR community, I talk about how could one go about delivering, what I call a […]