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Premise:
In this first episode of a new series, which will be focused on leadership, we host a practicing leader – Pankaj Rusia. He currently works for SAP as the Head of Customer Success for the SAP HR Cloud business are and is based out of Singapore.
As the Head of Customer Success for SAP South East Asia, he is on a mission to make customers look great in front of their leadership, employees, and managers, and to help them get the best out of their SuccessFactors solutions.
Insights from the conversation:
In this wide ranging conversation, he shares his insights on leadership. WE cover many things including the following:
The leadership burden, which makes us be different person at work and while at home. We discuss some challenges that typically leaders in the middle management face. He talks about the importance of listening more than talking, understanding what drives your team members and having good conversations.
He shares the importance of developing people and letting your people outgrowing us as their leaders. He also shares the importance of finding mentors and sponsors for those we lead outside of their immediate circle within our organization.
We discuss the book – One minute manager and the key insights from the book. He talks about the 3 Seconds rule – to hold on to reacting to anything by at least 3 seconds to help our emotions settle down, it allows us to respond rather than react to situations and avoid embarrassment.
He also shares the importance of having a spiritual practice in becoming better leaders and seeking our purpose in life and how to measure the success of our journey. The importance of balance in the approach to leadership.
He shares one of the core challenge for leaders and their teams – the proliferation of meetings, specially virtual meetings, which leads to the paucity of time for deep thinking and improving our effectiveness.
He also shared the importance of learning and staying abreast of latest technology for leaders, as it helps connect with the younger and more tech savvy employees.
He talks about the importance of staying healthy and doing activities with teams outside of work and having a hobby is key for all leaders and how to find the time for these hobbies. The role that continuous improvement plays in our careers as in our sports life.
You don’t accept the results of yesterday, today.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, I believe that while leading a team as a middle manager in a large corporate is very different from leading the organisation itself, we still have enough agency and with some creativity, we can still exhibit all the capabilities of leaders. Hope you learnt from the conversation as much as I did.
You can find the video version of this conversation here.
