Tag: Intention

Leadership

First Principles Based Leadership Requires First Order Learning

Premise I read this post by John Hunter, which was originally published in 2014 but is still very relevant. In this blog, he shares one key insight from the work of Deming – managing (or leading) can’t be taught (prescriptive) and needs to be learnt (experiential). First Order Learning Vs Second Order Learning One needs to learn to lead by leading and to manage by managing. We can learn from our own experience (first order learning) or from the experience of those who have gone before us (second order learning). When we learn from our own experience, we start to […]

Leadership

Emergent Leadership

Leaders must adopt emergent leadership in a rapidly changing world with new workforce expectations, technological advancements, and increasing competition. Becoming intentional, aware, and capable of sense-making is key, alongside viewing actions as experiments and monitoring for unintended consequences, thus necessitating continuous dynamic adaptation and a cultural shift away from rigid planning towards empowerment and engagement.

Leadership

Seeing the Unseen!

Earlier today, I read a post by Martha Bird (@anthro_tweeter). She is a business anthropologist at ADP focused on understanding the cultural contexts of work and workplaces. In the post, she talks about the importance of “Leading with Intention and Attention”. You can read the entire post here on the MIT Sloan Management Review site. Personally, I believe that one of the key skills that differentiate good leaders from great is their abilities to spot things that are not spoken or shown. Over time, they have developed the uncanny ability to know when there is more to a presentation or […]

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 […]

Leadership

Lessons from Orchestra Conductors

In a recent blog post, Sethi Godin talks about how the famous conductors (orchestra) seem to be the only person on the orchestra that don’t make any sound at all and yet are the most important person on the team. He says, and I quote, Famous conductors are often judged for an hour or two on stage. They wear expensive clothes, make dramatic gestures and receive ovations. They also get paid a lot to carry a very little stick and they’re the only one on stage who doesn’t make noise. But it turns out that none of these things are […]